1 When It Does Not Serve White Interests
As I educated myself and pondered more, I started to gain the knowledge to answer my own questions. I now understand that it is not helpful for white people to educate on our own failures, it is not helpful for us to educate ourselves or the ever growing non-white population on our wrongdoings, or to admit to others or even ourselves that maybe our privilege is not deserved and that a shift in power dynamics is necessary. To do this, we as white people would have to admit that we occupy grossly disproportionate positions of power. We would then have to admit that this is because structural white supremacy is still embedded in not only our institutions, but in every aspect of our lives from unequal infant mortality rates at birth to barriers in practicing customary burial practices after our deaths.
Finally, we would have to acknowledge our privilege and make room to allow those without our privileges to occupy the same spaces as us. This is the most difficult part for most. White people may attend protests, may post black squares on their instagram feeds, or may become keyboard warriors warring with the many racists of social media. It is when it comes down to change actually happening, when we as white people are no longer able to use our privilege and must suffer the consequences of this lack of privilege that underprivileged communities have faced their entire lives that suddenly these movements have gone too far in the eyes of many. If we were to truly decolonize the United States, to truly work to create equity in all aspects of society, this is not possible without some white people having to face consequences not as positive as they are used to—and all of this is not possible without a dramatic change in education.
“A structural analysis of racism suggests that education will not produce less racist institutions as long as white people control them. As Beverly Gordon has argued, expecting white educators to reconstruct racist institutions ignores the fact that they face the sticky dilemma of attempting to educate the masses in a way that allows them accessibility to high status knowledge and places them on an equal footing to compete. Most assuredly in time, they will compete with our children and ostensibly with us for a share of the power and the reallocation of resources. And while most people do have good intentions, when our social status is threatened, we tend to become even more conservative in order to protect our material gains.”
—(Pewewardy 2000, p. 19) (Gordon 1985, p. 37)
Pewardy and Gordon acknowledge that because white educators and representatives largely control the education system, they will continually uphold the institutionalized racism long embedded in schools. This is because, “school curriculum has contributed to the formation of attitudes that make it easier for powerful groups, those whose knowledge is legitimized by school studies, to manage and control society,” (Anyon 1979: 382). Scholar Cornel Pewewardy argues this is done through promoting, ”a system maintaining curriculum. By that I mean it virtually designs hegemonic class structures, which just about guarantees that the oppressed remain oppressed and the oppressors remain oppressors,” (Pewewardy 2000, pg. 12). “Hegemonic ways of knowing, sanctioned in state standards, reinstitute colonialism in family life and practice… Hegemony, as embedded in education, is designed to maintain status quo benefits for a ruling elite, and is therefore by definition a form of anti-Indianism,” (Shear et. al 2015, pg. 76). Journalist and educator Carl B. Anderson refers to this use of education to maintain hegemony as “presentism”—using history to suit present-day needs (Anderson 2012). The present day needs of the United States government are to maintain this status quo, to maintain white supremacy for fear that the vastly majority white people in power would be at risk of losing these positions. “Efforts that aim to maximize the comfort of White children, while ignoring the historical and ongoing trauma caused to children from minoritized groups by a range of school practices, favor White perspectives and interests and marginalize those of students and families of color. Conservative toolkits assume White parents should be entitled to control public education and to protect their children from discomfort,” (LoBue and Douglass 2023, pg. 555).
“Bringing modern American Indian history into the curriculum would mean that the process of assimilation has failed, that American Indians still exist, and that tribal governments that have existed before contact with colonial America are also capable of efficiently serving communities and tribal nations,” (Padgett 2015, pg. 164). This is an uncomfortable reality for most white people, that maybe those who are not white are just as capable of filling the positions they have held for far too long—or that those who are not capable are perhaps in this position because structural discrimination has prevented them from obtaining the necessary qualifications. “For example, the modern-day canon that revolves around an established set of readings or ‘classics’ (Shakespeare and Dickinson are classics, but Louis Owens and Zitkala-Sa are not) is one way White supremacy gets played out in colleges and universities. White supremacy is viewed as natural and legitimate and it is precisely through this naturalization that White supremacy derives its hegemonic power,” (Brayboy 2005, pg. 432).