Giving Compass' Take:

• A North Carolina assistant principal discusses the impact of racial literacy in the classroom and understanding how to reimagine teaching in a way that addresses race. 

• How can more schools support and expand teaching development programs on racial literacy? 

• Read more on racial literacy and its importance. 

One of the ways to dismantle systemic racism in schools is to require racial literacy programs for white teachers — to catch our own presuppositions in midair and hold them out. I have been trained to believe as a white woman that I have a biological deficit to speak with credibility about race.

Due to how whiteness has been rendered as invisible in our society, much of our training as white people has taught us to see racism as what a person of color can discuss. The current times are showing us more of a multiracial, anti-racist landscape, but I am not confident this momentum will stay unless whites can build our racial literacy. For the purpose of this piece, at times I say them, us, whites and we.

The deficit-thinking model translates into schools when students and teachers of color are labored with the work of keeping whites "woke." In my experience, whites do not believe they can be experts on race, and that it can actually be racist to believe we can.

Make no mistake, I am 20 years in of intentionally sustaining my gaze on my own race. I will never be on autopilot to racialize myself; that is how the system of whiteness works. Its whole goal is to keep race off my daily calendar. In fact, our oppressor language pits whites against other whites who can identify their own race.

I have had white people tell me I’ve threatened them, shut them down, made them uncomfortable, and say I am just all together wrong for saying whiteness is a thing. I cannot promise racial literacy won’t be threatening — the narrative I hear the most when engaging whites about race. What is threatening to you and what is threatening to me is subjective.

I did not have one class in education. All of my training was on the social construction of identity. I believe my success, and my continued student engagement was due in part to my own racial literacy, discussions I had in and out — mostly out — of my school building. I could not depend on models in my environment.

Read the full article about racial literacy by Michelle Gordon at Education Dive.