Thread by @_timhernandez

Today I’m mad about what DPS did to me, so here’s some unsolicited thoughts and opinions about the racial dynamics of teaching. #BacktoSchool2022 (🧵)

80% of teachers are white.

40% of school DISTRICTS in the US do not have a SINGLE non-white teacher.

52% of Public School students are BIPOC— most students do not look like their teachers.

These are not just racist conditions of teaching. They are colonial conditions, too.

80% of teachers are white because the education system wants them to be, and it isn’t ready or equipped to create conditions for teachers who aren’t white, either.

Instead, they choose to promote the oppression their “equity” departments try and fail to dismantle.

When I filed my Discrimination Complaint about my white principal calling me “aggressive, divisive, and attacking” in front of another white teacher, it was ruled out because both he and the other white teacher asserted that he “did not say it with racist intent.”

So yes, we have a system made up by a majority white workforce determining what the racial experiences of students that do not look like them are. Then, to solve this (very easily solved problem), they invest MILLIONS into “Equity” Departments to make white teachers less racist.

If your “equity, antiracism” work invests in growing white people to be less racist/ more conscious of bias instead of investing in conditions (via policy or $$$) that allow for the dignity and experience of BIPOC people to thrive, it is still white supremacy.

You do not have to be a white teacher/admin to be an agent of white supremacy or uphold whiteness.

Equity work that is not self-determined by those who experience inequity is Saviorism.

Final thought: I wish not all white people would have discovered white privilege. Language about racial oppression was previously reserved for any people who did the work to understand why that language exists: to dismantle oppressive racial systems.

But bc all white people learned about white privilege (think 2020), we now have majority of teachers running around parroting language like “equity, antiracism, uncomfortable conversations, etc.” without actually having to do the work to know what that language’s purpose is.

The language of white privilege/ racial oppression is not for white people to grow. It is directly designed to subvert a system that perpetuates white power. Its purpose is not to encourage white people towards inclusivity in a racist system. It is to take power from them in it.

I’ve got a bunch of things to update y’all on about DPS, where I’m teaching next year, etc. I’ll get to it. But today I’m mad. And I’m a free, grown, Brown man, so y’all get to hear it. ( END 🧵)

Love to @elisabethepps for teaching me how to claim these things publicly for myself (free, grown, etc.) in the last tweet. I wish more of my people did.