Passive Racism and the Seattle Public Schools

Check this out. (HT: Rod Dreher)

This bothers me. A lot.

Many others have dealt with the implications that the Seattle School district believes that only white people can be racist, so I'm going to skip that.

What I want to focus on is "Cultural Racism."

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and
normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label
people of color as "other", different, less than, or render them invisible.
Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh
colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed
to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and
identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

First let me tell you what I agree with here. Identifying only whites as great writers or composers is racism. Marginalizing a culture is racism.

Having a "future time orientation" is not racism, unless these words do not mean what I think they mean. Last I checked orienting yourself towards your future goals was a good thing. I don't even see how that could be referred to as racism by even the most warped mind. Maybe it's some kind of Goals 2000 edu-speak?

And when did collectivism=non-racism? Communism is collective, and one can find some pretty racist communists. You need look no further than the Soviet Union. Just because the people in the Seattle Public Schools think collectivism is a virtue does not mean it is the repository of all virtue. I'm not really sure how being an individualist leads to racism. My definition of individualism is that I should be happy with who I am and not dependent on others. This seems logically opposed to identifying strongly with ones race and to oppressing others based on the group to which they belong.

Lastly, "defining one form of English as standard." Do I even need to say anything here? Okay, maybe they mean British English as a opposed to American English or maybe they are referring to colloquialisms, but I doubt it. The fact of the matter is that there is only one way to correctly form a sentence in English. I hate to break it to the Linguistic Establishment, but "Ebonics" is more closely related to "Redneck" than anything else. Poor blacks in the South spoke the same way as poor whites in the South. When the migration to Northern cities occurred, blacks were looked down on and discriminateded against for the way they spoke as much as anything else, but that doesn't mean they used proper English.

It's like the friend my husband has at work who is routinely called an "oreo" because he speaks "too white." Perpetuating the idea that groups can use English however they want and have it be correct leads to poor academic achievement and is a form of racism in and of itself. By insisting that blacks can't use "white English" what Seattle is really saying is that blacks can't be taught to use proper English. It's the "sure the slaves should be free, but I wouldn't want any of those disgusting people living here" racism of the North of the 1850s. The condescension of such an attitude is disgusting.

In fact it's an example of :

Beliefs, attitudes, and actions that contribute to the maintenance of racism, without openly advocating violence or oppression. The conscious or unconscious maintenance of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that support the system of racism, racial prejudice and racial dominance.

AKA "passive racism."

[Update: I just noticed that there is evidently no such thing as standard Spanish either. Note the "Latino/as." I'm sorry folks, but in Spanish it's just Latinos, like it's just Latins in English.]