The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools


Book Description

In "The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools" Susan DuFresne shakes us to our foundation with the historically accurate images she has created on the three fifteen foot panels, which Garn Press has transformed into a book that is destined to unite hearts and minds in the struggle for equity and justice for all children in America's public schools."I felt the weight of historical injustice on my brush as I depicted the findings of my research," Susan explains. "But I also felt the tugging of my brush to depict the fight for justice, which is also there throughout history. Teachers especially have always been courageous in their resistance to racism and oppression, and I wanted to share this history to inspire others through the images I was painting to take up that truth and join the resistance movement to end institutional racism in public schools." Susan is a teacher and activist as well as artist of exceptional talent, and she has produced works of art that ignite strong reactions and inspire action. Garn Press anticipates that the book will encourage conversations within civil society about institutional racism and discrimination in U.S. public schools, and we share Susan's expectation that the book will be studied by teachers and parents who want a re-Visioning of the role of public education in their children's lives.This is a book of hope as well as condemnation. The emphasis is on restorative justice and reconciliation. The graphic depictions of the history of racism and discrimination unite the struggles of resistance movements, including Black Lives Matter and the Badass Teachers Association. It is a call for the re-Imagining of public schools as places of racial justice that welcome every child in a society that recognizes the nation has an ethical responsibility to honor the civil rights of children and ensures that each child has the very finest education U.S. public schools can provide. The author and Garn Press will donate a part of net profits to Black Lives Matter and the Lakota People's Law Project.







To Live Heroically


Book Description

To Live Heroically examines American Indian education during the last century, comparing the tribal, mission, and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools and curriculums and the assumptions that each system made about the role that Indians should assume in society. This significant book analyzes the relationship between the rise of institutional racism and the fall of public education in the United States using the history of American Indian education as a model. The author asserts that had the federal government really wanted an educated, self-sufficient Indian population, it would have selected the successful nineteenth-century tribal models of Indian education rather than the mission or BIA schools. And her description of the reservation and bordering white community demonstrates the depth of institutional racism and its impact on local politics, economics, and education. Huff wants the reader to see how policy is made about Indian education and to recognize the complex issues that Indian (and other minority) families and educators deal with in real communities.




Challenging Racism in Higher Education


Book Description

Challenging Racism in Higher Education provides conceptual frames for understanding the historic and current state of intergroup relations and institutionalized racial (and other forms of) discrimination in the U.S. society and in our colleges and universities. Subtle and overt forms of privilege and discrimination on the basis of race, gender, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability are present on almost all campuses, and they seriously damage the potential for all students to learn well and for all faculty and administrators to teach and lead well. This book adopts an organizational level of analysis of these issues, integrating both micro and macro perspectives on organizational functioning and change. It concretizes these issues by presenting the voices and experiences of college students, faculty and administrators, and linking this material to research literature via interpretive analyses of people's experiences. Many examples of concrete and innovative programs are provided in the text that have been undertaken to challenge, ameliorate or reform such discrimination and approach more multicultural and equitable higher educational systems. This book is both analytic and practical in nature, and readers can use the conceptual frames, reports of informants' actual experiences, and examples of change efforts, to guide assessment and action programs on their own campuses.




IMPROVING SCHOOLS FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS


Book Description

Improving Schools for African American Students is designed to provide educational leaders with a better understanding of how to recognize the diversity of strengths that Black students bring with them to school and how to use these strengths to improve achievement. The articles contained in this book discuss generic education issues such as policy reform, the importance of high quality teaching, and the improvement of schools from the perspective of the academic achievement of African American students. Part I explores institutional racism in the context of America's public schools and provides suggestions for educational leaders to eliminate harmful policies and practices within educational institutions and settings. Part II discusses the kinds of institutional and instructional changes that are needed to support successful schooling of African American children and youth. Part III focuses on the challenges presented to African American students by the current high stakes testing environment that surrounds standards, assessment, and accountability. A review of the literature on schools that have succeeded in improving achievement for African American students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels with districts moving towards narrowing the achievement gap is included. This text examines a wide variety of policies, programs, practices, and research that will provide valuable insight. The emphasis throughout the book is on the ability of educators to successfully restructure their schools, offer high quality teaching and learning standards for African American students and to make the kinds of changes that will result in high achievement for all students.




Resegregation as Curriculum


Book Description

"Blending critical race theory, contemporary pragmatism, and the new materialism, this book raises questions about methodology, power, and change. Educational policy analysis needs this book, as do curriculum studies, teacher education, and antiracist work for its focus on how policy is lived by those on the receiving end of structural oppression." Patti Lather, Department of Education Studies, Ohio State university "This provocative analysis offered by Rosiek and Kinslow offers an opportunity for researchers, policy makers, and school leaders and educators to think about the lived experience of Black students in desegregating and resegregating schools. The authors precisely detail the path leading to social and education policies that generated more suffering for Black students and also served to maintain white racial advantage in urban schools and communities." Michael J. Dumas, graduate School of Education and African American Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley "Calling for an ontological reorientation to combat the force of whiteness, Rosiek and Kinslow present agonizing interviews with students subjected to resegregation and institutional racism. They call for readers to inhabit a ‘respectful solidarity’ with the students who analyze their experience with sharp insight, outrage, despair, and resolve." Stacy Alaimo, Professor of English, University of Texas at Arlington Resegregation as Curriculum offers a compelling look at the formation and implementation of school resegregation as contemporary education policy, as well as its impact on the meaning of schooling for students subject to such policies. Working from a ten-year study of a school district undergoing a process of resegregation, Rosiek and Kinslow examine the ways this "new racial segregation" is rationalized and the psychological and sociological effects it has on the children of all races in that community. Drawing on critical race theory, agential realism, and contemporary pragmatist semiotics, the authors expose how these events functioned as a hidden curriculum that has profound repercussions on the students' identity formation, self-worth, conceptions of citizenship, and social hope. This important account of racial stratification of educational opportunity expands our understanding of the negative consequences of racial segregation in schools and serves as a critical resource for academics, educators, and experts who are concerned about the effects of resegregation nationwide. Resegregation as Curriculum was the recipient of the O.L. Davis Book of the year award from the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum (2016).




Confronting Racism in Higher Education


Book Description

Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large. Over the past fifteen years there have been many discussions regarding racism and higher education. Some of these focus on formal policies and dynamics such as Affirmative Action or The Dream Act, while many more discussions are happening in classrooms, dorm rooms and in campus communities. Of course, corollary to these conversations, some of which are generative and some of which are degenerative, is a deafening silence around how individuals and institutions can actually understand, engage and change issues related to racism in higher education. This lack of dialogue and action speaks volumes about individuals and organizations, and suggests a complicit acceptance, tolerance or even support for institutional and individual racism. There is much work to be done if we are to improve the situation around race and race relation in institutions of higher education. There is still much work to be done in unpacking and addressing the educational realities of those who are economically, socially, and politically underserved and oppressed by implicit and overt racism. These realities manifest in ways such as lack of access to and within higher education, in equitable outcomes and in a disparity of the quality of education as a student matriculates through the system. While there are occasional diversity and inclusion efforts made in higher education, institutions still largely address them as quotas, and not as paradigmatic changes. This focus on “counting toward equity rather” than “creating a culture of equity” is basically a form of white privilege that allows administrators and policymakers to show incremental “progress” and avoid more substantive action toward real equity that changes the culture(s) of institutions with longstanding racial histories that marginalize some and privilege others. Issues in higher education are still raced from white perspectives and suffer from a view that race and racism occur in a vacuum. Some literature suggests that racism begins very early in the student experience and continues all the way to college (Berlak & Moyenda). This mis-education, mislabeling and mistreatment based on race often develops as early as five to ten years old and “follows” them to postgraduate education and beyond.




Confronting Racism in Teacher Education


Book Description

Confronting Racism in Teacher Education aims to transform systematic and persistent racism through in-depth analyses of racial justice struggles and strategies in teacher education. By bringing together counternarratives of critical teacher educators, the editors of this volume present key insights from both individual and collective experiences of advancing racial justice. Written for teacher educators, higher education administrators, policy makers, and others concerned with issues of race, the book is comprised of four parts that each represent a distinct perspective on the struggle for racial justice: contributors reflect on their experiences working as educators of Color to transform the culture of predominately White institutions, navigating the challenges of whiteness within teacher education, building transformational bridges within classrooms, and training current and inservice teachers through concrete models of racial justice. By bringing together these often individualized experiences, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education reveals larger patterns that emerge of institutional racism in teacher education, and the strategies that can inspire resistance.




Compelling Interest


Book Description

In recent years American colleges and universities have become the locus of impassioned debates about race-conscious social policies, as conflicting theories clash over the ways to distribute the advantages of higher education in a fair and just manner. Just below the surface of these policy debates lies a complex tangle of ideologies, histories, grievances, and emotions that interfere with a rational analysis of the issues involved. As never before, the need for empirical research on the significance of race in American society seems essential to solving the manifest problems of this highly politicized and emotionally charged aspect of American higher education. The research evidence presented in this book has a direct relevance to those court cases that challenge race-conscious admission policies of colleges and universities. Though many questions still need to be addressed by future research, the empirical data collected to date makes it clear that affirmative action policies do work and are still very much needed in American higher education. This book also provides a framework for examining the evidence pertaining to issues of fairness, merit, and the benefits of diversity in an effort to assist courts and the public in organizing beliefs about race and opportunity.