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 197