Facing Whiteness in Our Schools

On Tuesday, September 13th, LREI Director Phil Kassen appeared as a guest on The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC 93.9 FM and AIM 820.

from WNYC:
Several New York City private schools have attempted to address issues of race, class, and privilege as part of their students’ education. Phil Kassen, director of Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI), a private school in Manhattan, and Derrick Gay, diversity, inclusion and global citizenship education consultant, talk about how they go about it.

Below is the letter to the LREI community referenced in the WNYC piece.

While I generally don’t send all-community email messages during summer break, I felt compelled to do so this summer given the events I comment on below.

On July 1, the NY Post published commentary focusing on diversity education programming at a colleague school, The Bank Street School for Children. Specifically, the article focused on affinity groups—gatherings of students who identify with each other according to some metric, in this case race—and on the organization of affinity groups around white racial identity. The author wrote that the school was, “teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from ‘white privilege.” LREI was among the schools noted as having similar programming. To clarify, LREI does have affinity groups for students of color and, from time to time, has, organized affinity groups for our white students, and may well do so again.

Affinity groups are a generative and thoughtful use of children’s time and of a school’s resources. I have many thoughts on why affinity groups are an effective use of time for students of color. However, any insight my experience might bring to a discussion of affinity groups for students of color would be diminished by my ignorance of what it means to be a person of color in our society. Rather, for many of us, our time and attention must shift, at least in part, to a discussion of white student affinity grouping or, more generally, of whiteness.

Regardless of the beliefs, values, practices, or intentions of any one family, our children grow up in a world where racial bias exists. This seems indisputable to me. With this bias comes an associated privilege. By privilege I don’t mean that white people are immune to the challenges of life or that white people glibly exercise privilege over people of color. Speaking from the “I perspective,” as a white man (not to say anything about my gender, sexuality, class, etc.…), I experience my privilege every day. I am not followed in stores. I do not strike fear into the hearts of people I walk past late at night, and I am unlikely to be stopped by the police. I move through life with a presumption of innocence and virtue. I do not mean to vilify individual members of any law enforcement agency in any way, merely to acknowledge the enduring series of challenging police involved interactions with people of color. The fact that none of these things happen to me, or to my two sons, is a privilege. It is a privilege that we did not earn. I was born white and therefore I am, for the most part, exempted from these experiences.

The goal of having white children speak about white privilege is not to tell them they are all racist; it is not to make them feel badly or responsible for bias directed at others. The goal of these discussions is to acknowledge, out loud and without equivocation, that white privilege exists and to recognize it, to name it, to discuss it, to learn, and to grow. Another way to understand this is to agree that if one group of people is mistreated due to their race, than the simple fact that another race—the white race—is not mistreated in these same circumstances is an unearned privilege. Ask any student of chemistry or algebra, you must balance the equation. Unearned bias on one side means unearned privilege on the other.

A white person might say that they experience bias, or the same lack of privilege, due to their socio-economic circumstance or religion, for example. This may well be true. The fact that one feels a deficit does not mean that one is unable to be the recipient of unearned privilege. This is a complex issue.

Let’s address the guilt issue. It is no one’s goal for any student, or any group of students, to be made to feel guilty. That would not be educative nor a good use of any institution’s time or resources. Have I ever felt guilty or badly during conversations of racism, bias, and privilege? Yes, of course. Do I ever feel as if I, Phil Kassen, white man, am being blamed for the unearned bias directed at African-Americans? Yes, and then I get over myself. It is not about me. Moving through guilt, through defensiveness, through feeling put upon, through the personalization of this issue, is a necessary moment in one’s growth. This “moving through” is not a one-time event. But, rather, it is an ongoing component of dealing with the racism in the world, and an ongoing part of a lifetime’s development. The fact that my part in this struggle is an internal war with my feelings rather than an external danger is a privilege in and of itself.

As an adult it is likely to be easier for me to grow through the guilty feelings than it will be for some children. This is a complex moment in our development as humans. Complex does not mean impossible. Children are smart and sensitive. In having these conversations we are not expecting our white students to navigate waters that are any choppier than what is asked of our students of color every day. Likely they are much less so.

I write this longer than usual note just days after the tragic killings in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis, and Dallas. In the shadow of these tragedies, how can we consider avoiding any conversations about race. If we are going to speak about race, how can we, yet again, focus on what it means to be of-color and not talk about what it means to be white? What this will look like at LREI, I don’t know. However, we must try something different, we have to use all resources, we have to involve everyone, each focused on their part and not on telling those whose experiences are unknowable to many how to behave. We can no longer let hurt feelings stop our conversations, which would be another unearned privilege, and start focusing on a true path to equity.

Please do not hesitate to be in touch about this, either now or over the course of the summer.

Wishing you and your family the best of everything,

Warmly,
Phil