Thank you, Deborah Meier, for being able and willing to reveal your own racism! As Meier tells Diane Ravitch in the blog they write to each other and willingly share with the world: I think I have fallen into the trap, too, when pointing out that the white poor face…

I just read the New York Times best-seller “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” Henrietta Lacks was a black woman treated for cervical cancer at John Hopkins in the early 1950s. It was during this treatment that her cancer cells were taken without her knowledge, grown in a laboratory, and…

On June 13, the Portland (Oregon) School Board voted unanimously to adopt a Racial Equity Policy for the district.  The Racial Equity Policy was supported by community and school leaders and, according to a district announcement, was met with applause during its first reading before the board on May 9….

On August 5, 2010, the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA) was introduced in the Senate by Bob Casey (D-PA). SSIA would amend the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act—which is part of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act—to include bullying and harassment based on a student’s actual or…

Wisconsin’s new law–Act 250–allows persons to file a complaint against a school board for its “use of race-based nicknames, logos, mascots and team names.”  What is particularly exciting about the new law is that, during the resulting hearing before the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the school board and not…

“What is Memorial Day for, Mom?”  This was the question from my 9-year-old son as we sat at the dinner table on the night before the holiday  His 6-year-old brother cocked his head at me, eyes wide, waiting for ”the answer.”  As I related to him what I had always been told (i.e., that…

Tim Wise’s latest blog post titled “Imagine: Protest, Insurgency and the Workings of White Privilege” asks readers to play a game in which they imagine the public reaction to current events if the main actors were not white but black folks or other people of color.  At first glance, the set up felt a little hokey to…

A recent story in the L.A. Times titled ”Despite pressure from black activists, black support for Obama’s race-neutral stance is high” suggests that “average black folks” buy into Obama’s stance/strategy that a rising tide will lift African American boats.  Without taking issue with Washington on whether the black folks he interviewed in Charlotte, NC are “average,”…

At West Wind, we believe the system was perfectly designed to get the results it is getting. Thus, we seek to problematize the racial achievement gap by reframing the problem from one of failing students to one of a failing system. While this most certainly includes inequitable resources and inequitable…

In July 2009, REL Southeast at SERVE Center, UNC, Greensboro,  published the Issues and Answers brief for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) titled Reducing stereotype threat in the classroom: A Review of social-psychological intervention studies on improving the achievement of Black students.  The authors tell us that “stereotype threat…