From September 15 to October 15, the United States celebrates and honors Hispanic Heritage Month. This tradition grew out of National Hispanic Heritage Week, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a law extending the observance to the month-long tradition we know today.

But what does it mean to be Hispanic? Where does the term originate? What cultures or ethnicities does it intend to represent? Why was it created? Are there other words used to describe these groups? What about Latino/a/e/x? As a Puerto Rican and a program evaluator, who works with data and demographic information, I find myself questioning what it means to be Hispanic.

The reality is that it’s complicated. Pick ten different people and they will each give you a different answer on how they identify and why. Geographic location, age group, country of origin, and access to education are all relevant and play a part in how Hispanic/Latino/a/x/e folks choose to identify. These terms all attempt to represent the diverse experiences of communities from Latin America and parts of the Caribbean within the context of the United States.

Specifically, Hispanic refers to anyone from Spain or Spanish speaking parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. It celebrates and emphasizes a collective Spaniard heritage; marking Spain as the central European ethnic group in Latin America and parts of the Caribbean, erasing the much more complex and nuanced story of European colonization. Its attempt to include Spaniards fails to recognize that they are white Europeans, who do not experience the marginalization or oppression that often follows Latin American and Caribbean people of color. More importantly, this emphasis erases the collective Indigenous and African heritage evident in most parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. Instead, choosing to celebrate violent and brutal people, like Christopher Columbus, and empires who colonized, murdered, raped, pillaged, and terrorized Afro-Latinos and indigenous people.

Activists in the United States understood the political power of being united under one category. They recognized that it could help shed light on the community’s specific needs, help demand for more resources, and collect necessary data for community support. Lobbying to have a distinct category for people of Latin American descent was a strategic political move by activists in the ’70s and ’80s. According to an article in Remezcla, “for many decades… people of Latin American descent were referred to as their own distinct nationalities. And Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, for example, were categorized as white on the Census. This was a source of frustration for Chicano activists who argued that not having a separate category for people of Latin American descent meant they couldn’t show the government that they had separate needs. Mora’s research shows that activists, particularly the National Council of La Raza – now known as UnidosUS – lobbied the government for a term that would unite these varied groups. The organization was instrumental in uniting Mexicans and Puerto Ricans ‘to hammer out a Hispanic agenda,’ Mora tells Latino USA.”[1]

However, its limitations are evident. One term cannot possibly capture the diversity and the complexity birthed through colonialism. In fact, throughout the years, activists, social scientists, and communities have organically expanded the lexicon to include Latino/a, Latine/x, Afro-Latina/o/x/e as more inclusive ways to self-identify. The term Latino “refers to people from the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America, but it does not include those from Spain or Portugal. This word, however, typically doesn’t make room for people from Latin America whose countries were not colonized by Spain or Portugal, leaving out Belizeans and Haitians. (There are some people with ties to these countries who do self-identify as Latino.)”[2]

Recently Latinx (in the United States) and Latine (in Latin America and the Caribbean) have been added to represent the experiences of transgender and non-binary people. The integration of “x” and “e” help to mitigate the gender-specific language found in Spanish and other romantic languages. It allows for a letter associated with neither male or female connotations. Although not perfect, the addition of Latino in all its variations (a/e/x) is opening the door to a complex conversation about, race, culture, gender identity, and gender expression often hidden within our respective cultures and nationalities. Their introduction and malleability remind us of the fluidity of language, and the importance of that fluidity.

What is important to remember is that in all variations the central theme of each word is a focus on the European colonizers as the defining common denominator across cultures and nationalities. The words we choose to describe our identities are then often dictated by the colonizers and their language, violently ignoring a shared diverse indigenous and African ancestry. What ties us together is not the European empire that colonized us or the language we inherited from them, but the story of indigenous genocide, enslavement, settler colonialism, imperialism, economic exploitation, Christian supremacy, environmental destruction, and a caste system built on white supremacy. What ties us together is community, joy, liberation, and the stories of resistance, victory, and loss.

[1] https://remezcla.com/features/culture/latino-vs-hispanic-vs-latinx-how-these-words-originated/

[2] https://remezcla.com/features/culture/latino-vs-hispanic-vs-latinx-how-these-words-originated

RE·Imagine

RE-Imagine a world where the words that we use to describe ourselves are not rooted in our relationship to colonizers and their empires. They are not used as a currency to indicate our respective proximity to whiteness at the exclusion and harm of others. Instead, the words we use to identify ourselves are built on confronting the reality of anti-blackness, indigenous genocide, and speak truth to the complex and harmful caste system that we have inherited and perpetuated. Imagine a world where we center the words, experiences, and stories of Black, indigenous, and queer Latinx first.

-Cristher & your friends at RE-Center

Want to learn more? Click on the links below.

When it Comes to Latinidad, Who is Included, and Who Isn’t?

Hispanic vs. Latino vs. Latinx: A Brief History of How These Words Originated

How Do Latinos Really Feel About Hispanic Heritage Month? An Investigation

Origins of National Hispanic Heritage Month

About One-in-Four U.S. Hispanics Have Heard of Latinx, but Just 3% Use It

The New Latino Studies Reader

In May, we entered into the 28^th annual celebration of our Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community that was set during the backdrop of a global pandemic due to COVID-19, which has stoked further racism in the form of lies, assault, harassment, and hate crimes against the AAPI community. Similarly, the Black community has faced increased racism and harassment for wearing required facemasks in businesses, adding to heightened levels of fear for their safety and wellbeing. The murder of George Floyd by former members of the Minneapolis Police Department in May sparked an uprising against the pillars of systemic racism that prop up American society.  At the core of these pillars is white supremacy; the impacts of which vary based on which group one is racialized into. As protests continue across the world Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) continue to stand together in the fight for Black rights and Black lives, while risking their lives serving on the frontlines of the pandemic. COVID-19 has re-illuminated our inequities and compounded the stress already experienced by communities of color, as they seek to access services and supports integral to their survival and wellness. This racialized reality prompts the necessity to explore the following critical questions:

• How has white supremacy affected the Asian-Pacific American community?

• How does anti-Blackness manifest (appear/show up) within community relationships and education, and what might being a true accomplice in the 21^st century look like?

We realize this is an extremely complex topic that is entrenched in many American systems, and as such this post is meant to be a primer. Therefore, we encourage further learning through the use of the resources provided at the end of the post. In the time of the global pandemic, community is as important as it has ever been, and we at RE∙Center stand with our Black and AAPI community members in solidarity and unity against the racism they have and continue to face at increased levels across America.

Remember: Oppression thrives on isolation.  Connection is the only thing that can save you.

-Yolo Akili (Activist, Writer, Poet, Counselor, and Community Organizer)

When discussing how white supremacy, racism, and anti-Blackness manifest in any community, much less a community of color, it’s important to outright acknowledge that to trace the root of this socialization is to acknowledge that racism and white supremacy exist and permeate into every facet of American society and culture. No one is immune to its reach, and we all have a role that we play in the system, whether explicitly or implicitly, supporting it by our (in)action. It is also important to acknowledge that the forms in which racism and anti-Blackness play out across communities is both wide and deep. It is wide in the scope of its history, changing and morphing from the 17^th century to the 21^st, and it is deep in the amount of systems it is integrated within (judicial, financial, social, educational…).

The Anti-Defamation League ([ADL], 2020) defines white supremacy as a term used to characterize various belief systems that circulate around the following tenets: “1) whites should have dominance over people of other backgrounds, especially where they may co-exist 2) whites should live by themselves in a whites-only society; 3) white people have their own ‘culture’ that is superior to other cultures; 4) white people are genetically superior to other people”. Conversely, “‘Systemic racism’ or ‘institutional racism’, refers to how ideas of white superiority are captured in everyday thinking at a systems level… these systems can include laws and regulations, but also unquestioned social systems” (O’Dowd, 2020). Bridging the gap between the two, systemic racism assumes white superiority individually, institutionally, and ideologically, and the assumption of superiority can pervade thinking consciously and unconsciously (O’Dowd, 2020). In short, “individuals may not see themselves as racist, but they can still benefit from systems that privilege white faces and voices” (O’Dowd, 2020).

Before we discuss anti-Blackness in the Asian Pacific American community, it is important to distinguish that racial minorities cannot be racist to folx of color, as it goes against the power structure of systemic racism, but can instead engage in prejudiced actions that perpetuate and allow individuals to benefit off of racial power structures that oppress other racial minorities (Mayeda, 2018). Two poignant examples of how white supremacist and anti-Black ideologies play out across communities of color is the Model Minority mythology and colorblind policies, which have more recently played an increasingly visible role within education in the case against Affirmative Action in Harvard undergraduate admissions brought about by the Students for Fair Admissions.

The Model Minority

The term model minority “has often been used to refer to a minority group perceived as particularly successful, especially in a manner that contrasts with other minority groups… In particular, the model minority designation is often applied to Asian Americans, who, as a group, are often praised for apparent success across academic, economic, and cultural domains – successes typically offered in contrast to the perceived achievements of other racial groups” (Mayeda, 2018). Though recently coming into common vernacular, the model minority myth has a long history in America, taking root in the post-Civil War era. Asian immigrants seeking work were able to benefit  from the notion that they were more hardworking and obedient than African Americans. Behind the curtain of that notion were plantation owners and white politicians, who, seeing how this mechanism of social control created competition and sowed division, “surmised that a sustainable way of maintaining their hierarchy was to foster other racial hierarchies that conformed to and were microcosmic of white supremacy” (Mayeda, 2018).

The model minority myth is a stereotype that is undermined by its inability to apply symmetrically across those who identify as part of the AAPI community. The AAPI community is nuanced in composition, and though they may be doing well as a whole compared to other racial groups, a closer analysis of data points reveals complexity across multiple dimensions, greatly affected by differing periods of immigration to America. As indicated in the Pew Research Center data there is a great variance of inequality in the AAPI community that widely goes under reported and generally ignored, ranging from education to economic status. The allure of whiteness also breeds colorism both within the AAPI community and between the Black community. Colorism is defined as “prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a darker skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group-affects just about every part of the non-white world” (Wakefield, 2020, paras. 5). Within the AAPI community colorism creates divides, as those with a lighter skin tone, closer to Caucasian-ness, are praised for their assimilation to and honoring of whiteness. The proximity to whiteness not only increases the propensity for colorism within the AAPI community, but also motivates individuals in the AAPI community with darker skin tones (i.e. South Asian) to seek out means of lightening their skin to curry acceptance. In these cases, colorism appears generally interpersonal in nature. Yet, “In many parts of Asia, light skin is associated with upward mobility and higher classes. The notion is that, if you have light skin, you must be wealthy…. Dark skinned people are seen as the people work the fields” (Wakefield, 2020, paras. 17). Colorism functions and thrives both in the relationships we hold with each other, and within the social systems that directly impact the lived experience of those in the AAPI community. Affirmative action was built to counter the oppression of systemic racism and is critical to ensuring educational equity, but there are looming challenges from students, parents, and privately funded organizations.

Colorblind Policies

More recently within the sphere of education, AAPI and White American students have turned their sights towards abolishing Affirmative Action policies, in favor of more colorblind policies. This move, reflected by the support of the East Coast Asian American Student Union against Harvard undergraduate admissions brought about by the Students for Fair Admissions, is a clear example of anti-Blackness within the AAPI community. Support for colorblind policies within the Asian Pacific American community are presumptive of the thought that race conscious policies within education penalize Asian and white students. Much of this support was spurred on by Thomas Espenshade and Alexandra Radford’s Princeton study. However, those who lean on this data in support of anti-affirmative action policies ignore the “legacy of antiBlackness in all American institutions, which has massively disadvantaged black communities in all areas of mobility, including education, income, and mortality” (Mayeda, 2018). Affirmative action policies are in place to directly disrupt the forces of systemic racism, which have ravaged Black and brown communities for centuries. These actions return power back to white Americans and further solidifies the barbs of systemic racism within our educational systems.

Support for eliminating race as a considering factor for the college admissions process is bound to have far sweeping affects across educational institutions, both higher education and K-12 public and private schools. This a sobering reminder that when it comes to Black issues that have manifested due to systemic racism, Black folx are tasked with solving them alone, despite the fact that they exist outside of the Black communities’ control. Furthermore, the nefarious origins of the model minority myth harm both the Asian Pacific American and Black communities, as all forms of racial oppression are bound together. “Racism against any racial minority reifies white supremacy and the marginalization of all other racial minorities” (Mayeda, 2018).

We began writing this article prior to the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN. We wish we could say it was the first and last time that a Black person will be murdered by the police, but that would be a lie. The names of countless others prove this sad reality to be true – Breonna Taylor, Rem’mie Fells, Riah Milton, Tony McDade, Rayshard Brooks, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, David McAtee, Sandra Bland… the list goes on for centuries, and those are only the names we know.

Moving Beyond Allyship

Allyship is a concept that has been a pillar of the social justice vernacular, but the future demands another level of action to disrupt, challenge, and dismantle systemic racism. Generally, an ally will engage in activism by standing with marginalized individuals and communities. Conversely, an accomplice focuses on “dismantling the structures that oppress that individual or group-and such work will be directed by the stakeholders in the marginalized group” (Clemens, 2017, paras. 4). To be an accomplice in the time that we find ourselves in is to be rooted in a pro-Black ideology. When we say pro-Black, we mean advocating, and if need be literally fighting for the lives of all Black people, regardless of the economic and or social markers that enforce such negative notions of the ‘exceptional negro’ or model minority. We are fighting for the equitable treatment of all Black people. As Olivia Mayeda (2018) wrote, “all forms of racial oppression are interconnected. Racism against any racial minority reifies white supremacy and the marginalization of all other racial minorities.” This brings us back to the Yolo Akili quote we began this blog post with, “Oppression thrives on isolation.  Connection is the only thing that can save you.” The Black Lives Matter movement is built on community and connection as a direct assault against white supremacy’s goal to sow descent amongst communities of color.

An accomplice is re-educating yourself and those you connect with to combat the many ways BIPOC can enact white supremacy and anti-Blackness in their communities. An accomplice is standing alongside Black folx, and if need be to shield or protect them, as they march through communities throughout America, and the world, to demand justice, equity, and the end of systemic racism and anti-Black ideologies. An accomplice is actively working to dismantle the systems of oppression that have focused on undermining Black communities, regardless of the privilege one might lose in the process. Finally, an accomplice is looking into the face of a Black person, seeing the beauty of their being, and coming to a conscious decision to protect that being, because anything less is unjust, inhumane, and a buttress of systemic racism.

RE·Imagine

Imagine an America that doesn’t further terrorize BIPOC with further marginalization, but encourages desilofication as a means of building, maintaining, and broadening communities of color.

Imagine an American society that understood being pro-Black is not akin to being anti-white, and that freedom for Black people means freedom for all people of color.

Imagine an educational system that does not pit BIPOC students against one another for middling resources, but offers all an equitable chance to learn, grow, and establish community curated curriculum.  

In community,

Chris Richard & Your friends at RE·Center

Terms and Resources

José Luis Vilson is a full-time math teacher, writer, speaker, and activist in New York City, NY.

He is the author of This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education and has spoken about education, math, and race for a number of organizations and publications, including the New York Times, The Guardian, TED, El Diario /La Prensa and The Atlantic. He’s a National Board Certified teacher, a Math for America Master Teacher, and the Executive Director of EduColor, an organization dedicated to race and social justice issues in education.

When the pandemic hit and schools around the country moved teaching and learning to online platforms, I watched José make choices to engage his students in the subject of math in what I perceived to be still deeply connected and caring. I watched his Instagram feed become a combination of high-impact online math videos, emphatic quotes about disaster learning, and snapshots of his son’s grinning smile and bare feet in the bed capturing the gratitude he had for being able to be home with his family. In all his commitment, joy and fortitude, I wondered how he was doing personally and what he was learning about and preparing for to respond to the impact of COVID-19 on his students and his community.

In our edited conversation below, Jose talks vulnerably about how he feels in his mind, heart and body as an educator during COVID-19. He also speaks candidly about the things we should be considering as adult educators in relationship to the young people whom we are in community with. He reminds us that being committed to systemic, equitable change for young people and ourselves is heart work, not head work.

I encourage you to take a little time and read it all the way through. Listening to folxs like José is what will help us Re-Imagine Education so young people can be free.

SS: Starting off our questions…how are you and what have been your hopes for yourself as an educator during this time?

JLV: I’ll just say I’m blessed. I mean, I pray on that daily. Feeling like being connected to my more spiritual self, to my physical self, you know, to this moment, is really important. To have a really conscientious understanding of the moment has been very powerful in terms of assuring that everything I’m trying to do is somehow aligned. I don’t always do a good job of that alignment, but at the very least, I’m closer than I may have been maybe even a few months ago. I think also just generally, you know, I’m alive. I kid you not: I log into Facebook and eight out of the first ten posts was: “a family member has COVID”, “a family member passed away from COVID”, “I have COVID”. I have friends who were months into their pregnancy, and they got COVID while the child was inside of them. And it’s like, oh my god, I just cannot imagine. We need to start leaning on grace, we need to go deeper into empathy. There is an inequity there around feeling. So, for you to ask me how I feel. I feel like—that’s dope. Because not a lot of people get asked how they actually feel.

SS: Has the information and the different feelings you’ve had or that you’ve witnessed people having informed or shifted your teaching practice at all?

JLV: Something that I didn’t quite gather until this pandemic hit was that my connection to the classroom is very much about the body. It is a physical experience of being in the classroom. We’re still having the kids but is not the same as having a classroom with kids in it. And I felt that very hard in the beginning.  My sleep schedule started shifting and I would wake up at random times and go to sleep at random times. I couldn’t tell whether I was coming or going that first week.  I tried to replicate the school day and I very quickly found out that it wasn’t going to work for anybody involved.  By day four I was like: “I’m going to divide whatever the workload is by 50%. And then I’m going to divide the expectation of that 50% by another 50%.  I was at 25% of the original thinking that I had around any of this stuff and it has made my life so much easier. We have to learn how to be okay with certain things. I get stressed out when kids don’t hand in an assignment, but then there are those kids who won’t show up for an entire week, but then on a Sunday night, all of a sudden, you start seeing the notifications fly because they’re creating their own schedule. So, the news has definitely been affecting me in very, very profound ways.

SS: I hear that it’s been good to shift expectations around assignments and the work of school, but that it’s been hard to feel the relationships with students shifting by not being in physical proximity to them.  I’m also hearing you say that you have real fear when they don’t show up and wonder if something might be going on with their family in the context of where we are. Or if they, too, are feeling that kind of mental exhaustion you were talking about earlier and they’re really needing something different than what we expect of them.

JLV: Right. I mean, when you look at a map of COVID cases laid out according to zip code, you start realizing that so many of the “quote, unquote” “essential workers” are the folks who we disregarded for so long. And my school is in the center of one of those districts. And, lo and behold… I personally have a student whose father passed away and from COVID. I hadn’t heard from this student in a while. And then I got a message from her saying: “I’m gonna try my best, Mr. Vilson, to get this work into you, but my father passed away, so I’ll just try my best.” And I was like: “No, No, No, you don’t have to worry about my work at all. Take your time. It will still be there. It’s not going anywhere.” When I think about so many of my colleagues across the country you can tell that there are folks who are like “oh, well, this kid disappeared and that means they don’t care about their education.” No, actually, it’s US. We need to have a rethink about the things that we’re doing as adults, and how much more we can dig into this grace into this empathy in a real powerful way.

SS: Right, and not asking kids to do more, because there is often a lack of power analysis that comes with that ask. For example, home may be a place that is really asymmetrical to the resources—even limited ones—that schools can provide: food, technology, gyms or athletic fields etc. This is magnified for students who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.  We really need adults to connect the dots to the fact that these conditions are reflective of historical, systemic conditions of inequity. Racism, classism, white supremacy culture… and then work to shift in response to that understanding.  You’ve spoken before about the difference between working with kids and not for or at/on kids. How would you help educators to work with students during this time versus at/for them?

JLV: I think it goes back to how you are as a person and how that connects to you as an educator. I think there are some educators right now who are frankly lost because without the classroom they’re not able to strictly organize their students according to how they feel like they can. Some teachers want to have every kid be there in front of them at 11 o’clock in the morning. And then they get to lecture at them for those 30 minutes and that’s their vibe: everybody has to go on mute while this person is talking.  I think, instead, record a video of yourself giving a lesson so that a student can go at their own pace, and then turn assignments in. Then you can have a conversation about the assignment until the assignment is done to satisfactory completion. And you do it in a way where you’re asking more questions than giving a whole bunch of statements.  “I’m curious about blank” “I noticed that you did this. Can you tell me more about why you approach it this way?” “Oh, you may have missed this step. Can you tell me more about how we got from here to here.” Trying to shift the focus from teacher directive to more “A+B” (Teacher +Student). And I’m not trying to give them too many tools to learn.  That’s another thing too–there’s probably a lot of people out there trying to make sure students get five or six tools down. And I’m like, no, no, no–just give them the one or two essential things. Try to make it easy because the more data that we put out there for different people the more susceptible we make our kids. That’s a really critical elements of all of this.

SS: Can you say more about that?

JLV:  Zoom was the most popular online platform for many educators in New York City and people were mad because the NYC DOE took it away and decided instead to go with Microsoft Teams and then later went on to use Google Meet. We didn’t find out until a little later on that Zoom was literally giving data to Facebook on every single body who participated in Zoom. That’s an invasion that the student did not ask for! There are literally FERPA laws against that sort of thing. Long story short, I feel like we need to be more thoughtful about the way that data gets collected and gets monetized. And I know that when any product is free, it’s not actually free. It just means that we’re the product.

SS: What do you see is the work we have to do–and likely have always had to do-to receive our young people who are coming back from this trauma?

JLV: One of the things I got to advocate for in front of New York City Council was: take an actual human inventory of the things that have happened, the things that were lost, the things that we need to heal from. And I don’t use the word healing lightly. Being able to say to ourselves: which of our students have, quote unquote, “essential workers” as family? And I do mean, “quote, unquote” because they weren’t [considered] essential before, but now they’re essential. Which of our students have folks who have been on the frontlines of this pandemic? And how do you think that’s affected their educational attainment? How many of our students have parents who passed away? And how is that affecting their educational attainment? How many of our teachers actually know what our school’s mission and vision is? And then how are we going to change our school’s mission and vision to better reflect the moment of this time? What is our positionality in all of this and how do community members view our school in relation to them? Those are all the intangibles that you can’t always find in a fancy spreadsheet. I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times, but how can you get students to fully trust you with their minds if you’re not even getting a chance to actually get to know them? You have to get to know them in order for them to trust you with their brains.  I didn’t think that was that difficult, but for too many of us it is. So that’s the conversation we all need to be having week one of whenever that is that we come back.

SS: I even think about that for teachers and other adults returning. What’s the work y’all need to consider in relationship to each other to build real trusting relationships, vulnerable relationships. And really providing that space in those early days of Professional Development to actually make room for y’all’s whole humanity, too. What question do you want to be asked by your district, by your school, by your colleagues when you come back?

JLV:  How’s your son? How’s your family? How’s your neighborhood? How have things changed for you since we last saw each other face to face? What do you think you’ve been able to accomplish?  What are some things that you’ve thought about that are reflection points since the last time we saw each other? Has anything changed as far as your orientation about the things we need to do within the school community? Those are things that I would like to be asked on a professional level. We need to just try to be human beings. Anytime you ask me questions about academics, I’m like, you better have asked me five questions about anything social-emotional before we even get into all that other stuff.  I think I might have flipped a little in the last staff meeting we had because I was like “why are we even talking about gaps right now?” There’s no such thing as a gap right now. Everybody is not in school! The vast majority of folks are not in school. Why are we talking about gaps? We should be talking about how the kids are doing? How do they feel? We should ask them how are you feeling? How are you doing with all this?

SS: I couldn’t agree more. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and feelings. My final question is: what’s bringing you joy?

JLV: Last night, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics had me and Marian Dingle for a panel. Well, it was more of a webinar and we were talking about how to get from equality to equity and justice in mathematics. We broke the record and had over 800 people on the webinar! I even got into reparations! It was soulful and deep. We did it for the culture, we did it for our people, but then the white people also felt like they were in the conversation. So, we were able to straddle this line where we’re able to invite numerous folks in math and non-math and all sorts of different folks came through.  My family always bring me joy, my eight year old is the light of my life. We have our things here and there, but it’s been great.  Fathering him.  Generally, I just, you know, I do these things.  I’m not very good with self care, but I’m really good with community care. So I’m very good at checking in with people trying to build things and imagine, and have conversations with people about different things. That I can do all day.

As a part of our RE·Imagine blog, we want to highlight the wonderful people who we work with, and who make the work possible. Feature of the Month is a series dedicated to shine light on members of the RE·Center community and highlight their contributions both in and out of the work that we do.

Meet Joelle Murchison, RE-Center Board Chair, mother, and entrepreneur. Joelle joined the RE-Center board in 2017 and became the Board Chair in January 2019, following a six-month tenure as Vice Chair.

Although Joelle’s awareness of RE-Center began after her daughter attended Discovery Camp as a fifth grader, her involvement in equity work began back in middle school. Every year, she joined other students and their families on Long Island to advocate for the approval of her public school’s budget.

“I learned very early on the importance of canvassing, organizing, going door to door to get people to support the [school] budget. I knew that it would impact the access that I had to different things and, even as a middle school student, had sights about what I wanted to do and was very driven and knew that once I got to high school that it would really matter.”

In High School, Joelle continued her involvement in equity work through The Long Island Interracial Alliance for a Common Future, an organization dedicated to community collaboration across issues on the island. These early beginnings paved the way for Joelle’s current involvement in diversity and equity work.

Joelle offers her expertise as a diversity and inclusion consultant, speaker, facilitator, and coach through her consulting firm, ExecMommyGroup LLC, and is an Adjunct Faculty member in the University of Connecticut School of Business’ Management Department. Including RE-Center, she is also on the board of the Amistad Center for Art & Culture, here in Hartford, and College Possible, a national organization that works to make “college admission and success possible for low-income students through an intensive curriculum of coaching and support.” Joelle wears many hats and brings a deep commitment and passion to everything she does.

“I got advice from a mentor years ago that said when you’re choosing a board to serve on, it needs to be something that you really love … and you would want to do if there were no benefit at all. What is that piece of you that allows you to experience something that is deep within you [but may not be your vocation]? Finding ways to express those points of passion/joy around you in really tangible ways is what allows you to live a full life.”

Joelle is also committed to practicing self-care and joy in her everyday life though exercise, cooking, hosting, spending time with friends, and raising her four children.

“There’s nothing like a full, deep laugh. It breaks through tears, it can help address some of the most challenging/tense situations—you have got to be able to laugh & enjoy life so that’s what I’m aiming to do.”

RE·Imagine Education

At RE-Center, we are constantly trying to re-imagine an equitable and just world. We asked Joelle what she is re-imagining.

“I think I’m re-imagining what it means to be a professional, working mom … The funny thing about that fairytale is after the happily ever after there’s no more content. You get some clear instructions early on: you go to school, you get a degree, you find a partner and then you make a life. You get a house and 2.5 kids and a picket fence and a dog and what have you—but after that there’s no instruction and no rule book. So, I’m trying to reimagine what that means … I think you just have to be authentically you. And my prayer is that there are younger folks that see that they can do what it is that they set out to do even if there is no one before them that has laid out that specific path, to know with confidence that there’s a path … I’m trying to live in the moment of what is happening. So that is what I’m reimagining, what it means to be someone like me, what I have to give, what I have to offer, and most importantly what am I modeling for the next generation that will help them to do this thing in a more healthy and happy and joyful way.”

It is Joelle’s commitment to her passions and future generations that makes her addition to our team so essential! Thank you, Joelle!

In March, we celebrate Womxn’s History Month, and on March 8th, we get the chance to celebrate International Womxn’s Day. During this time, we get a chance to unearth and celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of womxn* throughout history and today. All over the country, students will be learning about Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Virginia Wolf, and Emily Dickens.

If you are lucky, maybe you will learn about Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, Harriet Tubman, or Ida B. Wells. Most likely you will never learn of Dolores Huerta, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Lou Hammer, Luisa Moreno, Celestina Cordero, Mary Jones, Lili Elbe, Lucy Hicks Anderson, Tarana Burke, Susan La Flesche Picotte, Elizabeth Wannamaker Peratrovich, or the many other womxn at the intersection of race, gender, sexual orientation, poverty, and other markers of marginalization.

Too often this month is monopolized to share the stories, the narratives, and the experiences of white women, as the universal representation of our achievements and collective struggle. Creating a monolith and whitewashing a community, that is nuanced and diverse. Intentionally erasing our history, struggles, and accomplishments that are rooted in our difference.

Today, we center and celebrate the experiences of womxn of color, trans womxn of color, queer womxn of color, and all the other womxn at the intersections of marginalized identities. The listicle below is a compilation of articles to help you learn about the womxn of color you were never taught about.

• 8 Women of Color on Whether Women’s History Month Matters By: Mekita Rivas – Published: Bustle
• These Are the Women of Color Who Fought Both Sexism and the Racism of White Feminist By: Anne Branigin – Published: The Root
• 12 Trans women and non-binary activist you should have learned about in history classn By: Gabrielle Bellot – Published: Hello Giggles
• History of Chicana Feminism  Published: University of Michigan
• Remembering Alexa, A Transgender Puerto Rican Woman Whose Tragic Story We All Learn From By: Jhoni Jackson – Published: Remezcla
• A Chat with Natalie Diaz Ahead of the Release of Her Long-Awaited Poetry Collection ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’ By: Claire Jimenez – Published: Remezcla
• Herstory: The Latinx Women Who Changed the Course of History  By: Various Authors – Published: Remezcla
• 4 Asian American Women who Changed History By: Katherine Oung – Published: Teen Vogue
• Tarana Burke Founder of the ‘Me Too’ Movement
• Published: National Women’s History Museum
• Influential Black Women – Photo Essay
• Published: Oxford African American Studies Center

Photo Descripton: Angela Davis speaking into a megaphone speaker.

RE·Imagine:

Imagine an educational culture where womxn and young girls learn about themselves and others as whole human beings, where the breadth of our experiences are recognized and honored.

Imagine creating a space where we can learn to see womxn, girls, and all people through the complexity of their identities and experiences. When the world gets hard and there is chaos, just sit still and imagine, what it could all be.

Is there a moment in Womxn’s History month we’ve missed? Let us know on Facebook or Instagram!

Thanks for reading!

Cristher & Your Friends at RE-Center

Here are the definitions of important words we used in the article

*Womxn: noun

Pronounced: wi-muhn-ex

Definition: A more inclusive, intersectional term that sheds light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers faced by all identities that exist in opposition to misogyny, including women (trans and cisgender), femme/feminine-identifying genderqueer, and non-binary individuals.

By:#GirlGaze – Published: Twitter

Words We’re Warching: Intersectionality

Published: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Education in the United States, also known as the “great equalizer,” has anything but an equal history. This Black History Month, we decided to take some time to reflect on the history of education for Black folks in the United States. Below you’ll find a chronological list of important moments in Black Educational History. Click on the dates below to navigate to a specific time point.

Early 1700 | 1740 | Late 1700s-1800s | 1833 | 1837 | 1865 | Late 1800s | 1954 | 1955-1956 | 1957 | 1969 | 1971 | 1990s | 1996

Early 1700s; During the era of chattel slavery, educating Black folks, free and enslaved was generally frowned upon. However, some took it upon themselves to educate Black people with the intention of teaching Christianity. One of these individuals is Elia Neau who opened a private school in New York City, however, support of his work declined after two enslaved people who attended the school participated in a planned uprising.

1740; South Carolina passes the first law making it illegal to educate enslaved peoples. Numerous Southern states passed similar laws, many of which repealed these laws after some time while others shifted their laws to prohibit the teaching of slaves to read and write while assembled in a group because of fears of uprisings.[1]

Late 1700s-1800s; Quakers had a large role in educating Black folks during this time period. Both New Jersey and Philadelphia Quakers each opened a school for Black learners and their efforts continued into the 1800s.

1833; Oberlin College in Ohio became the first college to admit Black students.

1837; The Institute for Colored Youth, the first Black higher education institution opened. This started a movement of universities and colleges specifically for Black students (now known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs). Among the early HBCUs were Lincoln University (Pennsylvania, 1854) and Wilberforce University (Ohio, 1865), which provided elementary and secondary schooling for students who did not have prior education. It was not until the early 1900s that these institutions began offering postsecondary education.

1865; The Civil war (started in 1861) comes to an end and slavery is legally outlawed (13^th amendment). With the passage of the 14^th amendment in 1868, Black Americans are legally recognized as citizens with equal protections and privileges.

Late 1800s; Jim Crow laws sweep across the country, mandating that Black Americans have “separate but equal” public facilities from White Americans. The legitimacy of Jim Crow laws under the 14^th amendment was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This was then extended to public schools in the landmark case, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899).

1954; In the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously voted to overturn the Plessy decision. Justice Eric Warren wrote, “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal”.”[2] The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that school districts across the country desegregate.

1955-1956; In the years following Brown v. Board, the court convened to issue directives to put their desegregation plans into action. In Brown II (1955), the court urged school systems to proceed with “all deliberate speed.”[3] The U.S. Government also passed a number of laws to put pressure on schools to desegregate including the Civil Rights Act (1955), which made desegregation a prerequisite to school funding, and the Elementary & Secondary Schools Act (1956), which awarded funding to educational programs and resources for poor children and could be removed if school districts did not desegregate.

1957; As schools districts across the country desegregated, Black students and families attending white schools had to endure the anger of opposing white students, educators, families, and community members. One of the most famous cases is the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine Black students who enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in September 1957. On the first day of classes, the Governor called in AR National Guard to block the students’ entry into the school. In response, then-President Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to school.[4]

1969; Despite pressure by the federal government, Black families and civil rights law

yers still encountered violence and loss of support if they attempted to enforce the Brown decisions. Federal judges assumed the responsibility of enforcing desegregation after their decisions in Green v. Country School Board (1968) and Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969), which forced school districts to develop viable & extensive desegregation plans.

1971; One of the problems affecting desegregation was housing segregation. While school buses transported white students to their schools, Black students were sometimes denied access to public school transportation. In Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg County Board of Education (1971), the supreme court ruled that school districts bus Black students into white school districts.

1990s; Black students attending traditionally all-white school districts also typically had to travel long distances, encounter racism from peers and teachers, and navigate class differences. Neighborhood schools in Black communities, however, began to deteriorate as students and teachers left and eventually closed. As Black communities navigated these hardships and began to develop apathy towards the busing program, the community schools movement began to build.

1996; In the tradition of Brown v. Board, state supreme courts also ruled on several civil rights cases relating to desegregation. Among these was the Connecticut case of Sheff v. O’Neill, a case where a group of Black, Latinx, and white students in Hartford filed a complaint that they were “being denied an education equal to that of their counterparts in suburban school districts due to the racial segregation and economic disparities between Hartford schools and those in the nearby suburbs.” Although this complaint was filed in 1989, the Connecticut Supreme Court did not issue a ruling until July 1996, stating that Hartford schools were in fact racially, ethnically, and economically isolated. As part of this case, the State established a voluntary integration program (Open Choice) and numerous reforms and programs designed to increase racial diversity. The plan is set to last until June 30, 3033.[5]

RE·Imagine Education

The fight for educational equity is one that countless people have participated in throughout history but often one we may not learn about in class. What is something you learned through this post? What would a racially equitable school district look like in the 21^st century?

Is there a moment in Black History we’ve missed? Let us know on Facebook or Instagram!

-SabriAnan & your friends at RE·Center

Here are some of the great things we read to make this post!

[1] Amity L. Noltemeyer, “The History of Inequality in Education”

[2] History Channel, Brown v. Board of Education

[3] Virginia Museum of History & Culture, Brown I and Brown II

[4] History Channel, Little Rock Nine

[5] NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Case: Sheff v. O’Neill

Office for Civil Rights, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Higher Education Desegregation

Encyclopedia Britannica, Jim Crow Law

Encyclopedia Britannica, Plessy v. Ferguson

Sonya Ramsey, “The Troubled History of American Education after the Brown Decision”

In 1993, the United States government officially declared Jan 16^th National Religious Freedom Day to honor the anniversary of the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786. This year, Donald Trump urged Americans “to commemorate this day with events and activities that remind us of our shared heritage of religious liberty.” Meanwhile, his cabinet has a history of actively enacting policies rooted in Islamophobia and targeting Muslim-majority countries. This begs a few questions: what is religious freedom, who is afforded religious freedom in the United States, and how does it show up in education?

If you went to school in the United States, you probably remember the story told in nearly all elementary American history courses about the foundation of this country. The Pilgrims (i.e. the first colonizers of what we now call the United States) were a group of religious refugees who left their homes in Europe to build a new home. Due to their religious persecution, they envisioned their new home would be one where all people could freely practice their chosen faiths, free of discrimination or ostracization. So, it is no surprise that one of the fundamental freedoms afforded to people in the United States is the freedom of religion. The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, also known as the Establishment Clause, reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In other words: everyone has the right to practice their religion, or lack thereof, without involvement from the State. This is where the famous “separation of Church and State” is derived from. This means that no Government entity (including public schools) may force religion or prohibit people from practicing their religion. For example, public schools are not allowed to start events, meetings, or class with prayer—even if the prayer is student led. Individual students, however, can pray at school so long as they do not disrupt education or try to force others to pray with them. The conversation about religious freedom and education often does not go deeper than the right to pray in school. While this is an incredibly important conversation, it does not address many of the daily experiences of non-Christian students and staff. In a country with pervasive Christian Hegemony, it is imperative that we move beyond the protection of prayer in schools.

Christian Hegemony is a phrase that describes “the everyday, pervasive, and systematic set of Christian values and beliefs, individuals and institutions that dominate all aspects of our society through the social, political, economic, and cultural power they wield” (Paul Kivel, ChristianHegemony.org). One example of Christian Hegemony is the work week. In Christian ideology, the Sabbath—or the day of rest—is Sunday. This idea of resting on Sunday as opposed to any other day has become so deeply engrained in United States culture that it is considered a secular norm. While this may seem small, the Supreme Court case, Braunfeld v Brown (1691), shows that this can prove problematic for people of other faiths. In this case, a group of business owners sued the city of Philadelphia because of a statute that required them to close their businesses on Sundays. The group of business owners argued that the statute prohibited the free exercise of their religion because, as people of Orthodox Jewish faith, they already close business on Saturdays to observe Sabbath. Closing two days in a row would put them at a significant economic disadvantage and staying open on Saturday would be against their faith. They were stuck at a crossroads because of the Philadelphia law. The Supreme Court voted in accordance with Pennsylvania, stating:

To strike down, without the most critical scrutiny, legislation which imposes only an indirect burden on the exercise of religion, i.e., legislation which does not make unlawful the religious practice itself, would radically restrict the operating latitude of the legislature. (Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 US 599 – Supreme Court 1961)

The Philadelphia blue law did not violate the freedom to hold religious beliefs, as protected by law, but it did interfere with the freedom to act. This gray area between beliefs and actions is often where we see Christian Hegemony flourish.

Christian Hegemony is also present in our public-school policies and practices in subtle ways, such as teaching children the morality of good versus evil, and overt ways, such as planning school breaks around Christian holidays. While this may seem small, planning breaks around exclusively Christian holidays (i.e. Christmas and Easter) puts students of other faiths in a position where they must choose between missing school to observe holidays or go to school and not observe. For those who choose to go to school, the holiday season can still be an intensely isolating time of year. One mother wrote about the exclusion her nine-year-old Jewish son felt during Christmas time. This article can be found here.

The feelings of exclusion, however, do not just come from the social aspects of being unlike their peers. Non-Christian students can feel excluded by the way the religious curriculum is taught. I went to a school that taught about religion as a part of World History. We spent weeks on Christianity—talking about the history, beliefs, practices, and differences in denominations—and a few days on Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism combined. During these conversations, non-Christian faiths were posited as distant, exotic, and potentially harmful. Christian Hegemony, much like other systems of domination and oppression, establish Christianity as the norm and other schools of belief or non-belief as “other.” This othering can prove to be harmful for non-Christian students in schools as students of all faiths internalize this and turn it into bullying, discrimination, and self-hatred.

These students often deal with discriminations from their peers and teachers alike. This is especially seen for Muslim students in a post-9/11 America. When completing the Equity School Informed Climate Assessment (E.I.S.C.A) in Manchester Public Schools, RE·Center staff spoke to students of different faiths. One Muslim student expressed,

“I never felt unsafe, but more so targeted….I just realized how much people’s perception changed when I took off my hijab. I got a lot of terrorist comments.”

The same student reported having to use a faculty bathroom for a whole calendar year because “a group of girls said I was making a bomb in the bathroom and it was constant. The teachers were all nice about it but why do I have to be different?” When zooming out to look at the numbers and stories, non-Christian students and staff reported feeling stereotyped and discriminated against in schools. Moreover, non-Christian staff were significantly less likely to agree that their religion is respected in their school or office and significantly more likely to agree that Christian Hegemony is a problem in their work environment. This problem, however, is not exclusive to one school, district, or state. Stories highlighting the occurrences of discrimination and stereotyping emerge daily from students and staff across the country.

The Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state is at the core of America’s representative Democracy. However, the protection to practice your chosen faith free of persecution and interference from the government is still centered around Christian Hegemony and does not protect non-Christians from near-daily experiences of discrimination, stereotyping, and othering both on the interpersonal and institutional levels. While conversations about faith can sometimes feel uncomfortable, it is extremely important that we begin having open and honest conversations about faith-based privilege and oppression, especially as it connects to other systems of oppression. As young people are constantly internalizing the subtle and overt illustrations of systems of domination, we must constantly look at school climates (i.e. practices, policies, etc.) to see where it hides.

In community,

SabriAnan & Your Friends at RE-Center

RE·Imagine 

What would it look like to have a school climate where all students and staff, regardless of faith, are looked at and treated with equal respect?

Interested in reading more about Religious Freedom and Christian Hegemony? Here are some of the things we read in preparing this article:

Your Right to Religious Freedom

About Christian Hegemony

Freedom of Religion

United States Constitution

Christian Culture in US Schools

Christian Privilege and the Everyday Impact of Christian Hegemony

Back to School—And Religion is on the Syllabus?

School Breaks Unfairly Based Around Christian Holidays

What is Christian Hegemony?

The Real Meaning of the Separation of Church and State

Don’t Get Stuck on Prayers in Public Schools

The Equity-Informed School Climate Assessment

On November 5^th, 2019, RE·Center Race & Equity in Education hosted a community screening and discussion of True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, now available on HBOGo.

The film examines the journey of Bryan Stevenson, a public defender in Alabama and the founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). EJI, based in Montgomery, Alabama, works to bring justice to the incarcerated, wrongfully convicted, and disadvantaged. The film weaves together Stevenson’s own story, those of his clients, and the history of injustice and complicity in the United States justice system to reveal how a narrative of racial inequality emerged in this country. As Stevenson says in the film “the North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war.” True Justice highlights the ways the ideology of racism becomes codified through the law, resulting in the inequitable treatment of Black and Brown citizens by the criminal justice system.

Among the historic court cases outlined in the documentary was Stevenson’s 2012 Supreme Court case against juvenile life sentencing. By a small margin (5 to 4), the Supreme Court Justices declared unconstitutional any mandatory penalty that essentially dooms a juvenile offender to a life sentence. When speaking about this case in the film, Stevenson and his colleagues at EJI also spoke about the school-to-prison pipeline—a “national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems” (ACLU). Research on the school-to-prison pipeline shows that the pipeline begins with inadequate resources in public schools, pressures of national test-based accountability legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act, and school discipline policies such as “zero-tolerance policies,” cops in schools, and other forms of punitive in-school discipline. All these policies and actions have been shown to disproportionately affect Black and Brown students across the country. While True Justice largely focuses on the American South, the issues of racial inequity highlighted can be seen across the country, including here in Connecticut.

To bring the conversation back home and provide some time to collectively digest all the heavy content of the documentary, RE·Center staff facilitated dialogue in three small groups. These groups discussed the Criminal Justice System, Narratives of Race, and the path to Truth and Reconciliation. This conversation was not the end, RE·Center facilitators ended with a call to action. Encouraging others to take the tears and heavy emotions left at the end of the film and use it to get involved locally, the attendees were given an engagement guide (which can be found here) with information about Bryan Stevenson, the Equal Justice Initiative, and a list of Connecticut-based organizations who do work focusing on incarceration and racial justice. The night ended with attendees sharing information about other events and community conversations happening in the coming weeks.

Each time RE·Center hosts a film showing, we are reminded of the collective brilliance, wealth of knowledge, and passion in the Hartford community. Thank you to all those who attended for making the event a success!

RE·Imagine

We look forward to hosting more community conversations and film showings in the future. Have something you would like to see us host? Let us know at info@re-center.org or via Facebook and Instagram! Want to stay in the loop and hear about more events like these? Follow us on social media and sign up for our mailing list!

On the anniversary of 9/11, SabriAnan Micha takes some time to reflect on the “Send her back” chants from the Summer.

In mid-July, Donald Trump stood back as chants broke out a rally in North Carolina. “Send her back! Send her back!” Trump’s supporters were referring to Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was born in Somalia. Almost immediately, countless op-eds and articles were published condemning Trump’s followers for their racism and xenophobia as well as marking this rally as a defining moment for his 2020 campaign. As SE Cupp writes in a CNN article,

“Regardless of either party’s ability to put an end to Trumpism in the near future, “Send her back” perfectly encapsulates the Trump era, his ambitions and his supporters’ zeal for punishing and otherizing his detractors. It covers all the features of the Trump doctrine: an appeal to basest instincts, personal animus, racism, xenophobia, revenge. All packed succinctly into three words.”[1] 

Throughout his 2016 campaign and time as president, Trump has shown an intolerance for people who criticize or do not agree with him. Trump’s rhetoric, however, is not exclusive to him. His supporters and success is indicative of the growing hate and intolerance people with marginalized identities face daily. The “send her back” chants were the culmination of years of policies, speeches, and Tweets that have worked to give that hate and intolerance a platform. On the anniversary of 9/11, a date that incites anger in some and anxiety in others, the gravity of the “send her back” chant sits particularly heavy on my shoulders. It is imperative we look at these racist and xenophobic comments and think of the ways they will affect our black, brown, and Muslim youth.

As a black, Muslim, child of immigrants I remember going to school in a post-9/11 world and being met with comments calling me a “terrorist” or telling me and my family to “go back where we came from.” Over time, I noticed these omnipresent comments getting louder and more aggressive around the anniversary of 9/11. As people were reminded of their collective trauma, they took out their anger on the most convenient target: me. Even though I loved going to school and learning, I began to get anxious whenever the anniversary neared. What if my classmates decided to do more than speak? Would I be able to protect myself? How would I explain the situation to my parents, who moved here so we could all have a better future? I remember wishing my educators would step in. Their silence, similar to Trump’s silence as the chants broke out, spoke for them. Now I fear even more for the youth of today. I think of my younger family members, especially those who choose to wear a hijab or headscarf. Although they are much tougher than I ever was, I fear that the usual 9/11 anxieties will only be heightened by having an acting president insist a Black Muslim woman be ‘sent back.’ Tim Miller, former advisor to Jeb Bush, wrote on Twitter,

“I’d say to my friends in DC going along with Trump. Imagine how this video of the President leading a white mob in a ‘Send Her Back’ chant targeting a black refugee is going to look in your kids high school government/history classes. This hatred has got to be stopped.”

In a time when the President of the country silently supports intolerance, educators must step up for their marginalized students. It is imperative not only to teach students why these comments are wrong, but also step in when they see or hear racist and xenophobic comments repeated in their classrooms or hallways. Students with marginalized identities must be able to trust that their educators will be there for them. Sometimes simply checking in with a young person who is having a hard time speaks volumes.

[1] Cupp, SE, “‘Send her back’ will be the Trump era’s defining slogan”, CNN

RE·Imagine

What ways are schools and educators currently standing up for their students of color and Muslim students? How can they do more? What would it look like to have an educational environment that fully supports and enriches these students?