15
votes
Questions about DEI standards
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- '1000 by 2025' Initiative: Jacksonville's Answer To Schools' Biggest Diversity Problem - Free Press of Jacksonville
- Authors
- admin
- Published
- Jun 17 2024
- Word count
- 569 words
I'm honestly not trolling. I'm looking for healthy discussion and help understanding, what I see as, unevenly applied standards in DEI.
Take, for example, this quote from the linked article:
"Who better than a Latino teacher to instruct students of the same background?"
Imagine if this statement came from a white parent or white teacher and they said, "Who better than a white teacher to instruct students of the same background?"
Taking the article to its logical conclusion, should we implement segregation in our schools? Should we hire teachers that accurately represent the backgrounds of the students and then segregate the students into classes instructed by teachers with the same backgrounds?
I'm a white male. I readily admit that I've had an easier life handed to me than many other people. I'd love nothing more than to break down the divide and live in a world where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
I struggle daily to understand how we can achieve that goal when I regularly see articles, like the one I linked, that appear to promote the opposite.
Yes, that is a pretty tone-deaf statement, but it's also generally correct. Same-race teachers seem to have a notable effect on success rates of their students:
If we were trying to maximize learning potential and further education without regard to anything else, segregation would probably be correct. Of course, there are a lot of other things that we (as a society) care about that makes segregation a bad idea. Luckily, it appears that it's not necessary to exclusively race-match teachers - it's only necessary that they have at least one same-race teacher (long article - it's probably worth reading, but the paragraph relevant to my point is quoted below):
This means we don't need to segregate to reap the benefits of same-race teaching. We just need to make sure that all students are exposed to teachers of as many races and backgrounds as possible throughout their education, preferably in their early education. So if (for example) all grade 3 teachers are black, all grade 4 teachers are Latino, all grade 5 teachers are white, that would guarantee racial coverage for about 90% of the racial makeup of America. That's just one clunky example, but hopefully it gets the point across.
So, is the 1000 by 2025 initiative a good idea? It's better than nothing. Simply having a more diverse workforce will increase the odds of pairing same-race teachers and students together at some point in their education. Once the teachers exist, the distributions can be adjusted to better maximize the reach, but just existing is a good first step.
I think part of the issue that you are having is considering the quote without the context within which it is intended. You are applying the reverse statement when there is no analogous reverse position currently in Florida. You need to consider your quote and the context of the quote and how they have an impact on the intent.
Quote: "Who better than a Latino teacher to instruct students of the same background?"
Context: There are relatively few Latino teachers.
Intent: Increase the number of Latino teachers.
Now consider the reverse statement:
Quote: "Who better than a white teacher to instruct white students of the same background?"
Context: There are relatively many white teachers.
Intent: ?
What is the intent of the reverse position that you brought up? I think the issue is that most of the possible intents are pretty negative. This is an important thing to be able to recognize, because it is a frequent talking point to bring up with statements about race or gender, or anything where there is a power disparity; "If we flipped this to white / male, would we still be comfortable?" The answer to that is frequently no, which is then inevitably followed up with questioning why it is okay to say it in the first place, and it all comes back to power dynamics.
When you said you are looking for help understanding unevenly applied standards in DEI, then I think it's important to remember a classic equality vs equity cartoon, which is simple but effective. Let's be realistic: you are a white male, as am I. We do not require the same protections or advocacy that other groups need, because we are already currently favoured in many ways. That's why it's okay to say things about Latino teachers, but not about White teachers. We are already looking over this fence easily, and we don't require the boxes.
I really dislike these race flipping hypotheticals. It over simplifies the situation by removing all cultural and historic context that makes the latino/white relationship deeply asymmetric.
The person that said that quote in the link was a teacher, not an administrator of the DEI initiative. People say dumb stuff all the time without realizing how it could come off. In their mind, they could have been referring to something like shared experiences and relatability in the classroom with students in their classroom.
The point of the initiative is to push for a more representative population of educators, not do a 1:1 replacement, segregation style. It seems to me that the school system has an overrepresenation of non-black and non-latino teachers that they are trying to address so they can produce better learning outcomes due to the research they quoted. They are also focusing on males in that 1000 person hiring, but I wouldn't come away with the assumption that they are misogynistic if teaching is dominated by women, right?
I understand the quote was from an individual teacher, but it made it into the article. So, now the responsibility of the quote lies not just with the teacher, but also with the writer and editor of this article.
If the same quote (but from a white perspective) came from a teacher and made it into a news article, there would be outrage. Why is there a double standard?
Because there already are a disproportionate number of white teachers. I guarantee you there are no white students in Florida who don't have a single white teacher. I also guarantee that there are black and Latino students who don't have a single black or Latino teacher. You don't even need to think about the legacy of racism throughout history in the US to recognize that there is a difference between these populations here.
Because white people, men in particular, hold most of the control and positions of power.
I know you claim to mean well here, but to me, this post and these questions strike me as a white man complaining about reverse racism, along with the classic scenario of quoting Martin Luther King Jr. without the proper context.
I'm a white middle aged man who has also had an easier life than most. But I won't assume that one quote, absent its context, should condemn efforts to level the playing field for everyone.
Because people make mistakes and say things that come off the wrong way to the wrong audience. I went to the website for this actual program and I found nothing that would give me pause to think this was some secretly masked racist initiative.
If a white person did it, yes there would be outrage from a group of people that only read headlines and only look so far into things that validates their narratives. There would also be people out there that do more than a few seconds of research into who said said what and why, and make their conclusion on a more nuanced basis. You get to choose as an individual what you want to do and how you want to react to things.
I think we should give people the benefit of the doubt and let well-meaning people have a little grace when trying to do good in the world. This is a program trying to undo some systemic problems that they identified with their school system. I don't take this random teacher's comments, in a likely amateur-written and amateur-edited article as coming off as the gateway for black or Latino male supremacy.
I actually think this is legitimate, if not perfectly phrased. I think students from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from having some teachers who look a bit like them and have some shared experiences in life, primarily because
I think the reason some people would object if someone said "Imagine if this statement came from a white parent or white teacher and they said ..." is basically
I think a challenge with any movement or group is communicating ideas outside of that group once a certain set of norms and definitions have formed, and I think DEI has definitely suffered from that somewhat.
That said, I think this is as simple as a sound bite being given without context. So, bad journalism, probably.
Looking at the site for the program, it seems they are trying to recruit people into teaching roles who aren't necessarily teachers by advertising a call to action to help kids. Teachers are also in short supply, so there isn't a reason to think any qualified teacher is being turned away unfairly due to race, etc. they are trying to grow the pie so to speak.
As to the larger question, I think representation is really important, as well as shared life experiences. It's not about having only black or Latino teachers for black or Latino students, but having a representative mix. So that some of your teachers will be white, and some Asian, and some black, and some Latino. And teachers do help out and float at times through schools.
So I get what you are saying, and I've had some interesting DEI experiences in my higher ed career. But this I think is healthy calls to action for teachers from underrepresented populations.