The Blog

2020-

2020-12-23 c
D.I.E. (diversity, inclusion, equity) AT DALTON SCHOOL III
"Your demands are stupid and you people are stupid. Critical Race Theory is a stupid religion and a scam but I actually hope the school meets all of these ridiculous demands just to watch it implode just like Evergreen hahahahaha. CRT is a gift that destroys everything it touches. Enjoy being racist fanatics while you can because the world is waking up to your bullshit gift. You people are the real racists."

Teacher Demands at Dalton

As promised. Looks like it's signed by most or all of the faculty. I'd like to meet anyone who didn't sign. That would be a very brave person.

This is unedited. As you can see, I left plenty out of my first post.

Without new visions we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics but a process that can and must transform us.
Robin D.G. Kelley

Context

During the past few months, we have been inspired by the Black Lives Matter uprisings across the country. Black activists and their accomplices continue to put their personal safety at risk in order to make a better world for all of us; we thank them for their courage and vision.

We have also had the opportunity to see this activism up close, in our own community. Dalton’s Black students and students of color demonstrated that same courage—going forth unafraid—when they shared personal stories of racism and trauma in the high school town hall at the end of the year. On Instagram, @blackatdalton and @dalton_anonymous have held Dalton accountable for its shortcomings, and Dalton’s Black alumni and parents of Black students are helping us to envision a more inclusive school. We are also inspired by the demands currently being championed by Black Students Demanding Change.

Dalton has also made a public commitment to “live up to our stated values as a visibly, vocally, structurally anti-racist institution.” Towards this end, Head of School Jim Best outlined the following list of actions:

•Create and apply a comprehensive anti-racism and inclusion plan

•Revise course content to be relevant and inclusive of a full range of experiences including those of people of color

•Learn specific teaching practices that foster an inclusive classroom without burdening students of color and marginalized students

•Establish a clear system for reporting incidents of bias, discrimination, or racism

•Implement a mandatory parent orientation that is aligned with our mission, our values, and our commitment to anti-racism

We are heartened to see Dalton’s leadership taking such a strong stance on this issue, and we are energized for the work ahead. In the spirit of eager collaboration, we have identified 24 proposals, detailed below, that we believe will complement and extend Dalton’s existing efforts.

To contextualize these proposals, we would like to include the following definitions, put forward by the Aspen Institute:

Structural Racism: A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.

Institutional Racism: Institutional racism refers to the policies and practices within and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor, or put a racial group at a disadvantage. Poignant examples of institutional racism can be found in school disciplinary policies in which students of color are punished at much higher rates than their white counterparts, in the criminal justice system, and within many employment sectors in which day-to-day operations, as well as hiring and firing practices can significantly disadvantage workers of color.

Much of the discourse surrounding equity and inclusion in schools focuses on reducing interpersonal racism, training faculty about implicit bias, and diversifying the curriculum. We heartily affirm the importance of these anti-racist efforts, especially in light of student testimony detailing microagressions, careless remarks, and blatant racial prejudice. In this document, we imagine what it would mean for Dalton to move towards its stated goal of becoming a more “structurally anti-racist institution” (emphasis added)—an inspiring charge that requires more than well-intentioned, individualized efforts. On the contrary, we must “[engage with] the Dalton community in an intensive, comprehensive, ongoing examination of our cultural norms, our policies, and our programs,” and most importantly, we must change them. Structural racism is cumulative, pervasive, durable, and mutable; our response must be similarly thorough and systematic.

It’s important to note that the language in this document focuses primarily on the Black community at Dalton. While we acknowledge that white supremacy harms all people of color, we believe that anti-Blackness must be understood as distinct from “racism” writ large. In this moment, our collective anti-racist efforts must center Black people and their needs. Nonetheless, we believe that many of the proposals outlined below could be extended to consider indigenous and native people; people from other underrepresented racial and ethnic identities; people from working-class backgrounds; people with disabilities; the queer community; non-binary, genderqueer, and gender nonconforming people; etc.

... Proposals (read their Communist Manifesto with a barf bag)

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