Speaker 1: Greetings and welcome to wok a F with me Danielle Moody.
Speaker 1: This week on my Patreon, I shared conversations that examined
Speaker 1: how we can reverse the damage that the last four
Speaker 1: years have done on our country and what can be
Speaker 1: done to create a better future for everybody. Today, I'm
Speaker 1: bringing you thoughtful taste from two of those interviews, looking
Speaker 1: at the structural inequities in the public school system and
Speaker 1: the continued fight for lgbtqequality. As always, to hear these
Speaker 1: full discussions and get full one hour shows every single week,
Speaker 1: head over to patreon dot com, slash woke a F
Speaker 1: and subscribe For now. Take a listen to my talk
Speaker 1: with educational scholar Bree Pickhour, author of Reading, Writing and Racism,
Speaker 1: about how teaching race evasiveness to educators only deepens the
Speaker 1: racial divide in our schools. What kind of pushback do
Speaker 1: you yet when you're telling people like, oh, we're doing
Speaker 1: this work, but we have to undo this work in
Speaker 1: our classrooms, Like it isn't just a you know, an
Speaker 1: exercise in like growth in our democracy, but it's like,
Speaker 1: how do we do that? I'm so glad to hear
Speaker 1: that that was your experience because it certainly isn't the
Speaker 1: norm in teacher education programs. I think most teacher educators
Speaker 1: consider themselves specialists in the subject area that they're preparing
Speaker 1: people to teach. So I'm elementary education, my specialty of
Speaker 1: social study, so that's what I'm supposed to prepare people
Speaker 1: to do. Instead of thinking about that we are preparing
Speaker 1: a whole person that is going to be sitting in
Speaker 1: front of a whole room full of people, and that
Speaker 1: what teachers teach is not just their subject matter. We
Speaker 1: teach our beliefs, and so if we're not giving our
Speaker 1: future teachers an opportunity to unpack what it is that
Speaker 1: they believe, particularly around race, then they're going to go
Speaker 1: in and teach mainstream, dominant racial ideology to their students.
Speaker 1: And that's what the first part of my book is about,
Speaker 1: is the kind of racist curriculum that is going viral
Speaker 1: right now that is sort of seen as one off
Speaker 1: bad teachers or bad apples, but that really point to
Speaker 1: the permanence of racism and education because, like most of society,
Speaker 1: teachers have not necessarily done that deep work to understand
Speaker 1: they're the way that they think about race, the way
Speaker 1: that they think about difference. You know, I've often believed,
Speaker 1: you know, we did such a grave disservice to everyone,
Speaker 1: not like not just teachers when we said, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: be blind to race, right, like, let's let's let's ignore it,
Speaker 1: let's tolerate it. Right. I grew up in a schooling
Speaker 1: system that was ninety six percent white. I was the
Speaker 1: only black kid most of the time in my classes,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't acknowledged. Andy by the not acknowledging it,
Speaker 1: it was like it was a way to basically say,
Speaker 1: you need to assimilate, right like you are supposed to
Speaker 1: assimilate to be like everybody else, and that the uniqueness
Speaker 1: and the experiences that you're bringing into this place, we
Speaker 1: don't care. Yeah. Yeah, you know for teachers that sort
Speaker 1: of with pride have that I don't see a color.
Speaker 1: I see blue, purple, yellow. You know, it's really based
Speaker 1: in a deficit notion of people of color when you
Speaker 1: hear white teachers say that, because what they're saying is
Speaker 1: if I acknowledge your race, then there's something negative that
Speaker 1: I'm doing. There's some reason why I'm not supposed to
Speaker 1: notice it. And if I'm not supposed to notice it,
Speaker 1: it must be because there's something wrong with it, and
Speaker 1: so there's this fear that really, what I think is
Speaker 1: underneath that is a fear of being called racist. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the fear underneath a lot of white teachers, and
Speaker 1: so they espouse this race evasive kind of mentality. I've
Speaker 1: been moving away from color blind because I'm trying to
Speaker 1: move away, I know, and I actually when you, I know,
Speaker 1: and when you just said race a vase, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a better term, right. Yeah, we've been working on
Speaker 1: that one in the field for a while. But I
Speaker 1: think that it's it's really what's underneath that is deficit
Speaker 1: understandings about race. I had a student once who was like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't want to acknowledge their race,
Speaker 1: but I also, you know, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: making assumptions. It's like, what is the assumption you're afraid
Speaker 1: that you're making. What was the assumption that they were
Speaker 1: afraid that they were making. Well, it was actually very
Speaker 1: confusing when she actually started to talk about when she
Speaker 1: started to get into it, she had a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion around race period. I Mean, there's so much right
Speaker 1: beneath the surface, you know, she started talking about how, well,
Speaker 1: if she gets a tan, then she's darker than some
Speaker 1: of her students, and so I think she was wondering
Speaker 1: if that if she's still white. I mean it was Look,
Speaker 1: this stuff is unexamined and it's well and so if
Speaker 1: we're not giving them a place to talk about this,
Speaker 1: then the classroom is the place where they're experimenting, and
Speaker 1: we see the results of what that looks like when
Speaker 1: we see these, you know, pieces of curriculum that are
Speaker 1: floating around it. You know, as recent as three days ago,
Speaker 1: there was a curriculum out of Wisconsin around I think
Speaker 1: the words were something like something about an escaped slave yep,
Speaker 1: and how would you how I could? I like, for
Speaker 1: the life of me breathe When these stories come out,
Speaker 1: I'm like, how how I know that each sit down
Speaker 1: and they plan out their week, they plan out their unit,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking to myself, how how does something like
Speaker 1: that happen? And that's where this book came out of,
Speaker 1: really was I was just I started collecting these examples
Speaker 1: like this because I have students, white students who don't
Speaker 1: necessarily believe that racism is still a problem, at least
Speaker 1: pre forty fifth president, I was like pre insurrection and
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of post racial. So I had
Speaker 1: started collecting these examples to show no, this actually is
Speaker 1: a problem. And so after some point it got beyond
Speaker 1: the like shock value and the disturbing value of them,
Speaker 1: and I really started to question, you know, these aren't anomalies,
Speaker 1: These aren't going anywhere, and so what is their function?
Speaker 1: How are these examples actually functioning to a maintain white
Speaker 1: supremacy and be teach the next generation dominant ideology without
Speaker 1: them necessarily even knowing the history. How is it still
Speaker 1: teaching the mainstream ideas around race to the next generation.
Speaker 1: How is it reinvesting in whiteness? And so that's really
Speaker 1: where the book started, was to analyze these examples to
Speaker 1: move past the like disturbing shock value, to see that
Speaker 1: these actually do have a purpose, and their purpose is
Speaker 1: to maintain racial hierarchies. My conversation with Bree resonated with
Speaker 1: me for days after we talked, so I definitely recommend
Speaker 1: taking a listen to the entire conversation. Just five dollars
Speaker 1: gets you access to a growing library of hundreds of
Speaker 1: shows at patreon dot com. Slash woke f with five
Speaker 1: new episodes going up every single week. Another discussion I
Speaker 1: found residence in was with my friend Kiera Johnson, who
Speaker 1: is the new executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force.
Speaker 1: We'll jump into this conversation with me asking Kiera direction
Speaker 1: she is guiding the task force in after four disastrous
Speaker 1: years of anti LGBTQ policy from the previous heinous administration.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to move away from Trump, but it seems
Speaker 1: like I'm never going to be able to. So, you know,
Speaker 1: what are some of the things entering into this position
Speaker 1: now that you've had to deal with, you know, over
Speaker 1: the last four years. The last four years of the
Speaker 1: Trump administration have been traumatic for so many marginalized communities,
Speaker 1: but particularly for the LGBTQ community. We were the target
Speaker 1: from the beginning, right it was like inauguration in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and then boom, right like, we're going to let
Speaker 1: you know exactly what we think about you. We're going
Speaker 1: to remove you from the website right from the White House.
Speaker 1: We're going to you know, rescind protections for LGBTQ youth
Speaker 1: in school. We're going to ban transgender people from the military.
Speaker 1: We're going to take away, you know, any right right
Speaker 1: that had been one we're rolling back. So what are
Speaker 1: some of the things, like the big tackle things that
Speaker 1: came out of the last four years that you're focused
Speaker 1: on now in terms of repair. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: you named a you know a lot of those things,
Speaker 1: and I think the overarching impact of that is fear
Speaker 1: right depression a whole. You know, I think about people
Speaker 1: like young people who were fourteen years old when he
Speaker 1: came into office, that were perpetually hearing messages that you're
Speaker 1: not human, you don't deserve civil rights, It is okay
Speaker 1: to bully you because you are, you know, you are
Speaker 1: undeserving right of compassion and joy and particularly to participate
Speaker 1: in community and society. And so I mean, honestly, one
Speaker 1: of the big things you're tackling is hopelessness rightful. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was literally sanctioned by the state where you could
Speaker 1: harass and jail trans black women, right like. It was
Speaker 1: just it was like the new norm of the land.
Speaker 1: And so you know, those are the things we're trying
Speaker 1: to undo while also you know, working to be proactive
Speaker 1: in our campaigns and actions. So you know, it was
Speaker 1: really heartening, right to see the repeal of the ban
Speaker 1: of transgender folks in the militancy. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the questions that has been sitting with me is does
Speaker 1: that also mean that people who were discharged do they
Speaker 1: now have access to their pensions? It's like the trickle
Speaker 1: down effect, right, they don't necessarily need or want to
Speaker 1: be reinstated, but do they have access to VA benefits now? Right? So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we're still trying to figure those
Speaker 1: things out, and I do want to see and I'm
Speaker 1: hopeful that the Biden administration is going to take some
Speaker 1: real concrete action to eradicate this violence against trans women.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a real epidemic in our country right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, every year, Kia, the numbers are worse
Speaker 1: than the year before, and you know, it is so
Speaker 1: the word disheartening doesn't even begin to describe what is happening.
Speaker 1: Right That to leave your house as a black trans
Speaker 1: woman is in fact taking your life in your own hands,
Speaker 1: you know, Like we have lost so many stalwarts of
Speaker 1: our community as well as those that just are just
Speaker 1: trying to live their life, like just trying to exist.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that we talk about that enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I think that that should be of top
Speaker 1: of mind for the new administration. Well, and it's just
Speaker 1: a restoration of our humanity, right, like a simple is.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. And one of the things
Speaker 1: you know, the movement and the task words in particulars
Speaker 1: is working to further right now, is ensuring federal protections
Speaker 1: right for lgb TQ people. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: folks you know around the country don't know that discrimination
Speaker 1: is still legal based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Speaker 1: People can be kicked out of housing, right like people
Speaker 1: can be denied healthcare. They can still have their children
Speaker 1: taken away, turned away from a church when that's your
Speaker 1: place of worship, and it's a matter of life and
Speaker 1: death for a lot of people, right. And it's time.
Speaker 1: It's time that we own and acknowledge LGBTQ people as
Speaker 1: full humans deserving of civil and human rights. And it's
Speaker 1: exciting because I think this is the first time in
Speaker 1: recent history where it feels like that might actually be possible,
Speaker 1: right and definitely in the last four and a half years,
Speaker 1: it's the first time I think hope outweighs the fear
Speaker 1: right that people have about what's possible We've got a
Speaker 1: lot of work ahead of us, folks, and it's intelligent,
Speaker 1: vocal leaders like Bree and Kiera who will guide us
Speaker 1: through this turbulent moment in our nation's history. We need
Speaker 1: to stand strong together and fight for what's right and hopefully,
Speaker 1: hopefully we will not just get back to normal, but
Speaker 1: create a better society for ourselves and each other. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for checking out Woke AF once again.
Speaker 1: You can hear five new hour long episodes every single
Speaker 1: week for just five dollars a month, with extra video
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Speaker 1: our Woke family gets, the more people we have on
Speaker 1: our side in this fight. As I say every week,
Speaker 1: power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.