racism inservice

ok, if I didn't feel invisible enough before, I really feel invisible now. We are having a district-wide inservice about racism, where some high-paid consultant comes and talks to us on the TV (why we had to fly him to Madison so he could talk to us on TV is unclear, but anyway), and then we break into small groups and supposedly chew on the problems he poses.

What's amazing is the intractable determination of all concerned to
1) assume that children of color don't achieve because they can't
2) assume that "cultural differences" means that African-American kids are taught to hit back and be late to class
3) assume that fellow students' racial slurs are the only significant manifestation of racism at this school.

But the whole way this inservice is being conducted is... ok well dumb. They give us this article full of academic jargon blah blah blah, and it's not even a good article. It's supposedly an introduction to critical race theory. Yeah. Like that's gonna make any sense to anyone. Everyone at my table sat around and argued first about what "Othering" might mean, then about whether some kid in some example story should have gotten expelled or not. Of course they're having the same experience that non-dominant-culture children have in school (someone throws an article at you that you can't even read, then expects you to discuss it, then--if we were in the same room as Mr. TV Guy--criticizes you for getting off-topic), but they don't even realize it.

Sigh. I keep thinking about simulations to try to reproduce the experience of being in a classroom where the majority of people share a worldview and can't even conceive of how yours could be different.

On the plus side, there was no school today and we had pizza for lunch.