As the school year begins among anti-批判种族理论 rhetoric and attacks on race equity polices, 计划, MnEEP呼吁明尼苏达州学校重新致力于种族公正.
在MnEEP, we believe addressing and building racial equity is central to creating school systems that are beneficial for each—and every—student. 这就是为什么 we partner with school districts across Minnesota to provide 学校领导 and educators with the tools, 资源, and deep understanding they need to advance racial equity in their schools and classrooms and ensure Black, 拉丁美洲/拉丁, 亚洲, 太平洋岛民, and Indigenous students (POCI students – People of Color/Indigenous) have the opportunity to realize their full potential and achieve academic excellence.
A critical component of building racial equity in education means students have the historical knowledge and safe space to talk constructively about race and racism, including learning and understanding the tenets of critical race theory (CRT)— a tool developed by POCI scholars to analyze how our legal and institutional systems have advanced 结构 racism.
即使是强大的个人, 社会, 而经济效益来自于学生对系统的理解, 结构, 制度性种族主义在我们国家已经并将继续发挥作用, there are efforts being made nationwide and statewide to deny that opportunity to students.
反对crt的言论让MnEEP的我们非常担忧, and it should concern anyone who truly wishes to close the deep education opportunity gaps in Minnesota.
这就是为什么, 在这个关键的时刻，又是新学年的开始, 我们呼吁并授权明尼苏达州的教育工作者, 学校领导, 以及种族平等倡导者再次承诺种族平等和种族正义, 消除当前和历史上种族主义的危害, and to building anti-racist education spaces 在哪里 every student receives the tools, 资源, 以及他们成功所需的支持.
建设繁荣, 一个多种族国家，每个人都有机会过上他们应得的生活, it’s essential we work together to advance racial equity rooted in these core principles:
种族歧视是真实存在的.
MnEEP asserts that racism is real, and it is not constrained to the horrific harms done in the past. 我们生活在这种伤害的持续后果中, and they show up in the 社会 disparities we see today that fall along racial lines.
例如,只有 65%的黑人青年男性 在明尼苏达州按时完成高中学业. 另一方面，他们的白人男性同事准时毕业 86%. 这些年轻人在生理上没有什么不同, but the disparate statistical reality between them as groups tells a persistent story of how racism impacts them differently.
承认这些差异的存在, 要明白它们的存在没有自然法则, and analyzing the powerful 社会 forces that produce these outcomes allows us to better provide opportunities for achievement in our schools so our educational institutions can overcome the harm of racism.
We owe it to students to equip ourselves with information we can use to make our schools more effective for each and every student.
MnEEP对CRT的错误信息并不感到惊讶. 我们把它看作是历史上抵抗模式的最新发展 反种族主义 全国上下的努力. 这种抵抗已经并将继续伤害我们的学生和我们的社区, 并使白人种族霸权永垂不朽.
It impedes us all from acting to remake our public institutions to be places 在哪里 each person has opportunities to succeed and and is not limited from doing so.
我们的学生应该享有种族平等.
种族权益 is the 社会 condition 在哪里 every person receives what they need to be successful in recognition of how racism has denied them the very things that have created benefits for other racial groups.
在教育方面采取公平行动, the rules and practices of our schools and colleges intentionally act to know how racism has impacted their students and provides opportunities —even if some of those differ per racial student groups —so that each and all can benefit.
Racism singles out groups of people for immediate specific harm while having consequences that can last generations. 非裔美国人被剥夺了联邦政府的福利.I. 比尔, even though they had earned it by sacrificing their lives in military defense of our nation. Meanwhile, white families built up early economic and 社会 advantages by having full access to it.
Ignoring this fact leads schools to fail with students of color and Indigenous students by assuming they possess the same advantages around which to align how to deliver education. Ignoring the unique ways racism has impacted different students consistently leads to the failed approach of providing education to all students using the same methods for all. 其结果是构建了对某些人有效的机会，但并非对所有人都有效. 我们称之为“机会差距”.
To overcome the unfair expectation that everyone be treated “the same” regardless of how they have been harmed and limited by racism, our institutions must take actions that are informed precisely by those harmful limitations and act to counter them.
例如, after-school programs become ways for schools to provide exposure to careers that some white students privately have access to due to accumulated family wealth that flowed from the long-ago benefits of the G.I. 比尔.
种族权益 then is about doing the specific things that must be informed by the unique experiences of each racial-cultural group. 只有这样，机会才能真正被认为是“平等的”,” 在哪里 “equal” means to respond to the unique impediments all and each student face in their lives.
To overcome the unfair expectation that everyone be treated “the same” regardless of how they have been harmed and limited by racism, our institutions must take actions that are informed precisely by those harmful limitations and act to counter them.
CRT是理解种族主义的重要工具.
临界种族理论) 有一个工具能让我们理解这些障碍是什么吗, and how they continue to harm people based on their perceived racial class—and it empowers us to act fairly. 以最简单的形式, CRT it is a telling of our society’s legal constructs created to perpetuate racially disparate opportunities to cause harm to POCI people and their communities.
在我们的教室和我们的教育者, CRT simply provides a framework for understanding how law and policy in the United States creates and perpetuates racial harm.
例如, the permanence of racism can be seen in how, for generations, Minneapolis had 具有法律效力，种族排他性的契约 on property title transfers that forbade home ownership by African Americans in certain neighborhoods.
这使得通过物权法实现种族隔离成为可能. 1953年，明尼苏达州通过了积极的州立法，禁止在明尼苏达州签署新的契约, 尽管他们的遗产仍然存在. 到今天, the Twin Cities still have the lowest African American homeownership rates in the country.
Banning racial covenants was one act of racial equity—acting specifically to undo a law targeting African Americans to limit their opportunities for homeownership. This is what CRT allows us to do—to see and understand how systemic behavior causes racial harm, in this case how it was perpetuated through our legal system and still impacts Black Minnesotans today.
Tools and frameworks like CRT allow us not only to understand today’s inequities and act to end the legal system’s underpinnings of those, 也告诉我们可以采取什么措施来帮助消除造成的伤害.
例如, because racially segregated neighborhoods allowed for wealth to be amassed by white families that could then be used for college tuition while African Americans were denied access to that accumulation of wealth, college scholarships for students of color and Indian students becomes a justifiable— “equitable”— act towards equal opportunities.
记住这一点, the present challenge to CRT raises the question: Why would we not want to see and understand what, 在哪里, 当, 以及种族伤害在我们的社会中是如何产生的? And given that a school’s purpose is to prepare young people to be productive citizens in society, 为什么我们不希望学生培养理解种族主义的技能呢?
And if a key purpose of our education systems is to equip our people to be effective citizens, 我们应该用工具和知识武装他们，让他们看清种族主义, 了解它是如何永存的, 让他们摆脱色盲的虚假, 让每个公民都能在解决种族歧视问题上发挥自己的作用.
Thus, 当 CRT rightly exposes racial supremacy, it is characterized as an attack on America. 然而，这只有在美国选择成为一个白人至上主义国家的情况下才可能成为现实.
种族平等赋予学生和我们的社会权力.
种族平等作为教育成果的好处有很多:
1)种族平等促进对多样性的欣赏, 在多元文化社会中和平共处;
2) It nurtures skills for communicating and working effectively across diverse backgrounds, 提高我们的效率和繁荣;
3) It fosters respect for the inherent dignity of all people which affirms our civil rights and strengthens democracy and the rule of law in our Constitutional republic.
对于我们的多种族民主来说，这些都是至关重要的结果.
种族平等赋予学校领导、教育工作者和我们的社区权力.
老师, 学校董事会, and superintendents are acquiring a deeper knowledge of what that critical engagement with students requires of them in order to become better educators and guide their students’ academic achievement.
他们呼吁MnEEP和其他组织就如何更好地解决种族平等问题提供指导, 不是因为他们想要推进一种意识形态, but because they know directly from their students that aligning the educational environment and delivery system to racial equity is necessary for each student to develop the self-agency needed to succeed.
我们现在必须见面.
然而,, 尽管这些发展, CRT的批评者已经相当公开地认为公平是错误的. They have mischaracterized and couched racial equity as furthering the diminishment of “American norms” and of the self-worth of white students.
To appreciate the power being conjured by misinformation in this moment through the attacks on public schools for “teaching CRT” requires a deeper understanding of how racism has been constructed in our society so that ideas of white supremacy are equated with being American.
Thus, 当 CRT rightly exposes racial supremacy, it is characterized as an attack on America. 然而，这只有在美国选择成为一个白人至上主义国家的情况下才可能成为现实.
但是有一个版本, 以及历史实践, 美国不是这样的, 而像CRT这样的工具则可以实现这个理想的版本, 哪一个真正重视“我们人民”以获得成功.
But as we collectively struggle – to name and end racial supremacy and disentangle ourselves from its lies that we have normalized (perhaps often not being aware they were untrue and causing harm) – we need to work through the feelings that conjures up for us.
例如, 当 CRT makes it possible to see things like the racist Minneapolis property covenants, 一些明尼苏达州人可能会被认为我们一定是“坏人”的建议所冒犯.” That devaluing of self and the sense of loss it brings can be both infuriating and frightening and can—in an electoral political environment – be manipulated to meet a partisan and ideological purpose at odds with racial justice.
MnEEP理解这一点, while not interested in passing judgement on those who have been manipulated to use CRT to attack diversity engagement and racial equity, we remain fiercely steadfast in challenging the argument that racial equity should not be pursued in our education systems, 我们强烈反对学生不应该学习种族主义的要求.
这是一个机会.
MnEEP believes the recent attacks open an opportunity to understand CRT as the helpful tool it is to better understand how we have structured our society to cause racial harm, 包括剥夺许多学生真正的机会.
We see this moment as a time to recommit ourselves to being an empowered people that can move past that harm —equipped with good tools—to build the society each of us deserves, 每个人都有真正的机会和机会, 我们在哪里可以结束种族主义.
请访问MnEEP网站 www.cabecicosblancos.com 并参与一个致力于这样做的社区.
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额外的资源 & 阅读材料:
- MnEEP竞赛公平术语: 促进种族平等的概念、定义、过程和工具
3. 国家教育协会: 国家教育协会的教育种族公正框架
4. 繁荣的学校: 种族平等对学校繁荣的重要性
