6/1

    In Deculturalization, Spring argues that racism is a consequence of cultural intolerance. This idea makes sense to me, and we see it play out in our modern society still to this day. When we look back on British and United States history, it is clear that we (as a privileged, American people) have always feared and fought against difference and migration of any kind. The term “white” was never enough – racism needed to account for religion, heritage, and place of birth. Given recent (and the most current) events, it is still just as clear that racism pervades and continues to run deep. In a country in which so many people (namely, Native Americans) were run off their land and murdered for being different, it’s a shame that modern racism is the same problem with a different façade.

    Spring’s essay made me think a lot about cultural responsiveness and competence. If we aren’t being considerate of our students’ cultures and languages, are we doing much better than white settlers were a few hundred years ago? If privileged teachers and policymakers hold firm in their belief that they particular cultures, races, and peoples are inferior, then there will be a constant imposition on those groups to change their values and comply with those of the majority group. Is this what we’re doing in education? Is the 90/10 model of English language instruction a form of deculturalization? Those “engaged in the education of multiple language and cultural groups” (2) are at risk of propagating this type of cultural disenfranchisement. We don’t “aggressively strip Indian youth of their cultural traditions, languages, and religious beliefs” (72) as Bolligner says of the educational efforts imposed on Native Americans, but we do teach with our own objectives in mind. At my school, our curriculum leaves little room for cultural adaptation, and I often feel as though we are denying our students of their culture, especially those who just recently moved to Providence.

 

    These days, we talk a lot about racial bias. The tricky thing about such a prejudice is that we aren’t actually privy to its existence. Therefore, and especially if we aren’t policymakers or curriculum-writers, we often fall prey to these inherent biases we hold because they exist within the systems into which we’ve already subscribed (i.e. the school districts where we work, the curriculums we teach).

 

    The article from The Guardian about the disproportionate amount of COVID cases among Native Americans was dishearteningly similar to our conversation last week on black population’s susceptibility to the virus. I find the end of the article to be as powerful as it is chilling: with an impending second wave, there is an opportunity (and arguably, a responsibility) to prepare. I hope our governments can rise to the occasion in light of all that’s happened since the outbreak.