edweek.org
How to Make Anti-Racism More Than a Performance (Opinion)
Whether white people are ready or not, policies have to change, writes the co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network.
“Anti-racism work is all too often done as a performance—to be popular
and look ‘woke.’ It can be painstakingly ornamental. It needs instead to
embed community efforts, organizers, and the actual people who live
with America’s oppression. It needs to make structural changes that
dismantle centuries-old, racist institutions from the ground up in order
to rebuild with a commitment to community, safety (without police),
justice, diversity, and actual equity. For equity work to work, it must
be handed to the community. We have to actually trust the people we say
we want to empower to make structural changes, not just tinker at the
edges of injustice.“
