White supremacists roots in school systems
Project 2
During this project I researched white supremacy and the many errors in our school's curriculums.
English
For my product I created a sort of children's book about the resource ban at CYHS. The more I looked into this ban I found that the books that were banned were innocent. A lot of them included kids books about loving one another, loving ourselves, and history. While doing my research I used one of the banned resources called Justice for learning. It was one of my favorite magazines that a teacher had introduced me to a year prior. I looked a lot into the meanings of race and words like "white supremacy," "white fragility," and "white privilege". A lot of those words tend to trigger controversial responses from people because a lot of people like to ignore the problems. I looked at these words when researching the book ban because I feel as though they are words that can be associated with this particular topic. Breaking some of these words down white supremacy is the social, economic, and political systems that enable white people to maintain power or the belief that the white race is superior. Now I'm sure a lot of people hear that and think of history or at least the past when racism was its highest during the jim crow area. When we're talking about the school system it is important to keep in mind the jim crow era and the way schools came to be integrated. Because the way society viewed African Americans and any other race really white schools had better resources and basically everything else. It is showed today that there is a eurocentric focus when it comes to education. The word white fragility comes into play when speaking about racial problems makes people like the (all white) school board, uncomfortable. So the people in power blur out the stuff that makes them uncomfortable and get to tell the stories the way they want. That is privilege that was waved over the minority students of central that were affected. For perspective I was looking at both sides. One perspective seeing the material as anti-white and teaching children to hate themselves and the other side trying to say their voices mattered even if it wasn't the voice they wanted to hear. Why is it anti-anyone to be anti-racist? Thats the message I tried to keep in my book to show kids the truth.
Self in the modern world
For self in the modern world, I focused on the perspective of black and brown kids and teachers in public schools and more so on the ideas of identity and how race/ethnicity play into it. During my research I looked at the disciplinary actions placed on black and brown students and the immediate pressure for black and brown teachers to accept disciplinary roles. This hints at the clear microaggressions that make teaching spaces uncomfortable for these teachers. Especially in majority white schools it can feel like they are there as a token for the schools diversity. When it comes to students of color having police officers in schools proves to be damaging to the child's reputation. When a child gets in trouble in school it can easily be made worse by involving police. This can lead to a child having a record before even being given a chance to fail and improve. As teenagers are going through high school they will make mistakes and it is important to take a rehabilitation approach rather than adult punishment. As for my product I combined english with it to elaborate on why I wrote the book and how parents could use it.
Art
For art I wanted to create two pieces that highlighted the problems I found important. For the first piece I wanted to highlight the resources that were banned portrayed as a child's education. I painted two faces as one to represent both black and brown children. and I painted lines from them to the books. I collaged pictures of those banned books onto the canvas board and gave it a grey background to bring out the pictures. I wanted to convey the message that it is not right for future generations to be censored on what they can learn. As for the second piece it wasn't exactly easy and was rather left unfinished. I wanted to paint a child around 6 years old in an orange jumpsuit to symbolize the problem with officers in schools leading to the school-to-prison pipeline. I got my inspiration from a child that was handcuffed in his elementary background for failing to comply with school rules. I was very taken a back and decided to paint a child in a prison uniform with handcuffs while standing in a classroom to show what schools lead to when there is no disciplinary reform. I left the face blank because I wanted to show that. it could be any child that we should be concerned with the idea of policing our children rather than teaching them. In both aspects there are serious problems that need to be looked at. There is no data that proves having officers in schools is beneficial to students it is actually more negative. As for teaching and educating we should be going over all of history and point out reall how wrong people were in history and stop white washing curriculums.