Saturday, May 30, 2020

Lest my silence be complicit

some of this overlaps with what I posted yesterday on Facebook

I don't want my wanting to say just the right thing here turn instead into silence.
I also don't want to take up more space when my words are not those that most need to be heard.

I don't think it should escape any of us that the same week that brought us Amy Cooper weaponizing white womanhood in Central Park also brought us the death of George Floyd by the hand she was trying to invoke.
White supremacy is enforced thousands of little ways, and most are not at the point of a gun.

And just as it doesn't take a gun, it doesn't take laws, either. As Clint Smith tweeted yesterday:
We make and enforce policies in schools, among other places. It's also one of the places in America were the disparities in race between who enforces polices and who is expected to follow them is particularly large.
What we have in student handbooks and district policies, what we spend time on in professional development and curriculum, and what we don't say is what matters here.

Policies are also what we spend money on in our budgets.

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