How white families in Seattle unwittingly contribute to segregation and educational inequity by moving to live near 'good' schools

I had coffee at a favorite spot in south Seattle this morning. As I was getting ready to leave, I overheard the barista talking to a couple customers. He was describing the commute from his north-end-suburb home to work in the south end every day, as well as the differences between the two communities.

I was trying not to pay much attention until the conversation abruptly turned to education — and not just to education, but to the ways schools are assessed and how that data is packaged up for the public. He said part of the reason he and his wife had chosen their north-end neighborhood was because of the strong school ratings they had found online. All three involved in the conversation (each a white man, for what it's worth) agreed that it was very common for folks to not even consider a home in a neighborhood with “bad” schools.

Moves like he had made with his family and a refusal to even consider homes near “bad” schools lead sneakily, the barista said, to segregation. He said that by choosing what they chose, he and his wife were unwittingly going against everything they stood for. In other words, despite their best intentions, their decisions actively contribute to systems of segregation and discriminatory opportunities on a daily basis. They are unintentionally perpetuating the ongoing patterns of racial and educational inequity in the Seattle area, despite considering themselves to hold values that say they would fight against these injustices.

I about wanted to jump out of my seat and let out a joyful bellow. Something appropriately old-timey like, “Comrades! Welcome!”

Instead, because my coffee and waffle were sitting particularly uneasily in my stomach, I barely reacted and instead slowly, carefully walked out to my car and carefully drove a couple miles south to the relative comfort of my own home and bathroom. But I did feel raucously joyful for a moment, even if no one could tell by looking at me.

See, I’ve been having less-concise, less-useful versions of the conversation for a long time now. I’ve been trying to write about this very thing on this very blog for 23 consecutive months, in fact. If you present as white in Seattle, or anywhere else in America, unless you are taking great care and extreme measures to ensure the contrary, you are contributing in every meaningful way to the systems that oppress and divide us up. No matter what you do for a living or where you volunteer or what you believe, it’s not enough. As long as all of your capital is still feeding the system, the system will happily leave you to think about it what you like.

My secretly raucous joy came from being reminded that more and more of the people around and among us are figuring this out independently. We are waking up to the fact that our everyday lives as they are currently constructed are contributing to systems that run contrary to everything we thought we valued.

The problem is that waking up is just the beginning. It’s at that point that we are faced with trying to figure out what to do about this strange new reality. If this guy working at the coffee shop moves from up north with his presumably white family to buy a home in the south end, who will they displace? Will they then be contributing to a gentrification process that is already well underway down south?  On the other hand, if they stay up north, will they be continuing to perpetuate segregated, inequitable schools through their inactivity?

I don’t know. But wow, am I glad to know people are talking about it and reflecting on their role in all this. Tides are shifting.

Do you sense the momentum? Do you feel the growing discontent? Are you among the ever-larger contingent that knows it won’t find contentment on the beaten path?

You’re not alone. Change is there for the taking, but only if we make it happen. It starts with taking an honest look at the ramifications of our everyday life, and then making different decisions and living differently one day at a time.

Guest Post: As the single parent of a Black child, I don't get to take a day off from racism

By Jefflin Breuer

I have two children.

My first-born is a girl and white like me. We had so many conversations about rape culture, misogyny and feminism, and I tried to share every piece of advice I knew about how to protect herself, what to watch out for, and how to be strong and hold her ground. I could give her this advice because I lived in the same shoes.

My second-born is a boy, and he is Black. Actually, he's white, too, but no one will see that. I have raised him nearly exclusively on my own, and even though he’s only six, I have already had to navigate difficult and frightening situations with him.

He knows, for instance, as a six-year-old, that the police are not there to protect him and that he isn't allowed to play with toy guns — ever. He asks anyone who will listen if they believe Black Lives Matter and why.

My son started public school this year. I have read so many things about the preschool-to-prison pipeline. I dropped him off and couldn't help but think I had just given him to the system that wants to harm him. A system that will view him, because of his skin, as more violent, angry, loud and dangerous than his white classmates.

Of course, the beliefs embedded in the system are filtered out as the beliefs of individuals. I have already had to defend my small son at public parks when white parents have asked me how old he is, and then asked me why he seems so “aggressive.” Like he’s a dog.

He has been called the “N-word” more than once on public transportation by older white people. I have been told by older white folks that he will need "more direction and discipline" than other children. I have been told that he is a statistic and that if I don't raise him “right” he will be another Black man lost to the judicial system.

I am a white woman raising a Black child. I cannot relate directly to the discrimination he will face. I can't tell him how to fight something I haven't ever had to fight. I can’t help him understand something I don't fully understand myself.

I can’t even fully teach him the beauty of the way he looks because when he thinks of beauty, he thinks of me or the other white members of my family. He has asked me when he will turn white because he's afraid to grow up to be a Black man. Why? Because, he told me, he knows that Black men get killed by the police.

When Trump got elected, I cried, and my son again asked me when he would turn white. He cried too. Shaking, he asked me why people let Trump win when they knew he was not a nice man.

What could I say?

I try my best to shield him from the news and from my concerned conversations. I try to protect him so he can have the privilege of being a little boy who isn’t burdened by worry, but the world keeps reminding him of reality.

We used to commute every day, taking the light rail to northeast Seattle. One day, a Black teenage boy happened to board the train alongside us. We rode for a while, and then the transit police got on. They made a beeline for the kid who was now sitting near me and asked him if he had paid his fare. He hadn’t. The transit cops called the police.

The young man was clearly afraid. I offered to pay the missing fare, but the transit police refused, more interested in punishment than justice. A man on the train joined me in standing up for the young man and called the transit police out on their obvious racism. They hadn't targeted or confronted anyone else, just that one Black kid.

My son knew what was happening and why. I didn't have to tell him. He understands that men in uniform, without warning, came for that kid because he is Black. He understands, as I do, that this is the world we live in and right now, and that it's only getting worse.

I understand the struggle through my child, understandably nervous every time a uniform appears. Every time the doors open on the light rail. I see the people I love fighting for their right just to be here, struggling for every breath.

And I understand that being the parent of a Black child means that I am torn in two. The part of me that wants so desperately to protect his innocence and nurture his optimism has to take a sad backseat to the part of me that needs desperately to keep him as safe as I can.

The reality is that no matter how overwhelming, no matter how terrifying, we don’t get to take a day off from racism. Even on the days when I am just an exhausted single mother. Even on all the days when my son is just a six-year-old little boy. His skin is never going to turn white, no matter how many times he breaks my heart wondering if it will.

I take comfort knowing he isn’t alone. I can’t go through his struggle for him, but I can stand with him.

So can you. Please do.

Jefflin Breuer is a parent, activist and possible space-alien living in Seattle. Her interests include witchcraft, feminism, antifa and civil rights activism, among whatever other things she has time for.

A perfect metaphor for white privilege, courtesy of Quora

Answer by Omar Ismail, Stand Up Comedian, on Quora.

I am white. That's all you know about me. Am I privileged based on that alone and assuming I am, should I feel guilt and what should I do about it?

Absolutely.

Consider it this way. All I know about you is you’re tall.

Do you have any advantages?

Yes.

Does that mean you don’t deserve the can of tuna on the higher shelf? No. Nobody is saying that. Eat away mighty giant.

Should you feel guilty about getting the tuna from the top shelf? No. Nobody is saying that. Lighten your soul’s burden and let it fly free in the clouds beneath your knees.

Does that mean short people can’t get the tuna? No. Nobody is saying that.

Does that mean there aren’t disadvantages of being tall? No.

Nobody is saying that. You have our sympathy for your poor bruised knees.

What people are saying is:

1. Denying you are lucky is silly.
2. Stop looking bewildered every time a short person can’t reach something. We’re sick of explaining this incredibly simple concept.
3. We know there are things you do not have (i.e. even higher shelves).
4. We know there may be other things preventing you reaching the high shelves. Maybe you have bad elbows or arthritis. Short people with arthritis are still below you. You are still lucky you are tall.
5. It works out well for most people, for the grocery store to put most things on medium shelves.
6. If you can help shorter people with things on higher shelves, do so. Why would you not do that? Short people can help you with stuff on lower shelves.
7. We are annoyed that the people who run the grocery store put all the best stuff on the top shelves.
8. There are a lot of people who are putting things on higher shelves because they hate short people. Don’t associate with those people. They want everything to be about this height:

Same with white. Advantages. It doesn’t mean you’re rich. It doesn’t mean you’re luckier than a lucky black guy. Nobody wants you to be crippled with guilt. Nobody has ever wanted that, or means those things.

It means you have an advantage, and all anyone is asking is that you *get* that. Once you get that, it’s pretty straightforward to all the further implications.

This question originally appeared on Quora: I am white. That's all you know about me. Am I privileged based on that alone and assuming I am, should I feel guilt and what should I do about it?

Kids get hurt when the adults can’t stop playing with their double-edged swords

This in-fighting has no end in sight.

While we all agree that our kids are not being treated equally, that our systems do not value us all equally, we labor and argue over exactly how and when and what to change, continuing along each day in the same systems we talk about changing, perpetuating them by our presence.

Along the way, we get distracted. We form opinions and positions. Sides and factions develop. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a little mini-struggle that most people don’t know much about. We in education are debating about the everyday lives and futures of American kids and families, and the in-fighting is costing us time and energy and money that we can’t afford to waste on each other.

For instance, some say that charter schools undermine our public education system. Randi Weingarten, head of our nation’s teachers union, actually said recently that school choice is a “polite cousin” to segregation.

Others of us contend that our public school system has already been undermined by its own failure to adapt, and that we need new and different kinds of public schools. And we remind folks that school choice really just means a belief that parents should be allowed to choose what’s best for their kids.

Things have gotten so twisted up that some folks oppose charter schools for literally the same reasons people open them. It’s weird. It would be funny, actually, except that it’s no laughing matter.

We only first started trying to force schools to integrate in 1954. That’s only 63 years ago. Think of the change in demands on the system between now and 1950. We've needed to find ways to change with it, but we’ve tended to be inflexible, rigid, afraid. Those with privilege have clung to it, resulting in a mostly white teaching force, achievement and opportunity gaps along racial lines, and generations of kids who have grown up in schools that treat them unfairly.

I see charters offering that opportunity to innovate, to consider alternatives, to serve long-neglected students (and when I say charters, I only mean public charters. For-profit charters are corporate nonsense). If we limit our schools only to operating within the same framework they always have, how can we expect them to produce different results?

We can't.

Some decry charter schools as an attempt to privatize our public education system. I suppose that’s got a twisted legitimacy to it, in its way. People are basically asking, why should Bill Gates have so much influence over things?

Well, he shouldn’t — none of us should, unless it happens organically as opposed to financially.

But they’re missing the point: this isn’t Bill Gates’ influence. It’s the influence of many, many advocates and parents and students concentrated and magnified through Gates’ extraordinary wealth and power.

And here’s the extra-twisted-up part: limiting public charter schools actually does more to privatize our system of education as a whole, because you’re working to limit school choice only to those parents who can afford to exercise it. You’re setting up a profitable private school sector to thrive unchecked, and to entice a larger percentage of students than it would if there were more free public school options available.

If you want to keep as many kids in public education as possible, then you have to expand the options. Too many parents are already choosing out for us to pretend this isn’t the case.

Speaking of choosing out, we find another double-sided coin in the debate over standardized tests known as the “opt-out movement.”

Some parents say standardized tests put too great a burden on students. Others say the tests are inherently biased, written and administered in such ways that favor white students and perpetuate gaps.

They might have a point. The creator of the standardized tests himself said, “These tests are too cruel and should be abandoned.”

And on the one hand, yes! We grade and evaluate students from the very beginning as if they are products, conditioning them to judge and compare themselves to each other. We consider whether or not kids have hit our invented benchmarks at the “appropriate” times. We subject kids to hours of monotonous testing that is for the edification of adults, not the kids themselves.

Yet without those tests, we would never have had the evidence we now have of the opportunity and achievement gaps. And how do we measure progress without them? How will we know if those gaps are closing if we do away with the tests? How will we be able to prove (to skeptical white folks, mainly) what most low-income families and families of color already know from experience?

There’s no single solution. Charters, Montessori, home school, traditional public school, outdoor education, project-based learning, whatever. Families need freedom. They need high-quality, free options for their children’s education.

In the end, all the arguments about education are two sides of the same coin. So, maybe it’s something to do with the coin, you know?

Why does skin color matter, asks a white Laurelhurst Elementary parent. Let's discuss.

KUOW’s Isolde Raftery wrote something recently that Seattle needs to hear. Maybe all “liberals” need to hear it.

Please just give it a quick read. I’ll wait.

Done? Thanks.

So, you just read Raftery describing the backlash in some of Seattle’s “whitest, most affluent corners” to the day last fall when a couple thousand of the city’s teachers wore Black Lives Matter shirts to school. She shares snippets of emails from parents expressing fear and anger to their school leaders, and it paints a pretty intense picture of what is actually happening inside the minds of so many “good” liberal parents.

Seattle is plagued by the privileged white moderate, the wolf in liberal clothing who has all the right yard signs and claims all the most inclusive beliefs, but whose actions reflect fear, privilege and an urgent need to not feel upset. Stephan Blanford, the only true voice for equity on the Seattle school board, calls it “Seattle’s passive progressiveness.”

“We vote the right way on issues,” Blanford told Raftery. “We believe the right way. But the second you challenge their privilege, you see the response.”

Honestly, reading the emails, most of these parents just sound scared and confused. They genuinely don’t understand the impetus and the meaning behind the Black Lives Matter movement. So, I’m going to do my best to answer their questions, starting today with this one:

Wrote a parent at Laurelhurst Elementary: “Can you please address … why skin color is so important? I remember a guy that had a dream. Do you remember that too? I doubt it. Please show me the content of your character if you do.”

Dear Laurelhurst Parent,

Skin color is important because our weird society -- yours and mine -- has made it so. People who cannot pass for white, which is itself a social construct and not an actual race, have always been treated differently in America. Always, up to and including today. Slavery was replaced by Jim Crow, which was replaced after the Civil Rights Movement by the War on Drugs and the mass incarceration of our Black brothers and sisters.

Did you know that Native Americans were not legally allowed to practice their traditional religious ceremonies in the U.S. until the ‘80s? We’ve been doing our best as a nation to eradicate their culture from this land as well as their bodies, from the genocide of “manifest destiny” to the shame of our state-sanctioned brutality at Standing Rock.

We have a president now who is encouraging hate and discrimination against immigrants of any origin, but especially against Mexicans and Muslims. Did you know that a mass grave filled with bodies of immigrants was found in Texas a few miles from the Mexico border? The state said it found “no evidence” of wrongdoing.

On a level that is super local to you, Seattle Public Schools discipline Black students at a disproportionate rate -- so much so that the federal government had to come down on them a few years back. The district still shamefully boasts the nation’s fifth-worst achievement gap between Black and white students, and similar gaps exist for all non-white student populations as well as for low-income students regardless of race.

The Black Lives Matter movement started after a teenage boy named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a white guy for the crime of wearing a hoodie while Black. It has been sustained by continued police violence against innocent Black men and women, with police officers continually acquitted.

So, because it sure seems like our society doesn’t actually believe that Black Lives Matter, people felt the need to say it. It’s not that white lives don’t matter. America already obviously values white lives. White lives and white safety are not particularly at stake here. Black Lives Matter mentions color because it has to.

The next time you invoke Martin Luther King, Jr., I suggest you better familiarize yourself with his beliefs and his non-whitewashed legacy. Start here: Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Have you ever read it?

Please do. If you have anything you’d like me to read up on, please pass it along. Then let’s talk. What do you say?

Best,

Matt

Up next, from Eckstein Middle School in Wedgwood:

“What about red and black or yellow and white and black? How does supporting Black Lives Matter help that gap?”

Stay tuned.

Dear fellow fragile white folks: Sorry I'm not sorry for occasionally making you uncomfortable

Josh Barro published an article this week in Business Insider contending that liberals will regain political power if they can just stop being so annoying and morally overbearing. Basically, according to Barro, liberals seem worried about — and critical of — just about everything.

As in, oh, you’re going to have some chicken for dinner with your family tonight? Well, that’s not cool because the chicken was factory farmed.

Oh, you’re going to drive somewhere? Using gas? Don’t you know what oil drilling is doing to the planet? You can see fracking sites from outer space.

Oh, you’re banking with a for-profit big bank? Don’t you know what awful things they support? Don’t you know about credit unions?

Oh, you’re sending your kid to private school? Or a charter school? Or a public school? Or whatever? Don’t you know about the opportunity gap? Don’t you know that you’re gentrifying the neighborhood? Don’t you know you’re the problem? Don’t you know we’re critical of your choices?

Typical voters, according to Barro, “do not like being told to feel guilty about personal choices.”

Well, sure. I get it. That's not a thrilling experience for anybody. But here’s the problem with all of this: all these things deserve to be criticized. In fact, marginalized communities often urgently needs us to be critical of the status quo. Nothing we're talking about here is beyond reproach, yet we find it unbearably annoying to be reminded of why reproach might actually be appropriate.

Why? How did we get here?

For one thing, our egos are fragile and we don’t like feeling criticized, let alone being told that our decisions and actions are having a negative impact on groups of people, on the environment, on anything. We don't like being asked to consider that we might be the villain, at least in some ways or from some perspectives.

But it runs deeper than that. We’re not irrational creatures. When we make destructive choices, we’re not usually making them simply for the sake of destruction. We tend to behave in ways that we believe will reward us. When we instead act in ways that run counter to our overall best interests — when we make decisions that are unhealthy, or short-sighted, or dangerous, let’s say — or when we act in ways that hurt our neighbors, or that go against what’s best for ourselves or the community or the Earth, there must be a reason.

So, the question is this: why, right now, are we acting against our own self-interest, both personally and planetarily? Why, in other words, are liberals feeling the need to be so annoying to folks like Josh Barro?

I think it’s because the society we’ve constructed is based around one fundamental question: can I make money doing that? That’s the crux of capitalism. The man-made economic system around which we base our entire everything doesn’t care if something is “good,” so it doesn’t necessarily reward it. It doesn’t care if something is “bad” either. It doesn't care about fairness or equity or love. Something only needs to be profitable to be encouraged into existence.

That means that when someone comes up with a way to more efficiently harvest living animals, for instance, it doesn’t matter that the animals are suffering — not to the system, not if it’s a moneymaker. It doesn’t matter, ultimately, that the more-efficient process will do damage to the atmosphere and the Earth. It doesn’t matter that most frozen chicken breasts are injected with water before they’re sold to increase the weight and the price. It doesn’t matter that this water almost always has measurable amounts of feces in it. It’s profitable, so it continues. And it’s cheap, or it’s convenient, or it’s available, or something, and so we continue to consume it.

Similarly, we’ll dismiss potentially innovative ideas in education because we can’t fund them, or more often — and more subtly — because they will upset the status quo that is paying so many, many salaries.

You don’t have to reach far for examples of all shapes and sizes. For-profit prisons, for instance. Anything made of plastic or styrofoam that wasn’t utterly necessary. Just about all advertising. The fact that we’re quickly emptying the Earth of its bees, fish and buffalo, to name a few. The factions that continue to withhold school choice from families who can’t afford it, forcing them instead to send their children into schools that will discriminate against them.

We wouldn’t do these things if we weren’t being tricked into it by a faulty reward system. Imagine a world in which it is just not profitable to sell chicken breasts that have been augmented with shit water. It wouldn’t be done. It wouldn’t happen. People don’t tend to love letting raw meat soak up poopy water for the inherent value of the activity, I don’t think. But when watering down those chicken breasts will be rewarded with extra money in a system built on fear and perceived scarcity, suddenly we can convince ourselves it’s a reasonable idea.

We’re locked into a system that truly judges an idea’s merit solely on its potential to get you paid or to get itself funded. We have to look around and be willing to change our minds. America’s collective consciousness has to shift such that we look at the same world and reach different conclusions, that we are given the same opportunities and start to take different actions.

We can’t just legislate our way out of this. Not within our current parameters. Our values have to change — and not just what we say we value, but what we show that we value. We have to change what we do as a society. We have to change the structure through which we function.

That’s why liberals, I think — as well as those of us who find ourselves much further left than liberal, or maybe not on this linear spectrum at all — are finding themselves backed into this role of being moral police. It’s not illegal to factory farm chickens under truly horrific conditions, and it’s going to be really damn hard to make it illegal. So we find ourselves trying to encourage you to not want it, even though it’s out there fitting all the criteria. That's no easy task. We have to try to convince you to act against your own self-interest within the game of capitalism. I want you to not seek the reward we’ve been conditioned to seek. I want you to make up your own rules and your own game instead of chasing the money all the way to hell, but I can’t coerce it.

There’s an old idiom that says you don’t change a racist’s mind by calling him a racist. Michael Petrilli’s version was to tweet that “The ‘check your privilege’ stuff doesn't work.” Sort of like how a person doesn’t immediately become less of a butthole after you point out that he’s being a butthole. We're more likely to get defensive. It's natural.

But at the same time, if you’re perpetuating racism, you might not know it until someone tells you. We all need to be reminded from time to time. Sometimes we need someone to wake us up and tell us we’re being a huge ass, even if it’s not super fun to hear it. Even if it takes years for the message to sink in.

So, that’s why I do my best to call out inequity without pulling any punches. That’s why I keep ranting about capitalism: because I have to convince you that the reward you’re chasing isn’t worth it. That it’s not even real to begin with.

I can’t make it illegal to eat bad chicken. I just want you to not want to buy it. I can’t seem to force anyone to change the name of the NFL team in Washington DC, or the baseball team in Cleveland. I can only hope folks change their minds and do my part to encourage them to do so. I can’t make it illegal, it seems, to turn a blind eye to the discrimination and inequity in our schools, so I just have to keep pestering you to pay attention. If I don’t, through my silence and inaction I’m part of the problem, and nothing will change. And we’ll all just keep eating chicken shit.

Sorry I’m not sorry if that’s annoying.

The Privilege of Ignoring Race

A year ago today, I was out in Ferguson.

Two years ago today, Michael Brown had been dead for a day, murdered on Aug. 9, 2014. A few weeks later, I wrote this. This seemed like a good time to take a second look at it.

---

I have read and heard and seen a lot of people saying a lot of different things about race in the wake of the Michael Brown tragedy — some compassionate, some ambivalent, some ignorant. This is something true:

I took this picture this morning. Then Lindsay told Julian about Michael Brown, about who he was and what happened to him. She told him about how most police officers are people to trust, but that sometimes they make mistakes. She told Julian that it isn’t fair, but that sometimes he will need to be extra careful as he gets older because of the way he looks — that he will have to be that much more careful to stay out of trouble, to stay away from what looks like trouble, to stay in after dark, because it’s a matter of safety. She told him about having called to check in with his uncle Spencer a few days earlier, about asking Spencer if he was safe in L.A. and if he was being careful. She asked him if he understood. Julian asked a question or two, Lindsay answered, and then it was done.

This is what all this means to me:

Some have argued that the Michael Brown shooting isn’t about race. Many others have at least wondered. As you may know, I am white. I can tell you from experience that it is a privilege to ignore race. It is a privilege to be able to wonder whether or not this tragedy is a racial issue. It is a privilege to not have to start poking tiny holes in your six-year-old son’s bubble of innocence and sweetness in the days before he starts kindergarten.

We had conversations about race in my family when I was very young, too, and most of them were also very direct. Most of them even acknowledged the presence of danger and the possibility of violence. I vividly remember getting a version from my dad in elementary school of what his dad had told him as a kid: that there aren’t many good reasons to fight, but that if he heard anyone using the N-word at school — or using any other slur, or using anyone’s race or gender to hurt them or make them feel small — he had better step in and put a stop to it or come home with a bloody nose for having tried. That might not exactly fit with Dr. King’s belief in non-violence, but the message was clear: This is important. Not only do we not tolerate hate or racism, we will actively fight it. It’s a family value.

There is a subtle-but-important difference between these two sets of conversations, though. My parents (also white, coincidentally) chose to have these conversations with me and my siblings. They encouraged us to choose to stand up against blatant racism and hate. But I was not the target in the hypotheticals. I was on the sidelines. The guns wouldn’t have been aimed at me, so the conversation was different.

Lindsay and I talked with Julian this morning because he won’t have a choice. Julian needs to hear this, because he cannot choose out of his skin color or his black heritage. I can choose into the conversation, choose to step into the conflict. Julian does not have that privilege. He is about to start attending public school in a district that has recently been under scrutiny for disciplining black boys much more frequently than any other group. He will be stereotyped, he will too often be seen and heard through a racial lens, and he cannot avoid it. He cannot choose a different path. Before long, he will be, say, 10 years old and tall for his age. Soon after he will be a teenage boy of color living in a major city. He won’t have the privilege of staying on the sidelines when a police car drives past the park where he’s hanging out with his friends after dark. He won’t have the privilege of deciding it’s not about race when he makes a mistake and gets caught. And Lindsay and I, as parents, don’t have the privilege of giving him an option. We don’t get to decide whether or not he’s ready, because he has to be ready, because he has to stay safe. Because someone will call him a horrible name, and someone will treat him differently — probably unintentionally — because of how he looks, and because at some point, someone will view this sweet, loving kid as more of a threat, and he needs to understand what’s happening if he’s going to stay safe. He has no other choice.

Appalling displays of privilege and ignorance from our elected officials

On a recent school visit, Washington State Superintendent Randy Dorn asked a Latino high school student if he was “legal or illegal.”

Sen. Mark Miloscia, a Republican from Federal Way running for state auditor, does not believe that racism is real anymore.

Sen. Mark Miloscia, a racism-denyer holding public office

These are men elected to positions that have a huge impact on kids in our state, and these displays of privilege and ignorance are happening in public.

According to Alan Preston, managing director of Real Change, Miloscia attended a workshop on race and class at the 2016 Conference on Ending Homelessness and openly disagreed with the presentation, with the idea that race and racism are still playing a role in modern American society:

"Some of the stuff you guys are saying about class is true," he said, "but I disagree with 90 percent of what you are saying about race. It might have been true in the 1870s, but it isn't true today."

This guy was conveying an opinion that an alarming number of Americans share. It's an assertion steeped in the invisibility of White privilege.

It dismisses the suffering of newly freed Blacks after abolition, the cruel segregation of the Jim Crow Era, and the current racist system of mass incarceration. His comment was completely ignorant of how racism is baked into our educational, judicial, financial, employment and other institutions, and how that renders people of color vulnerable to poverty and homelessness.

Further showing his privilege, of the two presenters, Miloscia specifically sought out the woman of color as opposed to Preston to whitesplain all the reasons she was wrong about race and racism.

Meanwhile, there’s so little else to tell about the Dorn story that there’s basically no way to sugarcoat it. From the Seattle Times:

During a visit to Raisbeck Aviation High School on Thursday, Randy Dorn, the state’s top schools official, asked a few students their names, grade levels and where they were from. Students come from all over the region to go to Aviation, so Dorn was curious about the students’ home districts.

One student said he first went to school in Mexico. The two talked about the student’s transition to the Tukwila school, then Dorn said:

“Now I’ll ask you under my breath, are you legal or illegal?”

As a KOMO News photographer recorded the conversation, the student replied “I’m legal, I’m half American.”

These are two elected officials putting these levels of ignorance on proud display. These are two privileged white men charged with protecting and advocating on behalf of our kids and families, and they’re operating with blinders on.

Miloscia is vice chair of the Senate Human Services, Mental Health & Housing Committee, which “considers issues relating to services to children and families, including child welfare, child protection, dependency, and foster care. The Committee deals with mental health treatment, chemical dependency, at risk youth, and juvenile justice. The Committee also considers bills relating to housing, including state assistance to low-income housing, housing authorities, and the Housing Finance Commission.”

He is also a member of the Senate Higher Education Committee, dealing with “issues relating to the state's public and independent baccalaureate colleges and universities, public community and technical colleges, and private career schools. Issues include governance and coordination of higher education, financial aid, tuition, and workforce training.”

That means Miloscia, in committee meetings discussing things like homelessness, foster care, at-risk and homeless youth, housing, and higher education, just to name a few, is advocating that race plays no factor. He is arguing in these meetings and in our state legislature that systemic racism is a myth.

Then, when presented with information that runs counter to his privileged belief system, rather than considering the possibility that he has something to learn, he seeks out the least privileged presenter -- an expert in her field -- to paternalistically explain she is wrong.

What voice do his constituents have with that approach? What hope do we have?

And then we have Dorn, the superintendent of a public school system that has a growing opportunity gap and that claims it's working on its disproportionate discipline problem.

As long as these are our decision-makers, how can possibly expect to do right by our students and families of color?

We elected this ignorance. If Miloscia and Dorn don't hear from us now, we are complicit. If we re-elect them, we are complicit. Let's not make the same mistake again.

If Dorn and Miloscia want to continue serving people of color, which is inevitable as an elected official, they should be forced to take an implicit bias test and publicly discuss the results. We must force them to confront their privilege or show them the door.