Tabia Lee, EdD
From the Journal of Free Black Thought
As we continue to ride the crest of third wave “anti-racist reckoning” in America, it becomes ever more important to raise conscious awareness about the various race ideologies that are in tacit, explicit, intentional, or complicit operation in learning environments at all levels and that underlie teacher training programs, socialization, and professionalism. Race ideologies inform the ways of understanding race in the world, or the mental frameworks that teachers embody and enact and that are wittingly or unwittingly made observable in learning environments as manifested in curriculum and instruction and also teacher actions and interactions with colleagues, students, and community members. And yet, race ideologies remain largely undisclosed and undiscussed even as they are made more visible and impactful in education and across society.
This essay outlines some of the most common race ideologies that underlie teacher assumptions about and understanding of race, racism, and racial equity that in turn inform pedagogical and curricular choices in American learning environments. My intent is to illuminate some of the understandings that become possible when we start to unlearn some of the lies we have been taught through the dominant naturalist, neo-reconstructionist, and constructionist race ideologies and instead start to lean into understandings of race that are informed by skeptical eliminativist ideologies such as the Theory of Racelessness as articulated by Dr. Sheena Mason (2022).
Accordingly, at times I use a couple of linguistic markers informed by Dr. Mason’s work to denote an emergent shift in race talking and thinking that may be unfamiliar to the vast majority of teacher educators, diversity and equity consultants, and staff professional development leaders in California and nationwide even in highly regarded and so-called progressive teaching and learning spaces.
I use the term race(ism) to denote that race and racism are intertwined and to signify that race is a creation of racism; I use the term raci(al/ st) to affirm an understanding that engagement in thinking or speaking of humanity in racialized terms is a reflection of the unique ways that we have been indoctrinated since birth to (mis)understand our humanity and also to form us into more obedient and unquestioning proponents of the racism that once again and most ironically prevails in far too many American learning environments, at least for now.
American education has a race(ist) problem; the American schooling system and our society at large were set up to promote and socialize folks into raci(al/ st) ideologies. Well documented pushes for racial equality during the first and second waves of anti-racism attempted to right those wrongs in our schools and in our communities. However, in recent years neo-reconstructionist race(ist) hustlers have become dominant in educational discourse and beyond, threatening to push us backwards and further into the deeps of racial strife and division with a hyper-focus redefining racism as systemic and a promotion of equity over equality that are advancing under third wave anti-racist banners which some argue have done more harm than good (McWhorter, 2021). Under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, in many learning environments a neo-reconstructionist race(ist) orthodoxy has emerged that actively works to suppress and exclude alternative frameworks, methods, ways and means for dealing with American education’s race(ist) problem.
In recent years neo-reconstructionist race(ist) hustlers have become dominant in educational discourse and beyond, threatening to push us backwards and further into the deeps of racial strife and division with a hyper-focus redefining racism as systemic and a promotion of equity over equality that are advancing under third wave anti-racist banners which some argue have done more harm than good.
Presently in many American schools, third-wave neo-reconstructionist ideologies of racial equity that are rooted in faulty remakings and re-interpretations of race and racism are fomenting perpetual race(ist) struggle and are dangerously directing the scope of mainstream educational research, discourse, and practice. Given that the vast majority of racial equity frameworks remain largely rooted in deterministic, reductive, and/or explanatory understandings of race(ism), skeptical eliminativist offerings like the Theory of Racelessness (2022) and Race Transcendence (2016) emerge as frameworks with practical, moral, and ethical utility that are particularly compelling in light of the persistent hyper-emphasis on disaggregation of racialized data in American elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schools.
Make no mistake, the focus on raci(al/ st) data is the architecture and part of the toolkit of American race(ist) indoctrination and nothing more; specifically, the educational accountability systems in America were designed to promote, exploit, and emphasize the failure of American public schools (Lee, 2009). The deprofessionalization of teachers that went along with educational accountability systems worked to create and bring up an entire generation of American teachers that largely unquestioningly followed scripted curricula and had processes for teaching and learning handed down to them by experts; the Craft of teaching was outsourced and now race(ist) hustlers in the form of DEI consultants, senior leaders, and researchers are taking their hand at telling teachers what they should do in their classrooms to help fix American education’s race(ist) problem.
The urgent adoption of equity policies during this season of raci(al/ st) reckoning reflects the deep flaws in the proposed solutions to the race(ism) problem and the deeply flawed conceptual and pedagogical tools that are in use and promoted in learning environments that embrace a neo-reconstructionist understanding of race(ism) come to light more and more each day (Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, 2021; Free Black Thought, 2022; Legal Insurrection Foundation, 2022; Parents Defending Education, 2021). Especially as teachers at all levels are now being mandated to look at racialized student achievement data, to examine their teaching through neo-reconstructionist raci(al/ st) lenses, to employ aligned pedagogical tools and practices, and to support and advance aligned policies.
Under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, in many learning environments a neo-reconstructionist race(ist) orthodoxy has emerged that actively works to suppress and exclude alternative frameworks, methods, ways and means for dealing with American education’s race(ist) problem.
For example, the California Community College system is the largest higher education system in the United States and race(ist) neo-reconstructionist pedagogies and policies now unquestioningly and uncritically rule the roost while anti-racism writ large is co-opted to only represent neo-reconstructionist viewpoints (see Hotep Consultants, 2022). Sadly, groups that used to promote faculty viewpoint diversity and protect faculty academic freedom seemingly have aligned solely with faculty member rights to promote race(ist) neo-reconstructionist visions of anti-racism (Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, 2020; Faculty Association for California Community Colleges, 2022); while notably, some like me argue that the freedom to teach from a neo-reconstructionist lens was never under threat in the State of California to begin with. In practice, this means that an individual California Community College faculty member’s deviation from, questioning, or dissent about the prevailing race(ist) neo-reconstructionist fundamentalist orthodoxy opens them up to vicious slander, libel, and ostracization – in such a climate, absolute compliance with the new authoritarian order is veritably guaranteed and opportunities for diverse viewpoints to be expressed are crushed and silenced at every turn (see Foothill De Anza Community College District Board of Trustees, 2022).
At the macro-level, perhaps opportunities for more balanced conversations that include emergent and heterodox race ideologies right along with the others we have accepted largely without question may prove particularly worthwhile. Indeed, it is most pitiful and strange for teachers and students alike that the present push for neo-reconstructionist visions of equity in American education requires a maniacal focus on racialization of all people and things that is often rooted in dubious expectations and unfair responsibilities on educators alone to manifest equality of educational outcomes. Table 1 is a brief and by no means comprehensive representation of some of the ways that race ideologies are presently expressed in American learning environments. Notably, while there may be differences in how race naturalists, neo-reconstructionists, and constructionists view and understand race and racism, there is significant overlap in their understanding and use of the aligned pedagogical practices, concepts, and tools that are being employed nationwide at all levels during the present third-wave revival of race(ism).
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