Help me help you!
I wanted to walk the walk. To actually impact kids whose reading skills were lacking thanks to pandemic school-closures and other factors.
So I found an organization, Reading Partners, through which there were opportunities to tutor K-3rd grade kids in city schools near me.
Before I could get started, a 90-minute training session was required. I chose the on-line session, as it fit into my schedule well.
The session was being led by a 20-something “she/her” whose name and face indicated to me she was Asian. Am I allowed to make that observation?
I won’t bore you with all the details of this “training” session, but I’ll offer some highlights.
Just minutes into the presentation this young woman reminded us that America is systemically racist, and that’s why children of color need tutoring.
I bit my tongue.
But I thought to myself, “Where is this going? I wonder if I’ll be allowed to tutor a 6-8 year-old without having to apologize for being a light-skinned Latina.”
I stayed on the Zoom meeting, hoping it wouldn’t go any further in the DEI direction.
My hopes were dashed.
How will this help?
The four or five of us prospective volunteers were told next that we would be expected to teach the little ones within the confines of the program’s diversity, equity, and inclusion parameters.
I wasn’t sure how any of that was going to help children become better readers. And again I asked myself, “Could I find a way to simply help a child read in spite of the obvious agenda of this program?”
Then we were lectured about how we must be able to work with kids who might not “look like us,” as if we volunteers would turn our backs on any child. We were expected to respect the various identities — including gender identities — of kindergarteners through third graders. OK. Fine.
Then came a moment I could not get past:
The young woman put a graphic on the screen that included this text:
Day and _________
Peanut butter and _____________
Husband and ______________
Black and ________________
Cats and _________________
She went on to say, “You may find that you want to answer, ‘Day and night.’ Or ‘Peanut butter and jelly.’ Or ‘Husband and wife.’ But that would indicate implicit bias.”
It was at that moment that I dropped myself from the Zoom meeting.
I was sad. I was angry. They lost me.
All I wanted to do was give time to kids who needed help reading. Count me squarely in the camp of the great educator Booker T. Washington, who said:
“If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.”
But Reading Partners lost me.
Rather than caving in, I heeded the advice of Professor Andre Archie, author of, “The Virtue of Color-Blindness,” who told me recently on my podcast, “We must push back against the DEI agenda.”
In case you are wondering, Professor Archie is Black.
And he and I agree with another famous quote from Booker T. Washington:
“No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.”
Booker T. Washington is a hero of mine. “Up From Slavery,” should be required high school reading.
But are high schoolers in America even ready to read at that level? And will they push back against the Victimhood mentality being pushed by the DEI industry?
It’s remarkable that something Washington asserted over 100 years ago still holds true:
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
That pretty much sums up the forces behind the DEI industry.
I intend to work with programs and individuals who value the content of my character. And I hope you’ll find this, from Professor Archie’s recent Article in National Review, inspiring for you as well:
“It’s incumbent on all Americans to embrace the color-blind approach to race relations before the comfortable racism in the guise of anti-racism seeps even further into the body politic, permanently dividing America against itself.”