A drained swimming pool shows how racism harms White people, too

CNN

By John Blake, CNN

March 5, 2021The vast Fairgrounds Park pool in St. Louis, in an undated photo. It closed in 1956.

If you’re a White person who thinks racism only hurts people of color, the story behind an empty, abandoned swimming pool in Missouri might just change your mind.

The Fairground Park pool in St. Louis was the largest public pool in the US when it was built in 1919. It featured sand from a beach, a fancy diving board and enough room for up to 10,000 swimmers. It was dug during a pool-building boom when cities and towns competed to provide their citizens with public amenities that promoted civic pride and symbolized a perk of the American dream.

These public pools, of course, were for Whites only. But when civil rights leaders successfully pushed for them to be integrated, many cities either sold the pools to private entities or, in the case of Fairground Park, eventually drained them and closed them down for good.

These closures didn’t just hurt Black people, though — they also denied the pleasures of the pool to White people.

Heather McGhee tells the story of the Fairground Park pool in her powerful new book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” McGhee employs the metaphor of a drained, cracked public pool to make a larger point: White refusal to share resources available to all US citizens doesn’t just hurt people of color. It damages their families and their future, too.

McGhee has a name for this pain. She calls it “drained-pool politics.” If you want to know why the US has one of the most inefficient health care systems among advanced nations, some of the worst infrastructure and a dysfunctional political system, blame drained-pool politics, she says.

Those politics are built on a lie that many White Americans have bought for centuries: When Black or brown people gain something, White people lose.

“The narrative that White people should see the well-being of people of color as a threat to their own is one of the most powerful subterranean stories in America,” McGhee writes in her book. “Until we destroy the idea, opponents of progress can always unearth it, and use it to block any collective action that benefits us all.”Heather McGhee

McGhee’s book debuted last week at #3 on The New York Times’ nonfiction bestseller list and is already so popular that her publisher is scrambling to keep up with demand. It comes less than a year after the George Floyd protests sparked a national racial reckoning.

But McGhee’s book doesn’t just make the familiar “White people are voting against their economic interests” argument that many of us have heard before. She fills it with personal stories from her life and the people she encountered during three years of visiting churches, union halls and small towns across America.

McGhee’s book may soon be regarded as a classic in race literature and the phrase “drained-pool politics” could join “White fragility” in the lexicon people invoke when talking about race.

McGhee, a former president of Demos, a progressive think tank, recently spoke to CNN about her new book and this moment in America’s racial history. Our conversation was edited for clarity and length.

How would you explain to, say, a White Trump voter motivated by racial resentment that racism has harmed him?Supporters of President Donald Trump in Bristol, Pennsylvania, on October 24, 2020.When you think about “Make America Great Again,” that time period was a time when a White guy could walk into a factory and walk out set for life, when college was paid for the government, when a great middle-class house was subsidized by the government, when the minimum wage was high and when taxes were high.That formula is a formula that you reject now when given the political choice between a strong middle class and the party that markets to your race but delivers economic benefits only to the wealthy.

You cite the 2008 housing market crash as a “fire” that started in Black and brown communities but eventually spread to White communities as well. Can you cite another example of something that was seen as a problem largely confined to Black people that ended up costing White people, too?The pandemic itself is an example of a virus that hit the Black and Brown and indigenous communities first and worse. And then the illusion that it was only happening to blue cities and brown people allowed the Trump administration to take its eye off the ball and downplay the risks and turn it into a culture war, an “us vs. them” where Covid support shouldn’t go to blue states, which was also signifying brown people.That is an example of the fires raging in Black, brown and indigenous communities that were disproportionately exposed because of systemic racism. And then nine months later the highest rates are in (heavily White) places like South and North Dakota and West Virginia and then you realize that our fates are linked.

As you explain, White support for government programs that built up the White middle class actually fell as the civil rights movement blossomed because of a zero-sum approach to politics — whatever helps Black people must hurt Whites. When President Reagan said in his first inaugural address that government was the problem, was he invoking the zero-sum perspective that you talk about?President Ronald Reagan famously said in 1981: “government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.”He was. What had government done wrong? When you think about the picture that Ronald Reagan was trying to paint of government mismanagement and government’s poor judgment, you’d already had a decade of the War on Poverty, which was an extension of public benefits across the color line — from it being up until the 1960s largely for White people.And so there was an image in the White American mind of what business government had gotten into, that they shouldn’t have been in it and that they didn’t do well. There was a racialized story and the term “public” had already become degraded and associated with people of color: public housing, and public schools that had already become integrated.You think about the ways in which government provided for the common good during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s and in ways that built the White middle class. My book includes a section where it lists all the free stuff that the government gave to White families to help them have intergenerational wealth and economic security and how once we began to desegregate, government became stingier and that impacted everybody.

You said in the book that “refilling the pool requires us to believe in government again.” How important then is the pending Covid relief bill and a new voting rights bill just passed by the House in getting people to believe in government again?There are some success stories in the country’s pandemic response and in places where the vaccine is being delivered well. Here in New York, for example, I got my first vaccine shot and it was Air Force personnel who were delivering the shots and it was FEMA that had set up the site and it was on the grounds of a public community college. That is a beautiful thing, seeing our government do its job to help people who absolutely couldn’t help themselves.And that’s the kind of sight to we need to see more of so that we can restore our faith in the possibility of what we can do together. The exact counter to that is in Texas, a state cut off from the federal government to avoid being regulated, to avoid the kinds of safeguards that would have stopped the power outages, a state government that was totally absent from prevention to mitigation and taking care of its people. That was a very clear example of drained pool politics, of anti-government sentiment being put into policies that hurt everyone. It cost lives.

You praise the Fight for $15 campaign to raise the minimum wage. What did that campaign do right to avoid zero-sum politics, to avoid people using race to divide White and Black and brown workers?Protesters attend a rally for a $15 hourly minimum wage on February 16, 2021, in Orlando, Florida.They talked about it. They explicitly made the idea of racism as a divide-and-conquer tool a part of worker education, a part of the rhetoric, a part of the protest signs. The zero sum is so pervasive in our politics and is part of the right-wing messaging that in order to counter it you have to engage with it head on, you have to call it out. Give people a way to recognize it and reject it.

I’ve heard many political scientists say, though, that the way you sell a policy that helps Black or brown people is to make it race-neutral. They say, for example, when Obamacare was seen as something pushed for by a Black president for people of color, it wasn’t popular. But now that it’s seen as a program that benefits White people, it’s more popular.Let’s be very clear. Obama didn’t talk about it in terms of race. This is the point. Policies — you can’t avoid race. Race is the central character in the drama about government and our economy. If you don’t acknowledge that and give voters another way of thinking about race, then you’re just missing a huge part of the story.

You write that diversity is the country’s “superpower.” What do you mean?Demonstrators protest on May 31, 2020, in St. Paul, Minnesota, after the death of George Floyd.The research shows that diversity allows groups to think better about critical problems. It is the friction of coming from different backgrounds and looking at issues from different vantage points that creates a productive energy, and we are one of the most diverse nations. There is someone here with a tie to every community on the globe and we could use that to our competitive advantage and yet the “us vs them,” zero-sum quality that we have is holding back our potential.

Did writing this book and traveling across the US to meet people make you more optimistic or pessimistic about the country’s future?I left my travels much more optimistic because I saw these signs of the solitary dividends in nearly everywhere I visited, in pockets of America where people are crossing liens of race and unlocking that diversity superpower and rejecting the zero sum. That is really exciting to me.We’re at a moment of awakening in this country where more and more White folks are feeling that they have to relearn and unlearn some of what they’ve learned. And there’s a sense of wanting to change our course, recognizing that we have gone off course as a country and that we have to face up to decisions in order to really have the country we all deserve.

New School Model: Building a Culture of Support for Marginalized Students

NAIS

September 03, 2019

By Margaret Anne Rowe

 

In 2017, NAIS published a series of profiles on for-profit schools, highlighting their project-based learning programs, cost-saving initiatives, and individualized coursework. The goal was to inspire independent school leaders to reflect on their value in an educational field with competing options. Sharing ideas from successful school programs of all types can help educators and administrators reposition their schools so they continue to grow and thrive.

Amid affordable housing struggles, declining birth rates, and a rapidly diversifying nation, independent schools in the United States have many challenges ahead as they contend with a shifting demographic and social landscape. Schools are responding to this changing environment, in part, with increased attention to students’ mental health and well-being. In the Summer issue of Independent School, we explored the whys and ways students are more stressed than ever. Parental and peer pressures only exacerbate the already high rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. For marginalized students, the problem is made worse as discrimination is associated with poorer emotional and physical health. Schools now must blend social-emotional learning with academics to create an environment in which all students feel welcome and heard.

In this year’s upcoming updates to the New School Model series, we look closely at innovations across all kinds of institutions, particularly as they relate to supporting student health and well-being.

Visitacion Valley Middle School’s (CA) holistic approach to social-emotional learning has drastically improved student outcomes and fostered a happier, healthier school community. According to Principal Joe Truss, many of Visitacion Valley Middle School’s (VVMS) 473 students are low-income, immigrant, and/or of color, and are disproportionately affected by violence and discrimination. Students generally enter the school performing below their grade level, and often suffer from high levels of stress and anxiety. VVMS serves as an important place of growth and healing. With its renowned meditation program, emphasis on student health, restorative justice, and relevant and responsive coursework, VVMS is actively working to combat toxic stress and discriminatory educational practices by building community and supporting students through all challenges.

The power of meditation. Following a chance encounter in 2007 with San Francisco’s Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education, preceded by years of dealing with violence, trauma, and stress in the community, the school began training teachers to facilitate secular, transcendental meditation. VVMS has since become known for this meditation program. Known as “quiet time,” silent, unguided meditation takes place twice a day for 15 minutes at the beginning and end of each school day. Students aren’t required to meditate—after all, they are middle schoolers—but they are asked to remain quiet as others do so, with some opting to do silent activities like reading or drawing. The program promotes relaxation and an overall sense of well-being, lowering stress and preparing students for positive academic and social interactions.

Both VVMS and peer-reviewed research have credited meditation with drops in truancy and suspension rates, improved school performance, and changes in students’ general outlook (and even brain structure) that have increased their overall happiness and positivity. Though the program can’t prevent the challenges in students’ lives, and it is certainly not a one-and-done solution to “fixing” a school’s problems, it does improve students’ ability to deal with issues as they arise and better stay on track in school.

Help is here. VVMS works to foster inclusivity in all areas of campus life, so students are treated equally, regardless of where they come from or what challenges they face. Full-time counselors, a nurse, and a social worker are available for free to all students during school hours. This ethos around these mental health offerings helps destigmatize asking for help.

Additionally, VVMS aims to reduce behavioral issues and bullying by hiring a coordinator for the 2019-2020 school year. The school previously used a zero-tolerance policy toward wrongdoing. It did not address the root causes of student conflict, and the traditional emphasis on detention over dialogue was particularly harmful to students of color. A restorative justice coordinator will work to empower students to take responsibility for their actions and heal the hurt they inflict on others. By proactively building relationships at the school, and reactively facilitating constructive discussion between students who are in conflict or otherwise hurting due to a traumatic event, the coordinator will help students work through problems together.

Academic tracks. Most students (75%) come into sixth grade at VVMS reading behind their grade level, often by three to four grades. Rather than single out these students as different, students in the same grade all take the same classes. There is a dedicated period in the schedule for students who need extra support—it’s called the “accelerated” period, and it does not replace their ability to take an elective. When students are meeting grade level standards and test out of these support classes, they can take a second elective. The SFUSD reports that VVMS students’ reading scores are improving three times as fast as they did before the accelerated program.

Project-based learning. VVMS also encourages its teachers to structure all academic-level curricula around project-based learning (PBL) and has modified its bell schedule to accommodate longer classes with more robust labs and projects. Marginalized students and students performing below grade-level are less likely to be given these opportunities because their schools are more likely to narrow the curriculum and focus on test prep, even though PBL has been shown to improve student engagement, retention, and success. Students at VVMS have experienced these benefits and are reporting higher rates of engagement and interest in their classes.

Additionally, this commitment to PBL has led to collaborations between classes and academic disciplines, allowing students to make connections and build community. In one collaboration, a science teacher and an English teacher co-taught their courses; in another, English language learners and non-learners came together from their respective programs to share stories they wrote about immigration.

School is released early twice a week so teachers can collaborate and work on PBL lesson plans. Teachers at VVMS are reporting that they feel more prepared for class and are grading less work on the weekends.

Ethnic studies. VVMS is also one of a growing number of schools to offer ethnic studies as an elective, which examines U.S. history and culture through the stories of people of color. Ethnic studies courses have been shown to greatly improve outcomes for marginalized students who take them by giving them a curriculum that they can see themselves in. For all students, regardless of background, an introduction to ethnic studies can help to break down cultural stereotypes and have them think more critically about the world around them.

Students at VVMS are dealing with many of the same issues faced by students at independent schools. Stress and discrimination can and will be found in every community, at every school, and educators looking to combat them can learn a lot from programs that have already started the journey.

The Two Codes Your Kids Need to Know

The New York Times

The College Board came up with a surprising conclusion about keys to success for college and life.

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

• Feb. 12, 2019

Image

Ninth graders in a computer class in Brooklyn. The College Board has said that to be successful, students need to master computer science.CreditCreditSarah Blesener for The New York Times

A few years ago, the leaders of the College Board, the folks who administer the SAT college entrance exam, asked themselves a radical question: Of all the skills and knowledge that we test young people for that we know are correlated with success in college and in life, which is the most important? Their answer: the ability to master “two codes” — computer science and the U.S. Constitution.

Since then they’ve been adapting the SATs and the College Board’s Advanced Placement program to inspire and measure knowledge of both. Since the two people who led this move — David Coleman, president of the College Board, and Stefanie Sanford, its chief of global policy — happen to be people I’ve long enjoyed batting around ideas with, and since I thought a lot of students, parents and employers would be interested in their answer, I asked them to please show their work: “Why these two codes?”

Their short answer was that if you want to be an empowered citizen in our democracy — able to not only navigate society and its institutions but also to improve and shape them, and not just be shaped by them — you need to know how the code of the U.S. Constitution works. And if you want to be an empowered and adaptive worker or artist or writer or scientist or teacher — and be able to shape the world around you, and not just be shaped by it — you need to know how computers work and how to shape them.

With computing, the internet, big data and artificial intelligence now the essential building blocks of almost every industry, any young person who can master the principles and basic coding techniques that drive computers and other devices “will be more prepared for nearly every job,” Coleman and Sanford said in a joint statement explaining their initiative. “At the same time, the Constitution forms the foundational code that gives shape to America and defines our essential liberties — it is the indispensable guide to our lives as productive citizens.”

So rather than have SAT exams and Advanced Placement courses based on things that you cram for and forget, they are shifting them, where they can, to promote the “two codes.”

In 2016, the College Board completely revamped its approach to A.P. computer science courses and exams. In the original Computer Science course, which focused heavily on programming in Java, nearly 80 percent of students were men. And a large majority were white and Asian, said Coleman. What that said to women and underrepresented minorities was, “How would you like to learn the advanced grammar of a language that you aren’t interested in?”

Turned out that was not very welcoming. So, explained Coleman, they decided to “change the invitation” to their new Computer Science Principles course by starting with the question: What is it that you’d like to do in the world? Music? Art? Science? Business? Great! Then come build an app in the furtherance of that interest and learn the principles of computer science, not just coding, Coleman said. “Learn to be a shaper of your environment, not just a victim of it.”

The new course debuted in 2016. Enrollment was the largest for a new course in the history of Advanced Placement, with just over 44,000 students nationwide.

Two years later The Christian Science Monitor reported, “More high school students than ever are taking the College Board’s Advanced Placement (A.P.) computer science exams, and those taking them are increasingly female and people of color.”

 

Indeed, the story added, “the College Board reports that from 2017 to 2018 female, African-American and Hispanic students were among the fastest growing demographics of A.P. computer science test-takers, with increases in exam participation of 39 percent, 44 percent and 41 percent, respectively. … For context, in 2007, fewer than 3,000 high school girls took the A.P. Computer Science A exam; in 2018, more than 15,000 completed it.”

The A.P. U.S. Government and Politics course also was reworked. At a time when we have a president who doesn’t act as if he’s read the Constitution — and we have a growing perception and reality that college campuses are no longer venues for the free exchange of ideas and real debate of consequential issues — Coleman and Sanford concluded that it was essential that every student entering college actually have command of the First Amendment, which enshrines five freedoms, not just freedom of speech.

Every student needs to understand that, as Coleman put it, “our country was argued into existence — and that is the first thing that binds us — but also has some of the tensions that divide us. So we thought, ‘What can we do to help replace the jeering with productive conversation?’”

It had to start in high school, said Sanford, who is leading the “two codes” initiative. “Think of how much more ready you are to participate in college and society with an understanding of the five freedoms that the First Amendment protects — of speech, assembly, petition, press and religion. The First Amendment lays the foundation for a mature community of conversation and ideas — built on the right and even obligation to speak up and, when needed, to protest, but not to interrupt and prevent others from speaking.”

This becomes particularly important, she noted, “when technology and democracy are thought of as in conflict, but are actually both essential” and need to work in tandem.

One must observe only how Facebook was abused in the 2016 election to see that two of the greatest strengths of America — innovation and free speech — have been weaponized. If they are not harmonized, well, Houston, we have a problem.

So the new A.P. government course is built on an in-depth look at 15 Supreme Court cases as well as nine foundational documents that every young American should know. It shows how the words of the Constitution give rise to the structures of our government.

Besides revamping the government course and the exam on that subject, Coleman and Sanford in 2014 made a staple of the regular SAT a long reading comprehension passage from one of the founding documents, such as the Constitution, or another important piece of democracy, like a great presidential speech. That said to students and teachers something the SAT had never dared say before: Some content is disproportionately more powerful and important, and if you prepare for it you will be rewarded on the SAT.

Sanford grew up in Texas and was deeply affected as a kid watching video of the African-American congresswoman Barbara Jordan arguing the case against Richard Nixon in Watergate. What she remembered most, said Sanford, was how Jordan’s power “emanated from her command of the Constitution.

“Understanding how government works is the essence of power. To be a strong citizen, you need to know how the structures of our government work and how to operate within them.”

Kids are getting it: An A.P. U.S. Government and Politics class at Hightstown High School in New Jersey was credited in a Senate committee report with contributing content to a bill, the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act, which was signed into law last month.

Sanford cites it as a great example of her mantra: “‘Knowledge, skills and agency’ — kids learn things, learn how to do things and then discover that they can use all that to make a difference in the world.”

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Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award.