Making Good Trouble and Fighting the Spectre of Racism

My thoughts on racism and education in New Zealand

Maya Angelou is my hero. Her words drive me every day. When I die I really hope that there is a heaven or someplace that I can sit by Maya and hear her read poetry to me every day, or anything really. For now, I just have her audio books and her wisdom.

I found one of my tribes in the #CleartheAir community on Twitter last year (shout out to Valerie Brown @ValeriaBrownEdu -you are a gem!- and to Sherri Spelic @edifiedlistener  for steering me there through her caring and insightful discourse) and they have inspired me to become vocal about racism in education because it's real and nothing will change until we TALK about it; discuss it, deconstruct it, understand it, reframe it, overpower it and overcome it.

So I decided to become one of those people who Makes Good Trouble. Here's where the quote comes from:

My experience of racism in education has been one of systemic whitewashing (literally) and frustration because, in New Zealand, it is a teaching requirement that all school teachers teach te reo and tikanga Māori. We are appraised against this requirement and yearly certified that we are meeting it.

The Practising Teacher Criteria describe the criteria for quality teaching that are to be met by all fully certificated teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand- Teaching Council New Zealand

The reality on the ground looks very different. I have seen, over and over again how this is watered down so much so that teachers can simply opt out while still getting certified every, single, year. I have seen entire schools opt out because their community doesn't find it relevant. And that is OK with the Ministry of Education because I have yet to see a teacher not pass their appraisal and have to take remedial action steps to address it. Our Education Review Office might come in and give some pointed next steps but in terms of personal teacher accountability precious little has changed since I first began teaching.

Wait. There has been change. In 2006, the government got rid of the syllabus of Te Reo Māori in the New Zealand Curriculum so that teaching it was no longer compulsory nor valuable in the same way as science or maths. It became a 'principle' so watered down no one knew what it meant (article here). At that time, I was teaching in a bilingual school where most of the teaching staff were Māori and Pasifika. The sheer unspoken pain felt in that staff meeting, when we reviewed the draft changes, was palpable and will never leave me. In the ensuing silence lingered the inner fury and sorrow that damages the psyche when institutional racism strikes. But we couldn't talk about it. No one ever has. I wish we did.

Today, I feel privileged to teach in a school where every teacher is keen and willing to do uphold and promote Te Ao Māori (the Māori world), and that's how I know that racism is alive and well. I shouldn't feel privileged about this fact- it should be the status quo in every school in the country.

There's another reason that I know that racism is still institutionalised in New Zealand schools. No one ever talks about it. It's uncomfortable. We talk about the physical pollution in our environment but we are too scared to talk about this psychological and emotional pollution that is the single source of creating underachievement in New Zealand schools.

Racism and racial discrimination IS what creates racial inequity- surprise! It is a form of emotional or physical abuse. It's the discrimination by a thousand cuts that create an underclass and entrenches the cultural belief that this is acceptable. Is it?

We measure racial educational failure but never talk about why it's really there. We have a special place in our achievement graphs for Māori and Pafika students but never question the complicity of racism and its intersectionality in those outcomes. See this article about how the discourse is already being shut down. An example of white fragility at its best. Worry about upsetting the sensibilities of teachers instead of the educational future of students. Seriously? Heaven forbid we acknowledge we've had past race wars and race massacres in this country and have to teach about. (article).

Most pākehā (white) teachers are scared to talk about racism because it will challenge their places of complicit or extrovert privilege and will lead them to acknowledge how colonialism has entrenched this privilege and the effects it still has today (Milne, 2017).  Teachers of colour are scared to talk because we can be tagged as trouble makers with all the penalties that come from being a person of colour and a trouble maker.

Bigotry, discrimination and racism thrive in complicit silence because it perpetuates the power of those in privileged positions through enabling their fear-based biases to construct systems that disadvantage and oppress those that they fear. Through -mainly white - silence we perpetuate this spectral monster of fear we all see, we all know, we're all afraid of but don't want to talk about or challenge. The only people that silence about racism benefits are those who have some benefit from it, conscious or unconscious. If anyone is serious about overcoming racism then silence is not the answer (article).

We are smart. Just as we build negative constructs so we can change them. People can overcome biases when willing, and I work hard to challenge my own. Talking about racism is about discovering where those biases are and how to dismantle them.

Many times I have remained silent, scared even, to speak up about practices that perpetuate racism because I had the privilege of emotional safety and as a person of colour I didn't want to lose it. There are many children in schools who don't have the privilege of emotional and physical safety and are growing up with negative stereotypes about who they are and who they can become which perpetuates the dynamics of racism and inequality (O'Regan, 2018). But I've learned that I am complicit in all of it if I don't purposefully act to change that narrative however I can, whenever I can.

I believe that we can be more than what we are today. I believe that we can grow up and talk about racial discrimination and racial privilege with truth and kindness and move forward, but that we have to have a dialogue to create action. I believe that making good trouble is worth it to improve me as a teacher and a human being and those that I have the privilege to share my journey with. Especially the children that I teach.

So I make good trouble because I want to do better.

'Tō reo ki te raki, tō mana ki te whenua’
Let your story be heard in the heavens,
and your mana be restored to the land
(2018, O’Regan)

Mana is a Māori concept that cannot be translated into English. It speaks to personal power as well as our collective power as human beings and to the power of our world. It also speaks to our uniqueness and to the influence and control we have over our destiny as well as the sacredness of it. Tīhei Mauri Ora! 

References:
Milne, B. A. (2013). Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools (Doctoral dissertation, University of Waikato).

O'Regan, H (2018) Tō reo ki te raki, tō mana ki te whenua.  Keynote uLearn conference 2018.