writer, researcher, and editor
I do and always have found it exhilarating to teach teenagers, which is why people's reactions surprised me. Their little hormone-filled minds are hilarious, engaged, and inquisitive. I talk about Bell Hooks' Teaching to Transgress and the white savior mindset of teachers. About Black culture, and Black love.
Read MoreI do and always have found it exhilarating to teach teenagers, which is why people's reactions surprised me. Their little hormone-filled minds are hilarious, engaged, and inquisitive. I talk about Bell Hooks' Teaching to Transgress and the white savior mindset of teachers. About Black culture, and Black love.
Read MoreSubstitutes, like adjunct professors, are cheap and expendable labor. I talk about going bankrupt for one lost cause in education and jumping into the flames. About white saviors, corrupt urban charter schools, subbing, TTeju Cole, Emma Brown, and Soraya Chemlay.
Read More“I spent most of my life trying to curtail my anger, my loudness, and most of all, the assertiveness with which I express myself.” Dr. Allison Harbin gives excerpts from a phone call with her landlord as a reflection on anger, and its use as an assertion of rights and worth as declared by Chemlay. In this Not Safe for School (NSFS) newsletter, she discusses expendable labor, adjuncts, and white saviorism.
Read MoreI'm starting to think that rage may be our last hope for educational equity and reparations. About women's rage and neoliberalism. Dr. Allison Harbin wraps up her slum lord story and what it taught her about women's rage. She discusses rage being an avenue for educational equity.
Read MoreYou know when the odds are stacked against you when your rent-stabilized apartment is owned by one of the top 5 slumlords in NYC. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about the toxic mold that took over her NYC apartment, deregulation, and neoliberal ideology writ large.
Read MoreThere is no cure for white guilt and it doesn't benefit anyone, especially POC. Dr. Allison Harbin and her intern Abs (Abigail Wilson) outline a three-step process to becoming a better white guy based on Bo Burnam's 'Comedy,' sharing “Be a Better Ally.”
Read MoreWhy are white people so goddamn uncomfortable when it comes to conversations about racism? Dr. Allison Harbin's intern Abs talks about Bo Burnam's conversation with anti-racist Marxist Socko in relation to bias and the importance of open conversation.
Read MoreWhy there are so many ignorant-ass trolls in the world: because we made them. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about the conservative trolls flocking to the interview she had with author Jessie Daniels after an article in a conservative “newspaper” came out about it.
Read MoreSometimes, you just gotta clap back (literally). Dr. Allison Harbin writes about Black feminism, analysis, women's bodies, and Megan Thee Stallions "Thot $hit." On reclaiming your narrative and identity.
Read MoreBlack feminism is all about resisting and calling out white supremacy. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about how to resist and call out white supremacy and what the f to do with this information when it comes to racism.
Read MoreThe nice white lady facade, that basic pumpkin spice apolitical bullshit is so insidious. "Anonymous Becky," writes a guest post about how white women turned Virginia red in today's NSFS (Not Safe for School). About how white women benefit from affirmative action policies.
Read MoreThis subconscious terrorism of the mind that white supremacy perpetuates is precisely what we are so adamant about making real. Dr. Allison Harbin chats with Dr. Jessie Daniels on the project of making visible white supremacy, her strident critique of white supremacy, and visibility.
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In this post: Logical fallacies and why we're in this mess in the first place.
Last week: What we all stand to gain from reading more diverse books, and What White People Can Do Now Part Six.
Next week: An Interview with Jessie Daniels about the subconscious terrorism of racism & the need to take down nice white ladies.
Dear friends and fam,
Last week, I fan-girled hard over writer Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel The Poet X, and hardly even got to talk about how much I love how she has merged poetry with story-telling from a stylistic point of view. Anyway, this week, I’d like to offer a fact-check on CRT, the reality behind “de-segregation,” and my hot take on all of the f******cking absurdity of the not-quite-right Right (hint: it’s about our education system).
In a recent New Yorker article, “The Man Behind Critical Race Theory,” Jelani Cobb profiles the civil rights attorney Derrick Bell. As per usual, his fight in the court involves a white school board closing a school in the heart of the Black community of Harmony, Mississippi in 1961 as a direct reaction to Roe v BOE in 1955. The school had been provided the seed money in 1912 by the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, whose commitment to Judaism led him to provide financial support to the African American community. Unlike today’s white saviors and impact investors, Rosenwald gave the community a check and let them build the school they desired. Emma Dabiri’s treatise on coalition building in What White People Can Do Next most likely would approve of this instinct (and it’s where we need to orient our thinking about urban education today).
At any rate, our main man of the week, Derrick Bell enters the picture to try to fight what white people did in the aftermath of Roe v BOE, which was to close the “segregated” Black schools under the cry of reverse-racism or whatever the f racists justified their actions with back in 1961 (screams into the void: reverse racism is a logical fallacy).
So, white folks invested in education closed all the Black schools, the ones that philosopher and education activist bell hooks talks about as having such revolutionary potential, bused BIPOC students to white schools, and in the meantime, made sure to enroll their own kids in private school. If you think I’m exaggerating, I am not. That is precisely what my grandparents did following de-segregation. Never get in the way of a white person making sure their child’s education is better than a BIPOC child’s. (See: hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom)
This is not a drill. This is an actual Tweet.
This is not a drill. This is an actual Tweet.
Why public schools in the south suck more (spoiler: it’s bc of racism):
So, with all the middle to upper class white kids fleeing to private schools, we have the fundamental reason why southern states lag far behind others in terms of education outcomes: because the south was the only region to really have desegregation enforced, white lawmakers actively voted to defund public education just so BIPOC students would not receive an equitable education. So what that it also screwed over an entire generation of working-class whites in the south who might have liked to have more upward mobility and career track options following the outsourcing of manufacturing. Perhaps we wouldn’t have that raging meth epidemic if we had considered poor white kids worthy of a decent education.
I’ve written about my particular joy I found when Tucker Carlson professed to be “terrified” of CRT in schools over the summer, and made my favorite graphic for a post to date, read why I think Tucker Carlson’s right to be afraid.
Jelani Cobb best sums up how ignorant republicans have defined CRT for their mostly lower-socio economic and under-educated as well white base:
"C.R.T. has been defined as Black-supremacist racism, false history, and the terrible apotheosis of wokeness."
As per usual, that definition has nothing to do with how Derrick Bell later taught his constitutional law-class, Cobb quotes his former student and teaching assistant on the issue to clarify:
“When people fear critical race theory, it stems from this idea that their children will be indoctrinated somehow. But Bell’s class was the least indoctrinated class I took in law school. We got the most freedom in that class to reach our own conclusions without judgement.”
Nevertheless, white people persisted in ruining shit. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (arrest her murderers ffs), our all time favorite Texan governor signed into law this summer a bill that restricts teaching about race in the state’s public schools. And now, a bunch of other shitty states like Oklahoma (ugh), Tennessee (they’re the worst anyway), Idaho (potatoes are white right?), Iowa (they have potatoes too??), New Hampshire (holla @ my racists in the North East), South Carolina (duh), and Arizona (that also tracks).
All of you, dear readers, are invested in equity in education if you’ve kept reading to this point. What is within your power to do about correcting CRT myths, or even addressing them head on in your classrooms, meeting rooms, and boards.
As Emma Dabiri reminds us, coalition building is key. Without CRT and the flourishing of race theory writ large, we would not have the tools to investigate how white people are also screwed over by racism. And without it taught in schools…. Well, we can expect more of the same Trumpian ethos and democratic erosion.
Bell, in many ways, through his efforts to fight for an equitable education for all students, lived through the revolution of the Civil Rights movement, and lived just long enough to understand the limitations of its achievements. Today, public schools are more segregated than they were during Raegan. But worse than that, the quality of education continues to fall (thx charter schools and the public school boards who made them possible).
Citation: Emily Richmond’s Atlantic piece, “Schools are more segregated today than during the late 1960s.” June 11, 2012. As an update: shit’s gotten worse since charter school proliferation took off around the same time as this article was written. smh.
But most of all, we are not educating the majority of Americans writ large to think critically. If we were, abortion would still be legal in Texas, Stacey Abdrams would have become governor of Georgia, and perhaps poor working class whites would understand how much they have to gain by building a coalition with their BIPOC brothers and sisters (this has, in fact, already happened, see the NSFS from August 31 2021, “Activism in Education: On transportation, coalitions, and rainbows”).
If any of y’all have got some ideas about what you personally can do, lemme know! Just reply to this email :)
Until next week,
A
Paino, Maria, Rebecca L Boylan, and Linda A Renzulli. “The Closing Door: The Effect of Race on Charter School Closures.” Sociological Perspectives, 2017. Vol 60(4)
Levy, Tal. “Charter Schools Legislation and the Element of Race” Western Journal of Black Studies. Spring 2010; 34, 1.
Blanchett, Wanda. “Disproportionate Representation of African American Students in Special Education: Acknowledging the Role of White Privilege and Racism.” Educational Researcher; Aug/Sep 2006, 35, 6
I come by my disdain honestly in a long tradition of southern writers who remain obsessed with the uneasy cultural quagmire of postbellum southern history.
This subconscious terrorism of the mind that white supremacy perpetuates, and how it makes white people act foolish (aka racist). If you can’t first name the white supremacy lurking in your own mind, you aren’t going to be of much use in the revolution.
N.S.F.S takes on another GWM, the supreme court going apeshit, and the crises within the education system.
N.S.F.S is back with a note on toxic masculinity in the wake of the Uvalde shooting and James Baldwin knowledge. While Baldwin doesn’t use that term per se, I think he would have found it a useful shorthand for how he describes the “American boy” in his essay “Nothing Personal.”
I discuss James Baldwin’s words as a balm for writer’s burnout, what we do when we feel our activism has made no progress towards meaningful change, and worse, when things seem to be back sliding back into the racist and sexist dark ages.
As I am writing this, Russian troops are on a long convoy headed towards Kyiv. I'm writing to extend my empathy to those in Soviet-ravaged and war-torn places. NSFS About the Russia-Ukraine Crisis, World Problems, and the Russian Warship.
Substitutes, like adjunct professors, are cheap and expendable labor. I talk about going bankrupt for one lost cause in education and jumping into the flames. About white saviors, corrupt urban charter schools, subbing, TTeju Cole, Emma Brown, and Soraya Chemlay.
“I spent most of my life trying to curtail my anger, my loudness, and most of all, the assertiveness with which I express myself.” Dr. Allison Harbin gives excerpts from a phone call with her landlord as a reflection on anger, and its use as an assertion of rights and worth as declared by Chemlay. In this Not Safe for School (NSFS) newsletter, she discusses expendable labor, adjuncts, and white saviorism.
A continuation of last week's theme of culturally responsive teaching and student joy, and its use as a practical tool. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about what white people can do next. A reflection on Emma Dabiri and Elizabeth Acevedo's writing.
Read MoreCulturally responsive teaching comes down to learning about your students and teaching them lessons based on their unique community/history/identity. About culturally responsive teaching as a practical tool in the classroom, and the joy of Dominican American students.
Read More
NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram
Dear friends and fam,
“Whiteness is always there, ever-present, determining who gets a chance and who is denied opportunity. But recently I have been starting to visualize it like a horror-film ghoul: it’s looming in the shadows, it’s threatening, but we can really activate, energize it by saying its name three times in the mirror.”
- Emma Dabiri p5
Dear friends and fam,
Last week, I got to do what few childless-by-choice adults get to do: I got to drop off a kid at college. The day began with me playing Tetris with all of my student's belongings as she, her mother, and her little sister brought load after load down from their apartment. As I jam-packed my car with every single pair of shoes my student-owned, as well as at least a two, possibly three, a year supply of hair products. Her mother rolled her eyes and groaned, and her 12-year-old sister pointed out that she would never be like that and have so. much. stuff I couldn't help but laugh.
I had this exact same conversation with my mother when I went off to college, similarly in a car packed to the gills with mostly clothes, shoes, and CDs (yes, I am old).
While waiting on another load, a construction worker blocking off the street that I was now double parked in front of, couldn't help but ask if I was driving someone to college. I replied, "yes! She's a former student, I used to be her high school teacher, and I said I'd do whatever she needed to make sure she got off to college and then off to law school one day, and today that looks like driving her to college!" I laugh as I say this, nervously.
"Damn, you're her high school teacher? Imagine that. A high school teacher driving her student to college. Never thought I'd see the day!"
I immediately feel awkward, as if perhaps I crossed a boundary between students and teachers. "Well, I'm not her teacher anymore, the school wouldn't hire me until I took more certification sources, and then, well the pandemic happened...But yeah, so I didn't get to go back, but I promised I'd help them with college."
I trail off. Reminding myself that I didn't need to give the man my entire life story. He must have sensed how awkward I felt because he mercifully intervened:
"No, that's great. That's how it should be. Teachers should care. I wish I had had a teacher like you. That’s really something. Look at your student now, going away to college. Good for her."
It made me mad that he had never had a teacher who he felt had his best interests in mind. It made me mad that for the majority of urban school students today, not much has changed. Then a gaggle of girls burst through the doors of the apartment building with more shoes and stuffed animals, giggling and yelling. I heard a woman pushing a grocery cart across the street yell, "Look at you go! College girl! Study hard now!" My student was absolutely beaming. I felt honored to be included in her victory lap.
In the car ride up and then back down from the Bronx to Albany, I got to talk to my former student's mother. Her mother arrived in the U.S. from Burkina Faso a decade ago, with a husband and a 6 year old in tow. She spoke no English, but already spoke several languages. At some point along the way, she had another baby and ditched the husband. Then, she went to community college for an associates degree, and then, exactly four years later from when she began, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science. So, this woman got her college bachelor's in the exact same time it takes most full-time undergraduates to do, if not a touch shorter. It took her about six months to land a coding job, where she now works. All while being a single mother (the dad does help, for whatever it’s worth, but STILL). If that's not impressive, I don't know what is. If that’s not the goddamn American dream, I don’t know what is.
So when this woman asked me, "Why do you think urban education is so bad? Do people not know?" on the drive back that night, I had so many answers. We had already talked about several of them as we faced one setback after another in terms of paperwork, logistics, and directions. Just the fact we were in the car driving represented a tactical victory that I’d tell you about if it weren’t so mundane and tedious. As I ran through possible answers, I decided to keep it simple. Because really, it is a one-word answer.
"Racism."
I heard her sigh at this, and say quietly, "yes, I think so too. That's the only thing that makes sense."
What White People Can Do Next:
Emma Dabiri’s description of whiteness at the beginning of this newsletter is precisely how I’ve been envisioning it thanks to my deep love of horror.
Take, for example, Little Marvin and Lena Waithe's Them (2021) on Amazon, is horror at its best. Which is to say, it's one of the most terrifying and sickening things I've seen on TV. And those are just the historically documented events they portray. Somewhere between a mediation on mental illness caused by trauma and constant duress and historical fact of the history of Compton Los Angeles that show points out an uncomfortable reality: the villains, with absolute power and no humanity, are the white people.
As someone with deep southern roots, the only way I can describe the process of looking back at my own family history up through the present tense, is horrific. Perhaps that's why I'm so drawn to the genre, but it nonetheless gave me the vocabulary I needed to process distinguishing myself and my individual actions with those of my slave-owning ancestors. There's no easy separation, nor should there be. Somethings need to remain horrific for you, if only to remind you of your own humanity.
This week’s homework assignment is less about inward self-reflection as it was last week. Instead, let’s look at the historical weight of white supremacy, and how its current neoliberal iteration isn’t working for any of us. Last week, I bought too many books. At the top of them was Zone Book’s new Wendy Brown book Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Here’s a good review of the book that I found helpful for situating the way in which white supremacy has screwed all of us over.
Next week, I’ll be talking about sci-fi and Afro-Futurism as we continue the discussion around What White People Can Do Next? By Emma Dabiri
Until next week,
A
This is why I love Black futurism, or Afrofuturism: It allows an honest inspection of the past in order to re-imagine the future. Afrofuturism evaluates the past and future to create better conditions for the present generation of Black people through the use of technology, art, music, and literature.
What the Republicans have used to fear-monger and rabble-rouse whites naturally signals what I’d like to take as a moment of hope for the U.S: the more we educate all people, most especially Black and peoples of color, the brighter our collective futures will be.
Making a student feel bad in class is no trivial matter. Research clearly shows that unless a student feels safe in a classroom environment, they will not be willing to take risks for fear of reprisal. If students don’t feel comfortable exploring ideas in class, cognition suffers. Which is to say, learning outcomes are diminished.
This subconscious terrorism of the mind that white supremacy perpetuates, and how it makes white people act foolish (aka racist). If you can’t first name the white supremacy lurking in your own mind, you aren’t going to be of much use in the revolution.
I do and always have found it exhilarating to teach teenagers, which is why people's reactions surprised me. Their little hormone-filled minds are hilarious, engaged, and inquisitive. I talk about Bell Hooks' Teaching to Transgress and the white savior mindset of teachers. About Black culture, and Black love.
Sometimes, you just gotta clap back (literally). Dr. Allison Harbin writes about Black feminism, analysis, women's bodies, and Megan Thee Stallions "Thot $hit." On reclaiming your narrative and identity.
Black feminism is all about resisting and calling out white supremacy. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about how to resist and call out white supremacy and what the f to do with this information when it comes to racism.
A continuation of last week's theme of culturally responsive teaching and student joy, and its use as a practical tool. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about what white people can do next. A reflection on Emma Dabiri and Elizabeth Acevedo's writing.
Since the pandemic and deciding not to return to the classroom, my activism has taken another form. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about coalition building in relation to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney and restorative justice.
Read MoreI read Teaching to Transgress again when I decided to toss my hat in the ring of an urban high school teacher. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about coalition building in relation to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney and the different forms her educational activism has taken.
Read MoreBlack joy is virtually non-existent in education. Dr. Allison Harbin writes about why we need to preserve Black joy, why it needs fostering in the classroom, and what white people can do next.
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