Hot take: For educators, refusing the white gaze might look like accepting late work from students

Brett T. | 9:06 PM on October 21, 2019

White people, right?

We’ve done a few posts on whiteness and how it’s seen through the prism of academia. Remember that PowerPoint slide we posted with characteristics of white supremacy? If not, here it is again so you can check for yourself if you have white supremacist tendencies:

Nailed it. pic.twitter.com/tMLjEbzaxv

— Anna Jane Joyner (@annajanejoyner) April 30, 2019

Those definitions, taken from a 2001 study called “White Supremacy Culture” and published in “Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups,” also found their way into the New York City public schools:

“White supremacy is characterized by perfectionism, a belief in meritocracy, and the Protestant work ethic,” the exec said, adding that whites who object when accused of deep-rooted bias are called “fragile” and “defensive.” https://t.co/2J44nquBoX

— EdAsante (@EdAsante77) May 18, 2019

It’s been a while since we’ve been in college, but we learn what we can here on Twitter. Here, for example, are some screenshots taken from Washington State Ethnic Studies Now:

Oh wow. https://t.co/2mmuvGNafW pic.twitter.com/tJrOdkU81i

— Amir Sariaslan (@AmirSariaslan) October 22, 2019

Huh, educators from Seattle public schools choreographing refusal in a “Theater of the Oppressed.”

What? pic.twitter.com/43lQppTTxZ

— Amir Sariaslan (@AmirSariaslan) October 22, 2019

So teachers should accept work late in order to refuse the white gaze? OK. We suppose that fits in with the slide above. Here’s more:

Programs such as Seattle Public Schools Ethnic Studies Summer Institute and XITO are providing teachers with content and pedagogical shifts necessary for the critical examination of educational systems dominated by the white gaze. These programs teach the skills to disrupt and refuse.

To be in solidarity requires us to go further than learning. We must act. As individual teachers, schools, and districts build their ethnic studies programs, we purposely build them in ways that refuse the white gaze. We must work with our BIPOC students, families, and communities to define what this refusal looks like. How do our communities wish to refuse the white gaze?