Transcript Beyond “Food, Folks, & Fun” Multicultural Education as

Poverty, Racism, and
(Un)Consciousness in the U.S.
by Paul C. Gorski gorski@EdChange.org
Introductory Stuff:
Who Said It?
“We have deluded ourselves into believing
the myth that capitalism grew and
prospered out of the Protestant ethic of
hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was
built on the exploitation of black slaves
and continues to thrive on the exploitation
of the poor, both black and white, both
here and abroad.”
2
Introductory Stuff:
Who Said It?
“…we commit ourselves
to…address creatively and
courageously the complex causes
of poverty.”
3
Introductory Stuff:
Who We Are
• Who’s in the room?
• My background and lens
4
Introductory Stuff:
Starting Assumptions
1. Low-income people bear the brunt of
almost every imaginable social ill in the
U.S.
2. All people, regardless of socioeconomic
status, deserve access to basic human
rights
3. Inequities in the U.S. (and globally) mean
that all people don’t have this access
5
Gross Inequities
Compared with low-poverty U.S. schools,
high-poverty U.S. schools have:
• More teachers teaching in areas outside
their certification subjects;
• More serious teacher turnover problems;
• More teacher vacancies;
• Larger numbers of substitute teachers;
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Gross Inequities (cont’d)
• More dirty or inoperative bathrooms;
• More evidence of vermin such as
cockroaches and rats;
• Insufficient classroom materials
• Less rigorous curricula;
• Fewer experienced teachers;
• Lower teacher salaries;
• Larger class sizes; and
• Less funding.
7
Gross Inequities
Barton, P.E. (2004). Why does the gap persist? Educational
Leadership 62(3), 8-13.
Barton, P.E. (2003). Parsing the achievement gap: Baselines for
tracking progress. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Carey, K. (2005). The funding gap 2004: Many states still
shortchange low-income and minority students. Washington,
D.C.: The Education Trust.
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (2004).
Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education: A two-tiered
education system. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Rank, M.R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why American
poverty affects us all. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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Introductory Stuff:
The Agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Introductory Stuff (in progress)
The Big Picture: Ten Chairs
Key Information & Concepts
Where We Go Wrong
Tenets of Race-Conscious Anti-Poverty
Activism
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Part II:
The Big Picture:
Ten Chairs
The Big Picture
Point of Reflection:
What would you describe as your
socioeconomic status?
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The Big Picture
Point of Reflection:
Where does the notion of meritocracy come
from, and has it ever been true?
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The Big Picture
Point of Reflection:
Is poverty an individual experience or, like
racism, a systemic condition?
And what does this mean for how we tackle
poverty and racism?
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Part III
Informing Ourselves:
Key Information &
Concepts
Key Information
1.
2.
A majority of low-income people in the
U.S. are white.
However, African Americans, Native
Americans, Latinas/os, and Asian
Americans are much more likely to be
low-income than white people.
15
Key Information
3. A majority of low-income people live in
rural, rather than urban, areas.
4. However, a growing number of lowincome people are moving to suburban
areas due to gentrification.
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Key Concepts
1.
2.
3.
The ‘Culture of Poverty’
Deficit Theory
The “Undeserving” Poor
The process built on these concepts
socializes us into complicity.
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Key Concept:
Capitalist Hegemony
Defining “hegemony”
 History of capitalist hegemony (and
defining communism and socialism as the
enemy)
 Importance of hegemony to understanding
how we understand poverty
 Consumer culture, meritocracy

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Key Concept:
The ‘Culture of Poverty’
What is it? (See hidden rules quizzes.)
 Who made it up?
 What the research says
 Why it’s dangerous

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Key Concept:
The ‘Deficit Theory’
Two Components
 Example: “Welfare Mothers”
 Why it’s dangerous
 Who, or what, needs to be “fixed”?

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Key Concept:
The ‘Undeserving Poor’
Herbert Gans, The War Against the Poor
 Deterioration of support for policy
 “Welfare Reform”

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Socialized for Complicity
Consumer Culture (shopping)
 Myth of Meritocracy
 Myth of “American Dream”


Latter two most devastating to People of
Color
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Part VI
Where We Go Wrong
Where We Go Wrong
Confusing the mitigation of poverty
with the elimination of poverty.
- Clothing and housing the poor is
necessary, but it is not analogous
with ending poverty.
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Where We Go Wrong
Trying to address poverty by “fixing”
low-income people.
- We don’t fix racism by “fixing” People
of Color, either!
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Where We Go Wrong
Confusing charity with social change
movement.
- Ending poverty (like racism) requires
systemic changes to an oppressive
system—we cannot end poverty or
racism without battling that system.
26
Where We Go Wrong
Confusing charity with social change
movement.
- Ending poverty (like racism) requires
systemic changes to an oppressive
system—we cannot end poverty or
racism without battling that system.
27
Where We Go Wrong
Believing that education is the “great
equalizer.”
- White men with a graduate degree
earn, on average, $80,000 per year.
Native American women with a
graduate degree earn, on average,
$42,000 per year.
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Where We Go Wrong
Assuming it is our job to “save” lowincome people or people of color or
any other disenfranchised group.
- One might ask, who, exactly, needs
saving?
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Where We Go Wrong
Attempting to understand poverty by
studying poor people.
- Poverty can be understood only by
asking why poverty exists and to
whose benefit poverty exists. (Can
we understand racism without
understanding systems of
whiteness?)
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Part VII
Tenets of Race-Conscious
Anti-Poverty Action
Tenets

We cannot fight racism or poverty without
fighting racism and poverty.

Racism can be seen historically as economic
exploitation
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Tenets

Working class and poor white people often
are socialized to believe that working class
and poor People of Color, rather than an
oppressive economic system, are the source
of their hardships.

Focusing only on white privilege won’t work. Help
them see how they’re exploited economically by
the same power structure and how white privilege
is their “compensation” for being the buffer.
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Tenets

We cannot affect social change by employing
the models that are used to socialize us into
complicity.

We must model a rejection of deficit ideology, of
consumer culture, of the myth of meritocracy.
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Tenets

Social justice requires us to work with
disenfranchised communities.


Avoid service programs (or any programs) that do
not happen in collaboration with disenfranchised
communities.
Remember, the key to liberation is for people to
decide for themselves their path to liberation.
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Tenets

We cannot end oppression through cultural
programming.


Energies and resources set aside for anti-racism
and anti-poverty initiatives never should be spent
on “celebrating diversity” or “learning about
cultures” programs.
Taco Night is fun, but it has nothing to do with
racism, except, perhaps, contributing to it.
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Final Thought
Key to Fighting Poverty and Racism:
Consciousness
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Paul C. Gorski
gorski@edchange.org
http://www.EdChange.org