Research-Based Examples of Anti-Racist Curriculum

Between 1981 and 1997, a string of British schools with predominantly white student populations engaged in the process of developing anti-racist curriculum. As we have noted, multicultural education is not the same as anti-racist curriculum. However, by studying England’s process of implementing multicultural education, we can gain valuable insight into the ways that anti-racist curriculum can be supported or opposed.

Gaine (2000) notes that Black and Asian advocacy groups were largely responsible for starting the call for anti-racist curriculum in British public schools. By 1988, the British national government had provided funding for multicultural learning programs to nearly every Local Education Agency in England along and had created policy mandating that schools identify language barriers and harassment occurring in schools (Gaine, 2000). However, the programs were discontinued and the policy was reversed less than two years later as the political landscape shifted (Gaine, 2000). At this time, England developed its National Curriculum where, as Gaine (2000) states, “there was direct intervention on the part of Secretaries of State to promote curriculum content which reasserted a notion of Britain as a white, monocultural society” (p. 69).

In response to this history of implementation and reversal of multicultural education programs in the 1980s and 1990s, Gaine (2000) notes several strategies for future programs. First, Gaine (2000) notes that predominantly white schools have little inherent motivation to create anti-racist curricula. Student and community advocacy groups are powerful sources of change and can put pressure on policymakers and schools to improve curriculum. Gaine (2000) also describes several levels at which anti-racist learning can occur: structural, institutional, cultural, and personal. For anti-racist pedagogy to be successful in schools, Gaine (2000) argues, school personnel must commit to it on all levels. Finally, school staff members need appropriate training to properly implement anti-racist education (Gaine, 2000). Teacher in-service programs and ongoing professional development give teachers the foundational skills they need to implement anti-racist learning in their classrooms. Additionally, schools should create the time and opportunity for staff members to reflect on anti-racist practices and collaborate with one another to improve upon them.

In her 2010 article Sidelines and separate spaces: Making education anti‐racist for students of color, Deanna Blackwell draws on her experiences in anti-racist classrooms through a Black, feminist framework. Blackwell’s experiences and advice can be a powerful tool for educators developing anti-racist curriculum, especially in white-dominant districts. Too often, in an attempt to educate white students about white privilege and racism, anti-racist educators place their white students at the center of attention and push their students of color to the “sidelines” (Blackwell, 2010). When developing and implementing anti-racist pedagogy, educators must pay conscious consideration to whom the curriculum benefits. They must ask, does this learning only benefit my white students? Does it benefit my white students at the expense of my students of color? And, how does this “fulfill the educational needs and activist aims of my students of color?” (Blackwell, 2010, p. 478).

What does it mean to be put on the sidelines?

Blackwell’s experience and advice for implementing anti-racist curriculum in white-dominant settings can provide critical guidance to school districts like Carroll ISD in implementing anti-racist pedagogy . Blackwell’s (2010) central critique of other anti-racist curricula is their propensity to place students of color on the sidelines. Some instructors’ well-meaning intentions of educating their white students about racism and white privilege lead the class to focus entirely on the experiences and education of the white students, relegating students of color to roles other than that of the student. Students of color may become ‘cultural experts’ who are expected to become representatives of their ethnicity, ‘aides’ whose role is to help guide their white peers in their learning, or ‘witnesses’ to white growth (Blackwell, 2010). Instead of using their experiences to fuel white students’ ‘aha’ moments, Blackwell (2010) notes that teachers should “instruct [students of color] in how to use their own stories as sites of learning for their own educational purposes” (p. 480).

When a student of color chooses to share their experiences, the teacher should affirm the validity of their experience and then discuss how various forms and structures of racism shape it and the student’s identity-formation (Blackwell, 2010). Doing so moves beyond using the student’s experience as teaching material for their white peers and helps the student gain a deeper understanding of how to navigate the existing societal structures in their life. This also helps to center the focus on the student of color instead of their white peers while modeling how to critically engage in conversations about race.

Teach “social-historical context of identity and relations of power” (Blackwell, 2010, p. 481) instead of forcing dialogue

A frequent facet of anti-racism lessons is cross-racial dialogue. Blackwell (2010) notes the commonplace desire for educators to use this teaching method to help their white students “know the Other” (p. 482). These types of discussions in the anti-racist classroom not only stem from a place of arrogance that posits students of color as the Other, but they also open the door for a host of negative repercussions. Mandated cross-racial dialogue may force students of color to engage in unwanted, vulnerable spaces of sharing, they may increase hostility from white students with limited understanding of the history and structures of racism, and conversations may deteriorate into a type of ‘oppression Olympics’ that pits one student’s perceived level of trauma against another’s (Blackwell, 2010). Instead, a successful anti-racist pedagogy should first focus on developing “social-historical context of identity and relations of power” (Blackwell, 2010, p. 481) and provide space for all students to engage with this learning in a way that is meaningful to their own lives.

Create homeplaces and separate spaces

Finally, Blackwell (2010) reflects on the significant benefits that separate spaces for students of color have had on herself and her peers. Drawing from her own experience and from other researched examples, Blackwell (2010) describes these separate spaces as homeplaces for students of color in anti-racist classrooms. While taking an anti-racist class in college, Blackwell (2010) and other students of color met outside of class to share experiences, express frustrations, engage in collaborative learning, and diversify their perspectives in a way that would not be possible in a classroom with white students. Blackwell (2010) connects her experiences to other studies that found that, when students of color had their own spaces, they felt relief from the pressure of needing to defend their own validity to white peers and that they were in the center of the conversation instead of the margins. These separate spaces can be meaningful homeplaces for students of color within school and the anti-racist classroom.

This advice should be taken into careful consideration when white-dominant school districts design and implement anti-racist curriculum. Blackwell’s (2010) experiences can help educators avoid the white-centered anti-racist curriculum that has caused students of color to “shut up, been shut out, as well as counseled and consoled both white students and instructors” (p. 488).

Peter Heinze (2008) is an associate professor of psychology at Ramapo College of New Jersey. In his article Let’s talk about race, baby: How a White professor teaches White students about White privilege & racism, Heinze (2008) reflects on his experiences as a white, heterosexual man teaching white students in his multicultural psychology course. While our studies focus on advice for public school districts, Heinze’s experience can lend useful advice to teachers from similar backgrounds when implementing anti-racist curriculum.

White students tend to hold a bipolar view of racism, that someone is either racist or they are not (Heinze, 2008). Not only is this view of racism false, but it allows students to dismiss the ways that structural racism and privilege work in their lives if they consider themselves to be colorblind or simply “not a racist.” Instead, Heize (2008) teaches racism on a continuum that ranges from allyship to Neo-Nazi ideas and the places in between. Through discussion of the often unseen ways privilege functions in their lives, Heinze’s (2008) white students are able to expand their understanding of individual racism and begin to consider institutional racism.

Second, Heinze (2008) advises that white instructors engage in deep, personal reflection before teaching about white privilege and use that reflection as a model for students. Thorough self-awareness is necessary for the white teacher because “the White instructor unaware of his/her own racism is likely to reenact in the classroom the dynamic of blindness to power and privilege that exists and persists in our society” (Heinze, 2008, p.6). However, Heinze (2008) suggests that the teacher’s own experiences of developing self-awareness can be a constructive model for students. White students may be able to relate to and learn from the white teacher whose experiences provide an honest, vulnerable example of how they can address racist beliefs, notions of white supremacy or colorblindness, and unproductive feelings of guilt or shame.

Combining the strategies of teaching racism on a continuum and using oneself as an example, Heinze (2008) suggests sharing what he calls in vivo examples of racism. These examples may include sharing thoughts or actions of the teacher that were unintentionally rooted in racism or white privilege (Heinze, 2008). In vivo examples are admittances of mistakes, teaching moments for self-improvement, and opportunities for students to broaden their mindsets about what constitutes racism and white privilege (Heinze, 2008).

In her 2015 article “It's Pretty Much White": Challenges and Opportunities of an Antiracist Approach to Literature Instruction in a Multilayered White Context, Carlin Borsheim-Black provides an overview of the experiences Ms. Allen, a white, ninth-grade English teacher, in implementing an anti-racist unit over the book To Kill a Mockingbird. While the students were largely supportive of the anti-racist unit, Borsheim-Black (2015) noted that Ms. Allen received some pushback from parents who expressed colorblind views of racism. Like Carroll ISD, this study takes place in a classroom context with primarily white students, so the experiences and advice gleaned from this research may prove useful to similar districts when developing anti-racist curricula.

One of the goals of the anti-racist literature unit was to provide white students with the opportunity to identify, understand, and engage with Whiteness in their own lives. However, this pointed discussion of Whiteness led to one of the most challenging obstacles reported in the unit: White talk. Quoting McIntyre, Borsheim-Black (2015) defines White talk as “talk that serves to insulate White people from examining their/our own individual and collective role(s) in the perpetuation of racism” (p. 410). Ms. Allen reported, “I feel like the biggest challenge is the language I use, and we use, like we, us, our, and my, because I’m White and we’re White. Like our ancestors, and then I look in the back of the room and remember that Abby doesn’t share that heritage” (Borsheim-Black, 2015, p. 417). At the same time, she was able to highlight White talk in her students’ discourse as an example of privilege and dominant status. By discussing taken-for-granted language with her white students, Ms. Allen brought to light the implications that language can have.

Another challenge to implementing the anti-racist unit Ms. Allen faced was the tension between her work and the expectations she felt from her department and school as a whole. Although she was constrained to teaching a certain book using a specified method, Ms. Allen found pedagogical opportunities to teach anti-racism through the requirements (Borsheim-Black, 2015). Individual teachers may draw inspiration for small acts of resistance from these findings. However, the larger and more implicating conclusion educators may draw is that institutions hold power to either hinder or support anti-racist instruction in the classroom. School districts and administration may be a large proponent or detriment to anti-racist education.

Blackwell, D. M. (2010). Sidelines and separate spaces: Making education anti‐racist for students of color. Race Ethnicity and Education, 13(4), 473–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2010.492135

Borsheim-Black, C. (2015). "It's pretty much White": Challenges and opportunities of an antiracist approach to literature instruction in a multilayered White context. Research in the Teaching of English, 49(4), 407–429.

Gaine, C. (2000). Anti-racist education in 'white' areas: The limits and possibilities of change. Race Ethnicity and Education, 3(1), 65–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/713693011

Heinze, P. (2008). Let’s talk about race, baby: How a White professor teaches White students about White privilege & racism. Multicultural Education, 16(1), 2–11.