Paul Bonnici Paul Bonnici

Position Statement on Racial Injustice

In a recent position statement, the National Council for the Social Studies Board of Directors put forth that, “As the home of democratic citizenship education, social studies educators have a duty to address race and racism.” 

These words are clear and reflect the burdening weight of the tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and countless others connected to the dark history of systemic racism in the United States. The North Carolina Council for the Social Studies believes we must recognize and call out the painful past in which Black Americans are the victims of chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, extrajudicial activities (lynchings), an unjust criminal justice system (disparities in prosecution and sentencing, convict leasing, mass incarceration and neo-slavery), and fatal excessive force from law enforcement, etc. 

Nationwide, from 2013 to 2019, Black citizens have been three times more likely to be killed by police than their White counterparts.  

Despite Blacks being just over one-fifth (22 percent) of the population of North Carolina, police officers, in the line of duty, have killed 50 Black individuals (32% of the 155 killed overall) in the state since 2015. Of the 50 killed, 49 were Black men, and 21 of them were between the ages of 18 to 29.

Social Studies educators have a paramount obligation to instruct our students on the long, and often violent, struggles for racial justice, equity, and equality. We must decolonize our local curricula to not only teach of domestic racial terrorism like the Wilmington Coup of 1898 and the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, but also stories of resistance and resilience, including the peaceful protests of the Royal Seven and Greensboro Four, landmark civil- rights lawsuits like Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, Johnson v. Branch, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, and Simkins v. Moses Cone Memorial Hospital; the founding of stalwart civil rights organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at in-state HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) like Shaw University, and the armed vigilance of the Lumbee Tribe at the Battle of Hayes Pond (near Maxton, NC) and Robert F. Williams and the Black Armed Guard (Monroe, NC). We need to conduct research, study, and effectively teach history that is inclusive of all voices and experiences, especially those of historically oppressed and marginalized populations that have been silenced; and actively create anti-racist spaces for students to learn and master content. 

Yet, it is not enough to discuss and explore racial bigotry and prejudice in our classrooms; we must acknowledge the effect of centuries of institutionalized racial discrimination, dehumanization, intolerance and persecution on our students, colleagues, and schools. 

The vestiges of over 400 years of racial marginalization, segregation and injustice linger in our educational systems where our Black students are disciplined at an exorbitant rate when compared to their white peers. For nearly a decade in our state, data from the NC Department of Public Instruction shows that Black students have received the most in-school, short-term and long-term suspensions, the majority of placements in alternative learning programs for disciplinary reasons and account for the largest percentage of expulsions. In 2017 alone, despite only being 25 percent of the student population, Black students were 54 percent of juvenile complaints, 65 percent of juvenile detention admissions and 74 percent of youth development center commitments. Black students also have the third highest dropout and chronic absentee rates. These factors contribute to NC’s school-to-prison pipeline, where nearly 52 percent of state prisoners are Black, with almost 50 percent being Black men.

The findings of the Leandro Commission prove that the educational experience provided to all of the students in our state is not equitable. We must do better. Reflection is an essential piece of the education profession; Social Studies educators must engage in vigilant thought regarding their own experiences and privilege in order to successfully model what it means to be anti-racist; as well as the ability to grow in our own knowledge and humanity. 

The NCCSS Board of Directors understands that the work of racial justice often leads to cognitive conflict, as many educators may be forced to question long-held personal beliefs, and grapple with their own biases, privilege, and complacency in a system that has denied Black Americans their inalienable rights while never guaranteeing liberty and justice for all. NCCSS is committed to denouncing racist policies and practices, advocating for racial equity, promoting and providing anti-racist instructional content for use in classrooms across our state, and emphatically says, Black Lives Matter! 

NCCSS Board of Directors

References

1 (https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/)

2 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/).

3 (https://www.southerncoalition.org/youth-justice-project/2018-racial-equity-report-cards/)

4 (https://www.ednc.org/chronic-absenteeism-how-does-north-carolina-compare/)

5 (https://webapps.doc.state.nc.us/apps/asqExt/ASQ)

Read More
Paul Bonnici Paul Bonnici

The NCCSS Supports the National Council’s Response to Anti-Asian Violence During COVID-19

May 18, 2020.

Since the first identified case of COVID-19 was declared in the United States on January 15, incidents of verbal and physical harassment against Asians and Asian Americans have sharply increased (Yan, Chen, & Nuresh, 2020). On March 16th, President Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus” in a controversial tweet (Kuo, 2020), defending his phrasing and denying that it might be racist for several days before publicly declaring he would refrain from repeating the phrase (Vasquez, 2020). From mid-March, in one month almost 1,500 physical and verbal attacks against Asian Americans were reported. People of Asian descent have been beaten, spat on, yelled at, insulted, and faced bodily harm from coast to coast. Asian American students have been called “coronavirus,” told to “go back to China,” and physically assaulted.

History shows this is not the first time the United States has witnessed a surge of anti-Asian discrimination in a time of public health crisis . In the wake of the 1876 outbreak of smallpox in California, Chinatowns were labeled as laboratories of infection and subjected to quarantine. During the 1900 bubonic plague outbreak, government officials in California and Hawaii also racialized the epidemic. They quarantined Chinatowns, sprayed the homes of Chinese residents with carbolic acid, forced Chinese residents to shower at public stations, and burned down their homes. A Chinatown in Orange County California was also burned down in 1906 when city officials viewed Chinese residents as threats to public health for the spread of leprosy. More recently, a similar pattern of racializing disease and fomenting anti-Asian discrimination occurred during the 2003 SARS epidemic and is evident now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While fueled by the fear of disease and anti-Chinese/Asian rhetoric by politicians, the uptick of anti-Asian violence during a disease outbreak is rooted in longstanding biases toward Asian Americans. Soon after Asians arrived on U.S. soil, Asian immigrants were racialized as uncivilized, filthy, and dangerous to “Americans .” Depicted as the Yellow Peril who were dirty and dangerous to the United States as a white nation, Asian immigrants encountered discriminatory orders in housing, schooling, employment, marriage, and political participation. And in a time of public health crisis, wartime, or economic downturn, Asian Americans have often become a target of hate crimes and discrimination, as was the case in the Chinese massacre of 1871, Japanese American incarceration during World War II, the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982 during an economic downturn, discrimination against South Asian Americans, Arab Americans, and those perceived to be Muslim in the wake of September 11, 2001, and again today during the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) strongly condemns this discrimination and violence against Asian Americans. Furthermore, NCSS urges those in the public sphere to recognize the harm that is occurring and to engage in education about the impact of discrimination and violence on our citizens.

Role of Social Studies Education

This history and the current resurgence of Anti-Asian violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic signals the urgency of racial literacy education. As the home of democratic citizenship education, social studies educators have a duty to address race and racism. Our young and future citizens need the knowledge and skills to critically read, call out, and act against racism and racial violence in all its forms, especially during a time of crisis. COVID-19 is the newest episode in U.S. history in which a marginalized group is scapegoated and discriminated against during a public health crisis . Earlier, Irish immigrants were blamed for the cholera outbreaks in the 1830s. Then, Jewish immigrants were scapegoated for tuberculosis in the late 19th century, Italian immigrants for polio in the early 20th century, Haitian Americans for HIV in the 1980s, Mexican Americans for swine flu in 2009, and West Africans for Ebola in 2014. Informed and engaged citizens of a democratic society should know that a time of crisis requires solidarity, humanity, and hope, not hysteria or hatred. Only together can we “flatten the curve” of this pandemic, and only together can we prevent a wave of hate crime from arising. While racism and racialization of disease are not new to the United States, we can imagine and must promote a different kind of response through our teaching.

Social studies scholars and teacher educators whose research centers on the teaching of Asian American histories and Asian American representation are painfully aware of the effects of recent anti-Asian harassment on Asian American communities and of the longstanding absence of Asian American representation and histories in P-12 social studies curriculum. Asian Americans are woefully underrepresented in social studies textbooks (Suh, An, & Forest, 2015), standards (An, 2016), and children’s literature (Rodríguez & Kim, 2018). In the face of such sparse representation in the curriculum, media portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans as exotic Others serve as a potent influence to the popular imagination. While it is necessary to recognize the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States, it is also vital that educators provide examples of Asian Americans showing agency and actively engaging in efforts to overcome this health and social crisis. For example, Sikhs, who are predominantly South Asian American, are providing massive food support across the country and Filipina/o nurses comprise a significant portion of the U.S. nursing force.

On May 11th and 12th, 2020, PBS debuted Asian Americans, the first major comprehensive documentary about Asian Americans, from the earliest arrivals to the United States in the 1800s to the present. The documentary is accompanied by an educational guide to which several NCSS College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) members have contributed lessons (see https://advancingjustice-la.org/what-we-do/curriculum-lesson-plans/asian-americans-k-12-education-curriculum ). Used alongside resources like those listed below, social studies educators can begin to include Asian American histories across the curriculum broadly, especially in conversations related to race and racism.

Resources

Below, we have curated a collection of resources about COVID-19, anti-Asian/Asian American harassment, and anti-Asian/Asian American racism for social studies educators interested in learning more about these histories and contemporary experiences. We are particularly mindful of the need to ensure that Asian American voices are included in these resources. We urge social studies educators to remind their students to seek #OwnVoices that emerge directly from the communities of focus, rather than relying on outsider and/or secondary sources of information.

Read More