181. 10 Elements of White Liberalism

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In this episode, we’re exploring the list of 10 elements of white liberalism developed by Dr. Cheryl Matias and Dr. Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book, The Other Elephant in the (Class)room. 

Why? 

In the Introduction to their book, Matias and Gorski write “we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators: the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity,” (p. 1). 

They explain “liberal” is, in alignment with McLaren’s (1997) use of the term, as in contrast to “critical,” writing “critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression…In that absence [of critical approaches], the liberal stuff creates the illusion of antiracist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can’t Multicultural Arts Fair our way to racial justice,” White liberalism, they write, “individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression…undermines antiracism efforts, and…poses no serious threat to racial injustice.” (pp. 1-2).    
 

What are the 10 elements of white liberalism?

1. Mistaking celebrations of diversity for racial justice progress
2. Equating peace—the absence of tension as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail—with justice
3. Relying on good intentions rather than good actions
4. Slowing racial justice progress by insisting on “baby steps” and “developmental processes” that protect white people from having to grapple seriously with racism
5. Adhering to a savior mentality or some other ideology that positions white people as the “fixers” or “saviors” of students and families of color
6. Misconstruing equity as equal numbers or representation rather than the elimination of inequity and oppression
7. Superficially expressing a desire for diversity but rarely engaging in meaningful practices that substantially incorporate the voices and desires of racially marginalized communities
8. Refusing to acknowledge the expertise or authority of people of color, even on matters of racial equity
9. White educators manipulating the narratives of people of color in order to position themselves as “well-intentioned” or “innocent”
10. Engaging in “toxic positivity,” insisting that conversations about racism are too “negative” and we should focus on the “positive.”

What do we do? 

This school year, actively notice where these elements show up in your school community, in your own individual actions. Nurture a community that celebrates such identification, and pivot to the critical end of spectrum. 

In the authors’ words, “Although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it, instead, as an act of love and justice,” (p. 15). 



To help you consider ways to sustainably advance racial justice in your school or district, I’m sharing my Systems Transformation Playlist with you for free. (You’ll want to check out page 3!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 181 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. 

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons
I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. 

I am very excited today to talk about the 10 elements of white liberalism, so we'll really dive into what is white liberalism. How do you know it is happening and be able to identify it yourself in your educational community? Now I'm exploring this with you because this is actually a list of 10 elements that was developed by Dr Shira Matias and Dr Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book the Other Elephant in the Classroom, and Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick and I contributed toa chapter to that book, which is super cool. Definitely grab the book, but here we go, we're going to get into it. Let's do this. So this episode is really going to be kind of a microcosm of, or maybe even just an intro intro to the book, the other elephant in the classroom and I'm very excited to kind of share some quotes, share the elements that are really the framework for the book, that I first saw in the call for proposals for chapters for this book. So let's get into the why. I'm going to use the author's own words, because they're just awesome. And so in the introduction to their book, dr Cheryl Matias and Dr Paul Gorski write, quote we have we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators, the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity end quote. 

And they contrast this directly with, like, the openly racist folks in spaces, right. So actually those folks are very transparent about what is happening and they are very honest about their stance on racial justice, and so it's actually really hard to get traction because we're not even speaking aloud, we're not even to use a less ableist term like acknowledging, right, the racism that is part of, really truly embedded in and formed from the structures of white supremacy, right. If we're not acknowledging it, then we can't really do anything, and if folks are just openly acknowledging where they stand, well, we could like address it directly. So I think this is a really big mindset shift. We often talk about mindset shifts on this podcast and I think this is a big one. So we have to redefine what anti-racism activity looks like, what racial justice activity looks like, and we have to be open to acknowledging white liberalism, which is not racial justice, which does not advance racial justice and often, to the author's point and the contributors to this book's point, collectively it actually inhibits racial progress, racial justice and racial transformation. And so, I think, racial justice transformation. There we go. 

I think what I really want to do is continue with the author's words here in their introduction to the text and I keep saying authors, they are the editors of this volume, they authored the introduction and then they did a beautiful job curating all of these chapters together. So let's dive into their words from the introduction a bit more. So they explain that liberal in the term white liberalism is actually in alignment with McLaren's 1997 use of the term liberal, in contrast to, maybe, the term critical. And so they write, quote critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression. In that absence of critical approaches, the liberal stuff creates the illusion of anti-racist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice. I love that quote. So it really gives a framework right for why white liberalism is simply not enough right. And white liberalism specifically, they write quote individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression, undermines anti-racism efforts and poses no serious thought to racial injustice Excuse me, serious threat to racial injustice. So I think this is a really good point that if we are truly to be dismantling racial injustice, if we are truly to be anti-racist activists in the context of educational spaces, then we truly need to acknowledge that white liberalism activity is just not enough. 

And so the question now is what is white liberalism activity? How do I know that it's not actually racial justice? What do these things look like? What are the things that I personally might be doing, or that I might see fellow colleagues, teachers, staff members participating in, that they might not even know is actually white liberalism and not contributing to racial justice? So we're going to walk through those and, again, these are from that list that the editors developed in their call for proposals, so I will link to that document as well. But I'm just reading straight off this list and then I can go into a little bit of depth as well for each one. These are also listed on the blog post for this podcast episode, which is located at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 181. So if you're driving and interested in catching them all, you do not need to take notes. 

Know that that is written for you in a safe location and you can access it later when you need it, perhaps to share it with your staff and have everyone do a kind of introspective, reflective activity where it's like where have we seen these things or where have we actually participated in? Not just observed, but what have we participated in, because it's really hard to acknowledge our own stuff. However, that's a huge part of this and I really love the author's sentiments of really this is an act of love to be able to critique and highlight when we're just not doing enough. And we know that if we are pursuing this, pursuing racial justice, and we call ourselves anti-racist educators or whatever the phrase may be that you name yourself truly to do it well. We want to do it well. Right, if we name ourselves that and truly to do it well. We need a community of folks who are contributing to highlighting when we're not doing well enough, and we need that for ourselves. So with that in mind, here we go. 

What are the 10 elements of white liberalism? Number one mistaking celebrations of diversity for racial justice progress. So, again, in the words of the editors right, we can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice, like that's what it is, when we have these culture days, when we have these moments of like, learning about different cultures or celebrating different foods or music or clothing. Right, that's not that it's bad, it's just not enough, right, we can't have an absence of the deeper stuff. So if that's where your kind of quote unquote, dei initiatives end, that's just not going to contribute to racial justice. 

Number two equating peace, the absence of tension, as Dr Martin Luther King Jr described it in his letter from Birmingham jail with justice. So the idea of equating peace with justice, right, that's not racial justice. Right, racial justice is not. Oh, we don't talk about it. So there's no tension we're avoiding, we're all good. Right, that is not justice we have to be able to have the constructive conflict, the disorienting dilemmas, all that stuff that we've talked about before on this podcast many times, one of the quadrants of discourse that is not contributing to racial justice. Right, this is avoidance, this is peace as the absence of tension. And we've been folks have been saying this, right, people have been saying this as the collective we for a very long time, right, dr Martin Luther King Jr's letter was decades ago and he was calling it out then, and he was calling it out then. Peace is not justice. No-transcript. 

There are so many times in my life that I have had good intentions and the impact did not match the intent and I felt defensive. I think we've all been there, right, I continue to do that, just in daily, day-to-day things. Right, maybe not racial justice related specifically, but oh, I didn't mean to say it that way, oh, I didn't mean right. And so that defensive response is natural and normal, but we have to interrogate it, we have to critique it, we have to reflect on okay, what was the impact? What were my actions? What was the impact in terms of the felt experience of whoever experienced my actions? Right, and it doesn't really matter what my intentions were if my impact was bad. So we have to have actions that promote racial justice, not saying, oh, we tried but it failed. But, well, create space for accept and transform our actions based on any sort of feedback that someone wants to give us that the impact was bad, right, that's a huge growth moment for us. That's a very big risk that someone is taking to highlight, even internally, right To reflect on your own stuff, to say, ooh, actually my impact was not good. That's good on you for reflecting, right. So that idea of being open to critique, I think, is a kind of corollary here that I'm personally just adding All right. 

Number four slowing racial justice progress by insisting on quote baby steps and quote developmental processes that protect white people from having to grapple seriously with racism. So this idea of I will share an example that I think often of in this case and I think it's related. So it's the idea of setting in a strategic goal conversation, setting goals where the percentage of students who achieve the goal is not 100%. This bothers me so much. Now I understand things happen and it is hard. It is very challenging to reach 100% and there are many factors to consider. However, if our goal is to educate all students. Our goal is to educate all students, and all that other stuff is on us to figure out. And if we don't quite get there, like, okay, we figure it out some more, we go a little bit further, we reflect, we learn more right, all of the things that we do as educators and really as learners. But we don't say that the goal is only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to be able to read by the end of this year. Right, like 100%. We can't say, oh, these are our baby steps on the way to 100%, that we will get to eventually someday, maybe in the future, but in the meantime, all of the students who are here are just not going to achieve and suffer, right? So this idea of, like, demanding action now, this sense of urgency, this sense of the students in front of us deserve 100% to be our goal, I think is really important here. That's what that number makes me think of. 

Okay, number five adhering to a savior mentality or some other ideology that positions white people as the fixers or saviors of students and families of color. So this idea that I am helping, I am giving back to community. This is like a sacrifice for for me to like, go in and like do this thing gross right, like, no, like. Why are you doing this work? Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick has said to me you know, as a white person like Lindsay, you need to do this work for yourself. You can't do this work for me because in the long run you are not going to stay committed because you're doing this for someone else. You have to believe that you, as a community member in this, in this space on this earth, as a member of the human community, are harmed by the racial injustice that impacts fellow about right. That happens to white people when we are complicit or participating in or even just observing silently or just like living in right this racial injustice, right A society that perpetuates racial injustice, right? So this idea that like the savior mentality, or like we are the folks with the answers, as white folks, like no. I think also this speaks to the shared leadership component that we often talk about on this podcast, where it's like Ayanna Pressley says this best Her mom has the quote of like the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, or something I might be paraphrasing a bit, but the folks who are experiencing the negative impacts need to be part of the conversation of how to dismantle white supremacy. So I think that's another piece that, like the knowledge, the wisdom, the experience, the ideas for moving forward, the felt experiences are in the space. Like those folks should be leading the way and we as white folks I'm speaking as a white woman should be allies right, should be co-conspirators, should be whatever name you give it, all right. 

Number six misconstruing equity as equal numbers or representation, rather than the elimination of inequity and oppression. I see a lot of folks who are in the leadership space who are saying things like we are going to increase our numbers of BIPOC teachers by this percentage this year, great, awesome, you should. And if you are saying that is enough, it's not enough. Folks are not going to come to your space and stay in your space, or perhaps they will out of necessity or whatever, but they're not going to enjoy it and be thriving if we don't eliminate the inequity and oppression that prevented people from applying in the first place right or prevented people from being hired in the first place, and this is a huge piece. 

Number seven superficially expressing a desire for diversity, but rarely engaging in meaningful practices that substantially incorporate the voices and desires of racially marginalized communities. So, again, I think the same point that I was just talking about right when we actually engage in shared leadership, in decentering our white selves right. Again, I'm speaking as a white person here because I'm just being reflective of my own experience and things that I've learned and I'm still learning. But if white folks, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, then we are just engaging in white liberalism. We are expressing the desire for diversity but not engaging in the meaningful practices. Number eight refusing to acknowledge the expertise or authority of people of color, even on matters of racial equity. Do not tell people what their experience is and what the answer should be. Right, this is I've I've repeated this multiple times in the last few points, but I think I think this is a big one. 

Number nine white educators manipulating the narratives of people of color in order to position themselves as quote well-intentioned or quote innocent. Again, this is related to some previous numbers on this list and some conversation and ad-libbing that I've done around this, but the idea of thinking you can use someone else's words to make yourself seem well-intentioned, a good person, whatever the narrative is, even when you have messed up, even when you have ignored racial injustice, when you have contributed to white liberalism and not engaged more fully in thoughtful conversation, pushing the boundaries, being critical of the structures of white supremacy. You can't just take someone else's words who happens to be Black or Indigenous or Latinx or Asian American or whatever right Native. You can't just take those words like oh, this person likes me, so like I'm cool. No, number 10, engaging in toxic positivity, insisting that conversations about racism are too quote negative and we should focus on the quote positive. So again, I think this one is similar to that idea of avoidance and the confusion of peace and justice. Right, conflating the two. 

Really important that, even if it's uncomfortable, we lean into that discomfort. We will not have growth without the discomfort and that's something we really want to and should be normalizing in our spaces. We have to be able to grapple with discomfort. I mean, even on a, on a super basic academic level, students need to be uncomfortable with being wrong. Right? Students make mistakes all the time. That's how we learn. We learn from the mistakes with formative feedback. Right, that's how learning works, and we are institutions of education. We need to tolerate, engage with, lean into the discomfort and view it as a learning opportunity, experience it as a growth moment. That might not be comfortable, but boy am I going to be better after, right. 

So what do we do with all this? This is a lot and, honestly, as I was reading this, I'm like, yes, I can identify an instance, at least an instance of every single one of these numbers on this list, right, that I have personally engaged with. That does not feel good. So what do we do with this? I think the school year as a very first step. I often end podcast episodes with, like what's the one next step to gain the momentum. So there's a lot of steps, right. There's a lot of structures we could look into. I will link to my systems transformation playlist on the blog post. You can check out page three, which is all about racial justice. Lots of resources and guests on the podcast who are way smarter than me and have a lot more expertise and wisdom to share on this, but you can check that out. If you're looking for bigger things, you can certainly buy the book, and so we'll link to that as well in the blog post. The other elephant in the classroom again is the name of that. But again, I think the first step to get the ball rolling here is actively notice where these elements show up in your school community this year. 

Reflect on your own individual actions. Where are you engaging in these, even in this moment? Reflect, even listen to this podcast episode again, or open up the blog post and read through and identify for each one. Where have you most recently done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Just like acknowledge it and then do better, right? Also, nurture a community that celebrates that identification of when it's showing up, that kind of calls each other in, so to speak, to the conversation and says, hey, I noticed this. Right. And, of course, being able to pivot to the critical end of the liberal critical spectrum, that community piece, tolerating the discomfort, engaging with it, seeing it as growth, being able to truly celebrate as growth opportunities and celebrate the vulnerability of whoever is pointing it out as well. Right, that is huge. If you can create a culture like that, you are on the path to sustainable success. That is a winning culture of true justice. Right, you have to have that community built to be able to do this work. In the author's words I'm just going to conclude with those because they are brilliant and again, author's editor's words. In the introduction which they authored they write although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it instead as an act of love and justice. 

If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school. Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. 

If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no strings attached brainstorm call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time, leaders think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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