Now Racist: Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

Via Twitchy (via @snarkandboobs) with the sarcasm and such, a Portland educator wants you to ponder all the ethnonormative assumptions packed into your PB&J.

By the way, the Portland Tribune isn't snarky about this -- they give this idiot the Bold Hero Slant.

Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day.

Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year.

“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood.

“Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

Guitierrez, along with all of Portland Public Schools’ principals, will start the new school year off this week by drilling in on the language of “Courageous Conversations,” the district-wide equity training being implemented in every building in phases during the past few years.

Through intensive staff trainings, frequent staff meetings, classroom observations and other initiatives, the premise is that if educators can understand their own “white privilege,” then they can change their teaching practices to boost minority students’ performance.

I remember reading, say, 20-25 years ago, a pundit fretting about the loss of liberal persuasiveness -- why was the public growing tired of liberal appeals and electing awful insane conservatives?

The proposed answer was "Compassion Fatigue." That liberals had created such a vast and sprawling list of things we all needed to be compassionate about, and think lots of bien pensant thoughts about, that many were getting weary of it all and just wanted to get back to something called "living our own lives."

Do we ever get to just make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for a kid, or do we have to don the hairshirt whenever we do anything?

"Courageous Conversations:" These seem to be the "Courageous Conversations" referenced in the article. Via @morgenr.

Again I ask: Can I ever stop learning about you and just live my life?

posted by Ace at 02:46 PM

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