An up and coming author echoing the far-left liberal thinking that everyone (except, I guess, for non-Caucasians) is unconsciously racially biased.  His book is titled, Unconscious Bias in Schools – A Developmental Approach to Exploring Race and Racism. Harvard Education Press publishes it. Incidentally, the primary author is an Ed.D. graduate from Harvard. Certainly makes one go, “Hmmmm?” 

The authors propose using unconscious bias as the starting point in working with helping schools improve academically. They suggest that this approach is nonthreatening. Says who? Oh, yes. Liberals – who assume, without knowing, that all schools must be racist because most are predominantly Caucasian.

Yep, during my twelve years, I certainly designed master schedules to emphasize race even though we eliminated “basic level courses” to raise expectations and prepare every student to attend college if that was their goal. And, of course, discipline was, by its nature, racially motivated. We disaggregated our discipline data before using such information was even fashionable. When I arrived, we did not have an on-campus suspension program to keep kids in school. We created one in year one. A little later, we created a Saturday school for ongoing and minor misbehaver counseling students and parents instead of having kids come to school and pick up trash. Every kid who was suspended on- or off-campus was met with a school counselor, before getting back into school.

 I was criticized because I opened membership in the National Honor Society to special education students who had the appropriate grades. We recognized our honor roll kids each semester with a catered luncheon in a local bank’s boardroom – sponsored by the bank with community leaders in attendance. The other bank in town agreed to sponsor our Teacher of the Year Program – presenting the selected teacher with a $1000 award at an end-of-the-year banquet to be used to improve their skills by attending a national conference of their choice.

If the book authors only look at my background – an Ed.D. from Auburn and 12 years’ experience as a high school principal, I guess the judgment would be that I am a racist. 

I am personally and professionally offended that the authors would seek to paint with the broadest brush the schools and hundreds of gifted professionals and thousands of hardworking students with whom I served as inherently and unconsciously racist.

Authors, from your ivory tower, you do irreparable harm, and you either do not understand the menace of your words, or you do not care. Notwithstanding your intentions, your words are unacceptable in the honorable profession of K-12 public education, where I fought for social justice for every child under my care for more than three decades.

Shame on you for your arrogance. I propose that persons like these authors who suggest that a person or organization possesses an unconscious racial bias without ever knowing those whom they label are guilty of the racism they preach so vehemently.