Am I Anti-Racist?

In ACPS, we define culturally responsive teaching as validating the cultural lenses of all students while reflecting on our cultural lenses, teaching to and through culture, and building positive learning partnerships with students and families. Whereas, anti-racist teaching confronts prejudice through practices such as the discussion of past and present racism, stereotyping, and discrimination in society. It also teaches the economic, structural and historical roots of inequality (McGregor 1993, 2).

McGregor, J. "The Effect of Role Playing and Anti-Racist Teaching on Student Racial Prejudice: A Meta Analysis of
Research." Journal of Educational Research 86, no. 4 (1993): 215-226.

Yes, while a person can strive to overcome bias and prejudice, actively working to recognize and help to dismantle structures and practices that intentionally and/or unintentionally disadvantage historically marginalized people is a much more complex goal. Our ACPS policy is designed to help us work towards this goal together.

Visit the Anti-Racism Policy page located on the ACPS website.

A member of a dominant group who works to dismantle oppression from which s/he benefits.

The act of interrupting racism.

The belief that Jewish people are an inferior race.

Adopting the characteristics and values of the dominant group.

The violent taking of land, wealth, labor of indigenous peoples through domination & conquest leading to their extermination & the Transatlantic slave trade which created a permanent underclass based on race and gender.

Favoritism toward light-skinned people of color.

The taking of another group’s cultural knowledge, traditions or practices to use for self-benefit. Objectifies and commodifies while ignoring the group’s political struggles.

Denial of opportunities. Different treatment. Granting advantages to one group while denying opportunities to another.

• Individual Discrimination – perpetuated by an individual. Structural Discrimination – perpetuated by an institution through tradition or custom.
• Organizational Discrimination – perpetuated by individuals but reinforced by established rules, policies and practices.

A perspective centered on a Western worldview that has become intrinsic to the American cultural
identity.

A system of advantage based on sexual orientation.

Fear based on heterosexual values.

Unequal power relationship.

• Temporary Inequality – Temporary power-over relationship. Socially defined superior and inferior groups. Superior group has responsibility to “raise up” inferior group and to eventually end the relationship of inequity.
• Permanent Inequality – Permanent power-over relationship. Superiors enforce inequity and do not help inferiors. No goal to end inequality.

A system of advantage based on race rooted in and reinforced by cultural, political, economic and educational foundations. Never accidental.

Internalized belief of racial inferiority about own racial group.

Internalized belief of gender inferiority based on gender.

The intersection where multiple forms of oppression come together.

Internalized racism played out among different racial communities of color.

A hatred of women.

A relationship that exists between groups where dominates benefit at the expense of subordinates reinforced by a system of social inequity.

A belief that men are superior to women. Culture is male dominated, centered, and identified.

An attempt by non-whites with light-skinned privilege to skirt the discrimination barriers imposed by law and custom by attempting to “pass” for white.

A preconceived belief usually based on limited information.

An ever-evolving social, legal and political construct that has no bias in biological fact.

A disputed concept. Discrimination (a denial of opportunity) by subordinates against dominants.

A system of advantage based on gender.

Access to social, cultural, and economic resources and decision-making.

An unacknowledged system of favoritism and advantage granted to white people as the beneficiaries of historical conquest. Benefits include preferential treatment, exemption from group oppression and immunity from perpetuating social inequity.

A system of exploitation to maintain wealth, power and white privilege.