Thousands of white teachers across the country have take the Courageous Conversations training: That is where they have to admit white racism is what is behind so much black dysfunction.
Lots and lots of material on that in Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry.
Now more and more teachers are starting to write about it.
Dear Colin,
We had Glenn Singleton and his “consulting” services for years Rochester Public Schools in Rochester Minnesota. I believe all in all they got 6 figures for a District that hasn’t given teachers a cost of living raise since I have been teaching – almost 20 years. Glenn and his racial program came in when we got a new Superintendent – Romain Dallemand. Romain had no superintendent experience but was hired because he was black – background from Haiti. He left the district in disgrace due to corruption. Imagine that. He got paid and rewarded first with a fat new contract and the District had to pay him off to leave. He has since been a superintendent in Macon Georgia where nearly exactly the same thing happened.
Anyways, back to Glenn. Glenn was some sort of speaker we paid to give us white teachers a sermon on how we are racist before school started. We also were given his book – paid for by the District of course to read. The paraprofessionals were even given the book. Our principal then required us to read it – even if we had to take school hours to do it. After that we had to get together and have a come to Jesus moment about the book in a group. Any dissenters were frowned upon. There was no set in stone written down policy that if you “got bucky” with the racial programming you had to be re-trained but it was implied. Teachers feared for their jobs and generally just kept quiet. At the time and still today there was a big open push to “diversify” our work force. It hasn’t been too successful as far classroom teaching goes as not too many minorities want to move up to the North to do the tough job of teaching an increasingly diverse population.
I remember one district wide “workshop” where they put us in small groups for racial discussion. Only a janitor had the guts to speak up – the rest of us all either were quiet or confessed how racist they were. It was quite an odd scene. During all of Romain and Glenn speeches and workshops we had black guys we had never seen before walking around in three piece suits with their arms folded scowling at the crowd. They seemed like security from the black panther party or something. It actually made me laugh. Even in our small groups they would walk around and peak in to seemingly make sure everything was going as planned.
Anyways, there is entire facebook pages dedicated to whistle blowing on Romain Dallemand. Glenn Singleton is frequent topic. There is probably still an active one out of Macon Georgia.
