Whiteness, meaning the institution that upholds white culture and affirms white ways of being as superior over other ways, seeks to sustain and protect itself. That’s how it survives.
Identifying its tactics is a necessary skill for understanding it. Understanding it is necessary if you seek to destroy it, as I, a Dominican woman and educator, do. I do not seek to destroy white people. I do seek to destroy white supremacy as the ideology and structure that has oppressed, killed, and destroyed the rest of us since its inception.
Lorena Germán is a two-time nationally awarded Dominican American educator focused on antiracist and antibias education and co-founder of #DisruptTexts and Multicultural Classroom. She’s been featured in the New York Times, NPR, Rethinking Schools, EdWeek, Learning for Justice Magazine and more.
This story about an antiracism curriculum in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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