I saw some pages from the textbook. Here's one:
The number of things wrong with this page takes up more text than the page itself.
It positions historical US style racism against Blacks as unique, while ignoring how there was also discrimination against other European groups (Slavics, Ashkenaz Jews) and there are was also major discrimination in other cultures (i.e., the caste system.) The analysis would change significantly if US style discrimination against Blacks was placed into context of all such bigotry,
The use of a Nazi-era image of racism in a page on American racism subtly equates the two, comparing US racism today to to that of Nazis in the 1930s. Students would view this as moral equivalence, which is grotesque.
The Toni Morrison quote is presented as fact and used twice, forms the moral anchor of the page. Yet it is contradicted on the page itself - the next paragraph refers to Irish Americans, Italian Americans and Jewish Americans.
Portraying those groups assimilation as them being "absorbed into the expanding category of being called White” implies some sort of colonialist mentality by the majority culture - another rhetorical weapon against the normative desire by the immigrants to become part of their new nation in order to succeed.
The very concept of "Whitening" is a racial interpretation of normal assimilation into American culture, something that both the immigrants and the larger society largely wanted to occur. A racist society would resist, not encourage, the "other" to become part of the majority.
Moreover, the groups who did successfully assimilate are positioned as a kind of traitors, choosing to become racist "whites" when they just wanted to succeed, as most normal people want. (Of course, the essay is against normativity as well.)
The page is meant to define "Whiteness," but it changes the meaning throughout. Is it a racial descriptor, or an implied power structure, or a norm-enforcing ideology? The last sentence of the first paragraph would allow many of today's' Black people to be defined as "white." The word becomes a pejorative when it can mean nothing more than becoming an integral part of American society. Or perhaps the message being given is that there is something wrong with being a proud American.
The "whiteness as racelessness" theme is also muddled. White supremacists clearly do not consider themselves raceless - they are proud of their so-called "white heritage." This page positions whiteness as damned if you do, damned if you don't - by any definition, being white is racist.
The idea that whiteness is implicitly "normal" and other groups are then inferior is contradicted by the Jewish experience, where Jews are positioned as dominant and scheming - as too smart and too particular. As is often the case, the Jewish example proves the ideology's basic tenets are wrong.
This is astonishingly bad for a textbook that is meant to give children a moral framework. The cure is worse than the illness.
The publisher of "Voices" says it is "committed to making an ethical difference in the world of public education." I guess that is true. It is making public education significantly less ethical.
This page itself is all the proof you need that ethnic studies, as taught today, is not just wrong but is itself immoral.
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