So much of the conversation about #DisruptTexts necessarily centers the reading lives of Black & brown students.

I'm going to do the WW thing of centering whiteness in the conversation for a hot minute (feel free to mute me and/or give me feedback).

The thing about #DisruptTexts is that it's about the mirrors AND windows that Dr. Bishop describes.

It's about seeing oneself AND seeing others.

In a recent board meeting, SB student Nyasha Rutanhira challenged the board to consider the harm of white washed curriculum.

She explained that when presented with single stories of Blackness, her predominantly white classmates transfered that story onto their peers.

When the story of Blackness was presented as the story of enslavement, oppression, and singular icons, that's the story those white peers carried forward.

It's not by accident that white doctors didn't believe Black patients could feel pain, that their skin was "thicker." That's the result of those white peers... growing up... writing their own texts, texts that replicated the stories they ingested.

Dr. Ruha Benjamin speaks beautifully of the concept of the "over served," I've seen this concept used to describe the "over represented."

My white students have a very good chance of making their way through our pK-12 system and never having an educator of color.

In that same system, they might only read books by white authors, centering white characters.

They can leave with what Dr. Michael describes as an "arithmetic level" of understanding around race, identity, difference.

The thing about a world that centers you is that not only are you deprived of the opportunity to get to know others, but also despite being the middle of everything, it's very possible not to know yourself at all.

I'm thankful to the work of radical dharma that helps explain the way in which white supremacy is killing all of us, in different rates & ways.

White students making their way through white schooling & reading mostly (if not exclusively) white texts is harmful... for everyone.

That's the thing about collective liberation - it's about all of us.

That's also what #DisruptTexts does so well, it centers the humanity of students & educators who teach them. It elevates texts that build/grow our common understanding. It humanizes.

I believe, with my whole heart, that my predominantly white suburban public school needs #DisruptTexts as much as any school out there.

/end rant