Call for Responses to Racist Op-Ed

From Bill Kuch

Conor Casey is urging us to respond to the piece in VtDigger. We should respond. 

Here is his message to me:

"Any chance you can put out an alert to have folks respond to this ridiculous commentary about systemic racism by Deb Buckram (TJ's former opponent):

https://vtdigger.org/2018/03/02/deborah-bucknam-systemic-racism/

Her comments about Kiah Morris are pretty horrific!"

From: Elizabeth Filskov <lizfilskov@comcast.net>
Date: Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: Response to VTDigger piece
To: Bill Kuch <bkuch@vtdemocrats.org>
Cc: Conor Casey <ccasey@vtdemocrats.org>, Julian Fenn <julian.p.fenn@gmail.com>

Hello -

Here is what I have written. I bounced it off of a friend at the NAACP, and she gave it a go.

As a public school teacher, I do not have the same rights to free speech as non-educators. As such, I ask that someone else use what I’ve written. I am a single mother and cannot afford to be accused of, “behavior unbecoming of a teacher”, which would result in termination, as charged by a parent, community, board member or otherwise. You will recall I teach in Rutland City. I have a Master of Arts in Teaching French and Francophone Studies, with an emphasis on African and Antilles cultures, just as an FYI. 

Thank you for your understanding. 

Please use/share at your discretion.

Yours truly,

Liz Filskov

I am writing in response to Deborah Bucknam’s March 2 op-ed in VT Digger, which reads, alarmingly, as a monolithic, ethnocentric diatribe of white supremacy. It is riddled with contradiction and reinforces racist stereotypes.

Bucknam writes that, “The (American, public) educational system for African-Americans is something to get away from”. She attests that administrators tolerate bad behavior and low academic achievement of African American students, and that, thusly, African American students are poorly educated and fare less well than their white counterparts in life.

This is a sweeping proclamation. Rather than acknowledge the brutal and inhumane (history of) systemic racism and oppression against People of Color in the United States, she makes a hopeless case. Is she implicitly making a case for segregation then, or of not educating People of Color? Rather than acknowledge racism, and the facts of systemic lower wages and higher rates of incarceration of People of Color for the same wrongdoings by their white counterparts, she professes the very racist stereotypes that plague people of color, while contradicting the argument she is trying to make.

She maintains that the “bias-free” policing of predominantly non-white communities is backfiring. She argues on the one hand that People of Color are NOT victims to be saved (an imposed, white narrative for People of Color by whites), and in the same breath paints in dubious hues the validity of a bias-free initiative precisely because people of color are dangerous and need to be managed (read: by white people). Her white, elitist lens makes the case for racial hierarchy while trying, unskillfully, to argue against it.

Bucknam posits that the ancestors of African Americans in this country have been “acculturated” in the United States for long enough, suggesting that African Americans today should be able to attain the academic rigor they encounter in their predominantly white culture, citing specifically the police exam. Police brutality in non-white communities is so well documented (Bucknam suggests it is non-existent in predominantly white ones) that the FBI has investigated the “infiltration” of white supremacists in local and state law enforcement.

Academics know that course content and the assessments built to demonstrate their erudition is culturally imbued. Again, Bucknam’s proclamation is a racist reinforcement of a stereotype and a denial of the African American experience. She maintains that, “…white elites compound… racism by instituting easier and easier academic standards… (that) African Americans cannot master (the academic rigor required of the police examination)”. Bucknam makes the ethnocentric assumption that White Anglo culture *is* the culture of African Americans – or at least it should be by now. The expectation that African Americans should be acculturated by now is a grotesque display of white supremacy through the lens of a colonizer.

Last, Bucknam paints Representative Morris’ account through the white supremacist, infantilizing lens of victim-needing-to-be-saved. Indeed, the white-male legislator who opposed the BLM resolution was “ignorant” of Morris’ experiences. He is not a Woman of Color. The dismissal and unwillingness to acknowledge any experience that isn’t white and privileged has become a right-wing counter to the Black Lives Matter movement. This isn’t a matter of a media outlet pushing a black stereotype of victimhood – it is a matter of privileged whites rejecting the voice and the experience of a Woman of Color.

I am deeply concerned that Ms. Bucknam teaches at all, but that she teaches law. There is indeed systemic racism in Vermont and elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean it should be perpetuated and not fully acknowledged. It is you, Ms. Bucknam, who is clearly ignorant of the Black Experience. You do not speak for white people as a whole, and you certainly do not speak for the Black community. You represent a camp afraid to listen; I represent a camp willing and ready to cede the floor. This is not a risk, but rather an opportunity.