The First Ever Anti-Racism School Is Set to Open Its Doors This Fall

In the Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, a new pre-school set to open its doors in the fall of 2017, plans on implementing anti-racist and social justice doctrine into its teachings!

Benjamin Gore and Jason Frelot plan on opening the preschool at the back of the Columbia City Church of Hope, where they vow to educate pre-schoolers on the “experiences of people of color.” After generating massive attention the school has been dubbed as the “anti-racism pre-school,” and it’s set to open its doors in the fall of 2017, following a lot of community workshops for parents and children residing in and around the neighborhood.

“We’re looking to create the confidence that when these kids go into predominately white schools that they can bring counter-narratives to the school,” said Gore in an interview with King5 News.

The two teachers say that that pre-school education must extend far beyond singing songs, reading picture books, and naptime. As an alternative, Gore and Frelot plan to carry the discussion of race and racism all throughout the course of the students’ time at the pre-school. The curriculum is set to include telling “the stories that are untold” and the diligent teachers vow to actively change any preceding biases the students may have.

The teachers’ mindset follows the belief that toddlers can be inherently sexist and racist. It’s a view promoted by academic institutions such as Evergreen College, also in Washington State, which is holding a series of workshops for parents to help them cure their young children of racist, sexist, and other discriminatory thoughts.

Set to open next fall, the school is currently holding a series of community workshops for children and parents at Columbia City Church of Hope. The church describes itself as a “progressive community of faith” where “everyone is welcome,” including “old, young, gay, straight, believers, doubters, fence-sitters, activists, scientists, poets, and slackers.”

“We work for justice,” the church’s website elaborates, “especially for those who are systematically denied it: people experiencing homelessness, those who identify as LGBT, People of Color, those who are economically marginalized.”

Racism is disruptive in the classroom and hinders learning

For 15-year-old Zion Agostini, the start of an ordinary school day is like trying to navigate a minefield of racial profiling and. At an early age, walking home from elementary school with his older brother, Agostini noticed the differential treatment police gave to African Americans in his community: “I [saw] people get stopped, get harassed, get arrested for minor offenses.” About 10 years later, Agostini said he now faces the same treatment as a sophomore at Nelson Mandela School for Social Justice in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. “Me being a black male, I’m more likely to be stopped and frisked by a cop. Then, [I’m] going to school with more cops … [messing] with me at 7 in the morning.”

Agostini’s morning is always met by the daily routine of passing through a metal detector, emptying pockets, and removing clothing that frequently makes him late to his first-period class. “The fact is now I’m [tardy] because I’m being scanned four times because of the metal in my necklace or my keys. I missed whatever [the teacher] was explaining … a lot goes on in [chemistry], and because of that I’m behind.” All of this combined takes a huge toll on his classwork, he said. “It does make it extremely hard to focus on the classwork … You’re upset, or sad, or just emotional about what just happened. It takes a while to settle.” Schools are places for learning, growing, and achieving no matter what your background is; our schools should be treated like schools, not airports.

A recent study from Northwestern University reinforces Agostini’s experience, demonstrating that the stress of racial discrimination may partly explain the large and repetitive gaps in academic performance between some nonwhite students, predominantly African American and Latino youth. The team of researchers found that “the physiological response to race-based stressors—be it perceived racial prejudice, or the drive to outperform negative stereotypes—leads the body to pump out more stress hormones in adolescents from traditionally marginalized groups. This biological reaction to race-based stress is compounded by the psychological response to discrimination or the coping mechanisms youngsters develop to lessen the distress. What emerges is a picture of African American and Latino students whose concentration, motivation, and, ultimately, learning is impaired by unintended and overt racism.”