Alameda Unified School District ethnic studies course features lessons that have students evaluate whether they are ‘privileged’ and ‘oppressed;’ course activities include a ‘privilege walk’
Incidents
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request provided to Parents Defending Education from Zachor Legal Institute reveal that Alameda Unified School District’s ninth grade ethnic studies curriculum focuses on students’ relationship to privilege, power, and oppression. Course assignments include students doing the “Privilege Walk,” evaluating their identities to determine if they are “privileged” or “oppressed,” and projects and writing assignments that promote left-wing causes.
The request documents include a “9th Grade ETHNIC STUDIES Syllabus” which includes course themes such as “Power and Oppression,” “Resistance and Liberation,” and “Reflection and Action.”
The section on “Power and Oppression” defines the theme as “looking at who creates the master narrative and how that impacts the lived experiences of different groups.” It creates the “understanding that laws & policies are not objective,” and are “the forces that create a system of white supremacy.”
“Learning targets” for the unit includes students being able to “determine who has power, who doesn’t, and why, and the implications of that,” students can “critique power dynamics in history as well as their own lives and society,” be able to “identify social systems that structure and perpetuate power, privilege, and oppression,” and “can identify how identities intersect to create power, privilege, and oppression.”
The unit also includes “key academic language” such as “white supremacy,” “white privilege,” “microaggressions,” and “colonized mind.”
Another unit titled “Resistance and Liberation” is defined as the “history of resisting oppression as carried out by the oppressed groups themselves.” It states that the theme “directly challenges the ‘White Savior’ narrative” and shows “how individuals who are part of oppressed groups find empowerment and claim ownership over their own experience.”
Unit “learning targets” state that students will “recognize factors and conditions that motivated people to resist power and oppression,” they will “analyze how individuals and groups have organized to resist oppression,” they will “understand the role race and gender play in resistance and liberation movements,” and students will “identify resistance and liberation movements within their own communities – past and present.”
Included in the response to our records request was an activity titled “My Relationship with Privilege and Oppression – Who am I as an intersectional human being?” which has students “highlight the groups in the green and red columns that represent” their identities and shows whether the student is “privileged or oppressed.”
Categories labeled “Privileged Groups” include “European ancestries,” “white,” “European ethnicities,” “‘First World/ U.S./ Western European,” “Christians,” “Rich, Upper Middle Class,” “men,” “cisgender,” “heterosexual,” “not traumatized or abused,” “mentally healthy,” “physically healthy,” “raised with both biological parents,” “human beings,” “‘clean’ criminal record.”
Students are then asked to reflect upon their findings by answering whether they feel “more privileged, oppressed, or equally both,” “how does this perspective affect” them, and to “share an experience illustrating privilege or oppression linked” to their identity.
An assignment titled “A Map of Myself” instructs students to write down their identity in each “identity domain” and mark whether it puts the student in a “position of privilege or marginalization.” Domain categories include “race,” “ethnicity,” “biological sex,” “gender identity/expression,” “sexual orientation,” “religion,” “dis/ability,” and “first language.”
The assignment also includes reflection questions such as “Considering all your social identities listed in the table above, on a daily basis, which ones are you most aware or conscious of?” and “which ones are you least aware or conscious of?”
An assignment provided in the collection of documents titled “4 I’s of Oppression Project” states that students will be “studying one of the following systems of oppression: white supremacy (white dominated society which leads to racism), patriarchy (male dominated society which leads to sexism), heteronormativity (the idea that everyone is our should be heterosexual/straight which leads to homophobia), or cisnormativity (the idea that everyone is or should be cisgender which leads to transphobia).”
An assignment for the course features students writing an essay on “how do social justice movements use grassroots organizing and social media to be successful?” Using the document titled “Outline for Argumentative Essay on the necessity of any social justice movement,” students will choose from several listed groups such as “#NoDAPL (Daktota [sic] Pipeline),” “Stop AAPI Hate,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Black Panther Party,” and “Land Back.”
The document provides an outline for students to follow which includes guiding prompts such as “why grassroots organizing and social media matter for social justice,” “how social media helps activists get their message out,” and “thinking about what could happen next with grassroots and social media in social justice movements.”
Also included is a document titled “Privilege Walk Response Question” which asks students to “describe the emotions and thoughts you experienced during the privilege walk” and “how has it challenged or confirmed your perceptions of privilege and inequality?”
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