Shared Values and Particular Identities in Anti-Racist Education
Title
Shared Values and Particular Identities in Anti-Racist Education
Description
Excerpt: In this essay, I would like to address some issues on educating about, and against, racism. Nationally prominent moral educators in the United States (such as those connected with the character education movement) have generally given race
insufficient attention, considering that it is one of the pre-eminent moral issues of our national history. Perhaps this is because the issue is so political, and so politicized, and moral educators often search for larger principles and virtues that they regard
as positioned above the political fray.
Yet we can not draw such a sharp division between morals and politics; race is
an issue that is simultaneously moral and political. “Racism” in particular has become an inextricable part of our moral vocabulary. ...
I am concerned also about movies. Film provides cultural imagery with power to educate and miseducate. It behooves us to scrutinize popular films for the moral messages they convey, should be conveying, and should not be conveying. I will
focus on the acclaimed (if commercially unsuccessful) 1997 Stephen Spielberg film Amistad, about an 1839 uprising and mutiny on a slave ship, and the subsequent legal attempts to free the African mutineers, after they were tricked into landing in the
United States.
...
insufficient attention, considering that it is one of the pre-eminent moral issues of our national history. Perhaps this is because the issue is so political, and so politicized, and moral educators often search for larger principles and virtues that they regard
as positioned above the political fray.
Yet we can not draw such a sharp division between morals and politics; race is
an issue that is simultaneously moral and political. “Racism” in particular has become an inextricable part of our moral vocabulary. ...
I am concerned also about movies. Film provides cultural imagery with power to educate and miseducate. It behooves us to scrutinize popular films for the moral messages they convey, should be conveying, and should not be conveying. I will
focus on the acclaimed (if commercially unsuccessful) 1997 Stephen Spielberg film Amistad, about an 1839 uprising and mutiny on a slave ship, and the subsequent legal attempts to free the African mutineers, after they were tricked into landing in the
United States.
...
Subject
Racial Justice
Creator
Lawrence Blum
Source
Philosophy of Education Archive, Published in Philosophy of Education, 1999. http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/issue/view/19
Date
1999
Format
PDF
Language
English
Type
Text
Coverage
United States
Files
Collection
Citation
Lawrence Blum, “Shared Values and Particular Identities in Anti-Racist Education,” Antiracism Digital Library, accessed April 23, 2024, https://sacred.omeka.net/items/show/227.
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