Education Week - June 16, 2021 - 20

16
What Does It Mean
To Call a Program
'Evidence-Based' Anyway?
17
8 Considerations for
When You Design
High-Impact Tutoring
18
Letters to the Editor
I Am an Indian American Man.
I Had Anti-Racist Work to Do
Self-reflection
and identity
development in
adults contribute
to better learning
outcomes
I
t began with a question from my
mother. I was sitting next to her
on a beige loveseat in the living
room of my parents' beige house
in suburban Minneapolis. It was
August 2014. We were watching
a live news report from the
uprising in Ferguson, Mo., where 18-yearold
Michael Brown had been shot dead by a
white police officer and left for four hours,
face down in the street.
" Why do they always have to riot? " my
mother asked.
Her question was a variation on a
common theme, a mixture of disdain
and feigned confusion. My immigrant
mother's insinuation was clear: " Why can't
they [Black people] behave like us [Indian
Americans]? "
We continued to watch in silence. Teachers I
knew were marching alongside their students,
and I worried for their safety. My mind raced
as I fumbled to formulate the perfect response
to my mother.
I chose to remain silent, as I was taught
to do.
Days after that exchange, I still struggled
to reconcile my mother's cold response with
what I knew about her experiences with
racism as an Indian immigrant. I feared her
blind spots hinted at my own.
As the executive director of a local
education nonprofit at the time, I saw
firsthand how racism exists within our public
education system. I considered myself an ally
to students. But I lacked a deeply internalized
sense of how the construction of my racial and
ethnic identities presented me with a unique
opportunity to combat anti-Black racism.
Without this insight, I began to understand
that my effectiveness as a true advocate for
racial justice in our classrooms would be
limited.
Around this time, I read writer Soya
Jung's assertion that, as Asians in America,
" [o]ur options are invisibility, complicity, or
resistance. " The words rattled me because
I realized how often I actively chose silence
when witnessing racist behavior and how
often I made excuses for my invisibility. It was
my survival strategy. Jung's powerful framing
forced me to confront this reality: Identifying
as a person of color by itself does little to fulfill a
commitment to education equity. I needed to
reckon with how racism operates in my own
life and what it means to actively resist antiBlack
racism as an Indian American.
I started by researching the long history of
Indians in America and wondered how we
were wrought from the " least desirable race
By Anil Hurkadli
HURKADLI is a former
Minneapolis public schools
district leader and a former
executive director for Teach
For America in the Twin Cities.
He recently graduated from
the John F. Kennedy School
of Government's Mid-Career
Master in Public Administration
program, where he studied the
intersection of politics, policy,
and racial justice.
20 | EDUCATION WEEK | June 16, 2021 | www.edweek.org/opinion
of immigrants " into the " model minority "
my parents seemed so desperate to become.
The answer wasn't difficult to find. During
the Cold War, the " model minority " myth
" provided a powerful means for the United
States to proclaim itself a racial democracy
and, thereby, credentialed to assume the
leadership of the free world, " explains
historian Ellen Wu.
This new understanding of the modelminority
myth made me curious to better
know my family's complicated relationship to
it. My grandfather and great-uncle taught at
historically Black colleges after immigrating
from India. A 1969 article in a local Virginia
newspaper described the new, " exotic "
sari-clad acting librarian-my tenacious
grandmother.
I asked my mother to share details from her
immigration story. I heard the stifled pain in
her voice as she recounted how isolated she
felt during those early years in America. I
finally understood why she let my siblings and
me quit our Hindi language lessons as kids
and skip Diwali celebrations as teenagers.
To her, assimilation was a matter of survival.
Unintentionally, she passed along to me this
instinct to conform and remain invisible.
What I realized is that my identities
always matter, whether I knew it or not.
As a child, I was taught by my family that
direct communication and emotional
expressiveness were almost always bad. I still
become activated when I hear a raised voice.
Of course, the act of increasing the volume of
one's voice is neither inherently good nor bad.
Knowing why I instinctively react in this way
helps me remain curious when working with
people who have different preferences.
Reading and personal reflections are a
modest start. Putting that thinking into
action matters more. Albeit awkwardly, I
first practiced noticing and explicitly naming
racism in spaces where my colleagues
were overlooking their biases. I do so now
by humbly sharing my own mistakes and
reiterating my belief that each of us is capable
of being and doing better every day. I ask hard
questions intended to provoke learning. It can
be deeply uncomfortable, but my comfort is
not the priority when the stakes are the lives
and livelihoods of our students.
I can also see when my voice isn't necessary
as an Indian American man in conversations
about racism or sexism, and my role is,
instead, to simply step aside, listen, and be
willing to be changed by what I hear. This
has become a critical aspect of my program
evaluation work, and research equity is a
central concept for me while considering
concepts of validity, ownership, value, and
accountability.
Self-awareness engenders authenticity, which
our students can easily spot. When we claim
our identities as educators, it allows us to create
more responsive curriculum and instruction.
And it models for young people what it looks like
when identities and agency are integrated-
without their full understanding of who they
are, they are not fully empowered. These are
key factors in student success.
By ignoring the important role that selfreflection
and identity development play in our
students' lives, we increase the risk that they will
absorb the endless stream of racist narratives
that feed them harmful messages about who
they are. This disrupts their ability to thrive.
As lawmakers across the country attempt
to restrict our ability to discuss race in
our classrooms, I am reminded of my
responsibility in actively resisting antiBlackness
as an Indian American man who
works in public education. I am certain that
being unapologetically Indian American
includes a lifelong responsibility to dispel the
model-minority myth, reject racial hierarchy,
and act every day upon the ongoing calls for
racial justice.
And I am no longer silent with my mother.
I try my best to honor the pain and joy of her
story while helping her understand that ours
sits within a larger context that requires us to
be seen and act in solidarity with others. She
listens quietly and nods sometimes.
We won't always get it right, but we are
accountable to try. 
Elena Medvedeva/iStock/Getty Images Plus
http://www.edweek.org/opinion
Education Week - June 16, 2021

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