Racism and Public Works

The pink magnolias are starting to come out -- this tree is going to be a cloud of blossoms in a week or two. Look at all those buds!

Professional Development yesterday wasn't as tedious as one might expect. It was about structural racism and how it affects children's performance in schools. For example, if children feel picked on or singled out or somehow threatened, their brains are paying more attention to survival than to learning -- their brain stem goes into fight-or-flight mode, which short-circuits any activity in the "learning zone" of the pre-frontal cortex. Obviously I know that children who are happier and more comfortable are better students, but I'd never heard about the brain chemistry involved.

There's an online training session we're supposed to complete as well, and I only finished 66 percent of it, so I need to go back and do that today.

I absolutely do believe that structural racism exists. A lot of people are uncomfortable with this idea but it makes perfect sense to me -- people who come from advantaged backgrounds, and in the USA and most of the West that has typically meant white people, tend to do better themselves for a variety of reasons. And people who are part of groups that are perceived to be "less successful" have higher hurdles to jump. That doesn't mean there aren't other factors involved in success, like class and wealth, but race is often heavily correlated with those.

There are a lot of poor white people too, but even they have an immediate advantage because they are unburdened by assumptions and expectations based on race. They may have other barriers based on class or accent or region -- that has certainly been historically true here in England, and that's a problem as well. But racial assumptions seem a heavier burden to me.

Anyway, I'm not saying anything new here, but I found it all interesting.

In notes from the Department of Public Works, remember that sidewalk that was so slanted someone put God-awful planters on it to keep people from walking there? Well, there's been a massive project to level it out. Crews came in, dug up the pavement, moved around utilities, and made a huge mess in general so that now there's a flatter sidewalk in front of this new building.

And no more planters. Of course, I wonder where the plants went.

It looks pretty good, doesn't it?

And closer to home...

...this is happening across the street. Don't ask me what it is, but a jackhammer was out there at 9 p.m. on Sunday night plowing up the pavement. Kind of an interesting time to start that project, but maybe the pavement had to be gone so crews could do their work on Monday. As I always say, never a dull moment!