Days After White Supremacist Events
From Charlottesville to the Capitol, white supremacist events force teachers to name what they are seeing — even as administrators, colleagues, and community members may prefer they look away. Days After White Supremacist Events explores how teachers create space to examine hatred, history, and the democratic values students are asked to uphold.
Overview
White supremacist events — rallies, insurrections, acts of domestic terrorism rooted in racial hatred — confront teachers with a particular challenge: naming what happened clearly and honestly in a political climate that may pressure them toward vagueness or false equivalence. For students of color, these events are existential. For other students, they may seem distant or abstract.
DAP in the wake of white supremacist events means refusing to treat hatred as a “perspective” deserving equal airtime. Teachers in Teaching on Days After modeled how to name white supremacy directly, connect it to history, and help students grapple with the gap between democratic ideals and lived reality — without abandoning hope or agency.
Key themes
- Naming white supremacy without equivocation
- Connecting contemporary events to historical patterns
- Protecting students targeted by white supremacist ideology
- Holding democratic ideals alongside honest critique of their failures
Activities & Resources
Classroom-ready protocols and tools for teaching on days after white supremacist events.