bz-logo-standard-sig

Blog

“IN THE NAME OF GOD…WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA?”

Beatrice Fennimore January 19, 2026

“In the name of God…what is happening in America?”

Many United States citizens may be asking this question right now. This quote came to my mind as I decided to write a blog in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday this year. I must have heard that quote hundreds of times over more than 30 years as I repeatedly showed my university students the segment of the Eyes on the Prize documentary called, “Fighting Back: 1957-1962.” Here is the whole quote:

“In the name of God who we all revere, in the name of liberty we hold so dear, in the name of decency which we all cherish, what is happening in America?”

The speaker, Governor Orval Faubus, is actually referring to the decision of President Dwight Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne Division of the United States to protect the “Little Rock Nine” (9 Black students) as they entered Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Earlier, Governor Faubus had first surrounded the high school with the Arkansas National Guard to block the Black students from entry. He then removed the National Guard when the courts ordered him to do so. When the Black students attempted entry to the building again, there was an angry mob outside. The students had only the minimal protection of local police, who soon found that they could not hold the mob back any longer. The decision was made to rush the Black students out of the building in unmarked cars in fear for their lives. Only when the 101st Airborne Division arrived, and then remained in the school to protect the Black students, was the intended racial integration accomplished. For a while, and at great personal cost to the Little Rock Nine.

I showed this segment of Eyes on the Prize to my students over more than 30 years for a number of reasons. I wanted them to see the documented history of the Civil Rights Movement as it really existed, because so many had been offered little or no understanding of that movement during their education. But, even more importantly, I wanted them to think critically about historical political conflict over human rights and to see the actions of so many brave people who stood up against racial oppression. Yes, Governor Faubus represented the vision of a segregated south. Many others did too. But a lot of determined individuals and groups from every walk of life did not let their dream of liberty and equality die. Ultimately, much good came about for many people. As Representative John Lewis later said, activists for racial equality were making “good trouble; necessary trouble.”

During this segment of Eyes on the Prize, someone asks, “Was this the start of a new Civil War?” It could have been, it might have come close, but the conflicts were resolved.

The Constitution held, the power of peaceful protest reverberated around the world, and the nation moved forward. Now, on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, I see how complicated our commitment to constitutional rights and liberty and justice for all has become. Once again, we are seeing military presence in our cities. Once again, we are seeing violence and struggle.

We are in a different but intense struggle for democracy and for the upholding of our Constitution. The central issue this time is not school integration. Instead, the focus has been on immigrants who are undocumented and living in our nation. But the focus now appears to be expanding to the rights that have been guaranteed to all of us in the United States. The right to assembly and freedom of speech. The right to protest what we believe is wrong. The right to be informed by a free press. The right of our elected government officials to speak out and protect the citizens of their states. The right for all of us to see the faces and read the identification badges of men and women who stop our cars or seek to enter our homes or confront us in the street. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The recent shooting death of Nicole Good in Minnesota has to be a wake-up call for all of us. Is the violent treatment of immigrants now spilling over into civil society and endangering citizens engaged in protest? As she tried to move her car, the gentle words she said to the ICE officer were “It’s OK dude, I’m not mad at you.” I recognize there is a lot of dispute about what happened next. But cell phone videos have been analyzed carefully from different visual standpoints and are available to the public. * Nicole Good’s wheels were turning right and away from the ICE officers. The ICE official she was later accused of running over was clearly standing away from the side of the car as he shot and killed her.  The words we heard directly after the shooting were “Fucking bitch.”

“In the name of God…what is happening in America?”

We have a lot of problems to solve in the United States: among them are hunger, poverty, homelessness, and lack of widespread affordable health care.  As citizens, we have a sacred responsibility to try to solve these problems as well as we can. The words of Louis Brandeis ring out loud and clear on the wall of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia;

“The only title in our democracy superior to that of president is the title citizen.”

We are not just Republicans and Democrats! We are citizens who should be united in common purpose. Our most important task at this time is to think for ourselves, and stand up against political forces that seek to divide us. We need to interrupt the hate speech and dehumanizing talk that steers us toward scapegoating others. We must let the highest level of government know that we object to reference to entire groups of people as “garbage” and “rapists” and “animals” and “bloodthirsty criminals.” We must let the government know that we do not think that people who utilize their freedom of speech and who protest inhumane and violent treatment of others are “radical left thugs.” We are better than that! And we know our rights! We need to demand more integrity, honesty, compassion, and transparency from our government leaders.

I cannot tell you how many times people have asked me, at the end of my courses or presentations, what anyone could really do to change society. My answer has always been and still is the idea of Dr. Aaron Wildavsky**in his book “Speaking Truth to Power.” We can face our problems. And we can try to make them better problems by making them more worthy of our moral selves. We can hope that one day in the future we will be remembered as the brave and courageous citizens who truly, really preserved the greatness of this nation.

*New York Times Frame by Frame Analysis:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010648638/ice-shooting-renee-good-minneapolis-videos-analysis.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20260118&instance_id=169501&nl=the-morning&regi_id=68926723&segment_id=213880&user_id=f3558760d6bc05b1ffc0b291b0b2df63

Wildavsky, A. (1979). SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER: THE ART AND CRAFT OF POLICY ANALYSIS. Boston, Little Brown and Company.

This blog is written by Beatrice Fennimore (Bz Fennimore) an educator and activist whose career has focused on child advocacy, public school equity, social justice, and the practice of anti-bias education. 

https://www.bzfennimore.blog

WHY IS IT DANGEROUS TO ASK A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO BE MERCIFUL?

Beatrice Fennimore January 25, 2025

Why is it dangerous to ask a President of the United States to be merciful?

I encourage everyone in the United States, political persuasion aside, to reflect carefully on the possible dangers embedded in the decision of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde to ask our newly inaugurated President to have mercy during a prayer service at the National Cathedral. She asked for mercy for the immigrants who had been routinely maligned with dehumanizing and threatening descriptions. She asked for mercy for the many children living in fear of the loss of their immigrant parents. She asked for mercy for the children in fear for their lives because of their sexual identities. In her own words:

“Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”

Why or how could such a request on the part of an ordained Episcopal Bishop invite danger in the form of offensive public derision and hateful communications? Isn’t it the responsibility of a religious leader ordained in the Christian faith to defend those who are helpless and marginalized? Isn’t it the right of an ordained Bishop, in their own house of worship, to represent the values and beliefs of their faith? Why are we surprised or even outraged when their conscience compels them to try to wipe away the tears of the real children and adults who have been reduced to offensive and dehumanizing political descriptions? Is it possible, as this blog will suggest, that we in the United States have fallen into a pit of silence so deep that speaking truth to power has been reduced to a dangerous radical act?

This blog entry is written neither to explore partisan politics nor to examine the merit of the specific focus on Bishop Budde’s plea. Rather, it is written for two purposes. One purpose is to ask you to consider what you might fear if you spoke up to advocate for justice and fairness in a controversial issue affecting your family, community, or workplace? The other purpose is to suggest that the way to reduce the danger of speaking up in our democratic society is to make it more of a norm and less of a striking phenomenon. When the courage to speak up in controversy abounds, critical targeting of isolated individuals becomes much more difficult.  I see it as an essential social responsibility, for the good of all, to speak up when groups of people are being treated in ways to which we object on personal, moral, or religious grounds.

What are we afraid of? I will use the example of the many graduate students, already professional educators, who attended my university classes. When I urged these educators to bravely stand up for children and advocate for equity and equality in schools, I consistently ran into roadblocks. Most of my wonderful students readily recognized and freely discussed inequities and injustices in education: vast disparities in school funding, resegregation and increased stratification of privileged and disprivileged students, harsher school discipline policies for students marginalized by race or class, inappropriate focus on practicing for standardized tests rather than fostering deep and meaningful learning, and dehumanizing educator talk about students affected by poverty (to name a few). However, once I suggested the importance of their willingness to stand up and speak out about injustices, the discussion frequently took a steep detour. My students shared their real fears about the risks of speaking out. Assertive advocacy for disprivileged students receiving inferior school services might antagonize their colleagues and administrators, which would make their daily workplace uncomfortable. Testimony at a school board meeting about unfair discipline practices targeting poor children would likely result in retribution and the loss of advancement opportunities. Exposure to the press of the impact of unequal resources on children in school was sure to result in plunging performance evaluations, transfer, or even loss of their jobs. The list went on and on but the message was the same. Speaking out on behalf of the more vulnerable and marginalized students would place the educators at risk for retaliation. They said they knew people who had experienced such retribution, they feared it, and they had to think first about protection of their careers and their families.

How about you? Have you thought carefully about the reasons why you might prefer to remain silent or to stay behind the scenes? Do you privately acknowledge injustice and unfairness where you live or work but stay quiet for fear of discomfort or retribution?  Do you feel that you must compromise the ideals with which you began your job or career to survive in it? Are you afraid of antagonizing friends and neighbors by standing up for those experiencing oppression or discrimination in society? Such thoughts and feelings are not without justification, because life can change considerably when we represent our values and beliefs out in the open. However, if we cherish the Constitutional ideals of liberty and justice for all, and we value our right to the freedom of speech, we need the courage and humility to stand up for what we believe is right. This doesn’t mean that we have to depart from courtesy and sensitivity to the beliefs and values of others. It does mean that we need to be people known for strongly articulating our own beliefs and social concerns.

Years ago, as a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University, I took an inspiring course with an accomplished scholar and activist in the area of juvenile justice. They told us that, as educators, we needed to struggle to understand and help children in great trouble even when we didn’t think we were making any progress. “They will know you are struggling for them,” they said, “and seeing you struggle with perseverance will give them the confidence to struggle for themselves in the future.”

I would like to thank Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde for renewing my belief that there are many brave, peaceful citizens who take the risk of speaking out to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized people of our nation and of the world. It is time, perhaps more than ever before, to stand up for those who are endangered, oppressed, and marginalized. There are risks, yes, but there are also great rewards—not the least of which is knowing that we are people who have the courage to come out of ourselves and be known in public for our compassionate commitment to freedom and justice for all.

This blog is written by Beatrice Fennimore (Bz Fennimore) an educator and activist whose career has focused on child advocacy, public school equity, social justice, and the practice of anti-bias education. 

https://www.bzfennimore.blog

WE NEED TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE IMPACT OF POLITICAL HATE SPEECH ON CHILDREN!

Beatrice Fennimore November 22, 2024

 “…hate speech is understood as any kind of communication in speech, writing or behavior, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are…” (United Nations Strategy and Plan on Hate Speech)

I am a  teacher educator committed to helping children live peacefully in our diverse and complex world.  My years of working in the field of education have exposed me to many codes of conduct for students in public and independent schools across our nation.  These codes have focused on core values of life in a democratic society. They have emphasized that all students should feel welcome and safe in an environment in which they are treated fairly. Students have been encouraged to develop empathy for others and to embrace the diversity in their schools as valuable. There is a common expectation that all interactions with staff, teachers, and other students will reflect civility and respect. Many of these school codes of conduct reflect years of work of child advocates and education scholars to infuse a multicultural and anti-bias stance into school practice. Overall, school students have been encouraged to develop the social skills and values that prepare them to be the good citizens we will need for a peaceful future in the United States.

After reflecting on these school codes of conduct, I have to be deeply concerned about the exposure of children to some of the hateful and hostile discourse publicly displayed by candidates during our recent political campaigns. How are students now supposed to make sense of the gap between the behavior expected of them and the antithetical behavior of candidates for higher office? Will some of them now believe that it is acceptable to hurl demeaning insults that denigrate others? Imagine a school student who calls a teacher “scum” or “garbage” because of their birthplace of origin. Consider the possibility that a group of students on a playground are heard calling immigrant classmates “animals” or “rapists” or “blood thirsty criminals.”  Imagine students in a social studies class who refer to newscasters as “disgusting” or voters as “radical-left thugs” because of their political views. These hypothetical scenarios may seem far-fetched, but they should raise our awareness of the dilemma now faced by our child population. It would appear that some successful political candidates have spoken and acted in ways that would have resulted in their own detention, suspension, or even expulsion from school.

Perhaps because of our deep social divide and emotional political polarization during the recent campaigns, we forgot that our children were watching. Many of their hearts and minds have inevitably been affected by the offensive slurs, angry insults, and vicious scapegoating they have witnessed. We now have a responsibility as a nation – as parents, politicians, teachers, religious leaders, public servants, and concerned citizens, to help children process election-related fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. We need to show them, bipartisan differences aside, that we intend to work together to maintain a peaceful and positive social climate in which they can thrive. An important first step must be letting our local, state, and national leaders know that we will neither condone nor tolerate the presence of hate speech in further political discourse. All future campaigns and elections should be characterized by intelligent and respectful articulation of a variety of opposing beliefs and political positions. The children will be watching again, and hopefully they will see confirmation that the behavioral standards to which they are held in school are also upheld by those who seek election to the highest government positions in the United States of America.

Beatrice S. Fennimore is a teacher educator whose publications have focused on child advocacy, anti-bias education, public school equity,  and dehumanizing educator talk about children. 

My Latest Article on Dehumanizing Educator Talk!

Beatrice Fennimore May 14, 2023

Greetings blog readers,

I invite you to read my latest article (published May 11, 2023) which has been accepted for a future issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education. It is already published now in Open Access and is freely available to all readers. This article is focused on deficit and damage- based educator talk about targeted children and families.

My long experience in working as a professor with university students in rural, urban, and suburban schools has inspired my focus on denigrating and deficit-based educator talk.  We teacher educators who become routine school visitors often gain insights into the unguarded daily life of administrators, teachers, and children.  It became clear to me that many highly regarded educators did not consider denigrating and deficit-based talk (beyond the hearing of children and families) to be unethical. Rather, they seemed to believe that such talk had no influence on their professional practice.  Yet I came to believe that deficit-based and denigrating talk deeply affected the ways in which children with targeted diversities were received and treated in the process of education.

I approach this problem as an explicit topic within anti-racist and anti-bias education. In this article, I center deficit-based educator talk in the larger issue of dehumanization.  I have made specific recommendations for teacher educator reflection and practice that are grounded in four intersecting theories.

Although dehumanizing educator talk is a problem across Pre-K/16 education, I have focused in this article on early childhood teacher education. I have always loved early childhood education, and specialized in it during my doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. It is early childhood educators who encounter children as their first experiences in care and formal education begin. If early childhood teacher educators enact a specific challenge to dehumanizing educator talk, they can create new narratives of hope and possibility for all children and families. Hopefully these narratives will follow children into their later educational experiences.

Beatrice S. Fennimore (2023) Dismantling dehumanizing educator talk about children and families: the moral imperative for early childhood teacher educators, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, DOI: 10.1080/10901027.2023.2204306

This blog is written by Beatrice Fennimore (Bz Fennimore) an educator and activist whose career has focused on child advocacy, public school equity, social justice, and the practice of anti-bias education.     https://www.bzfennimore.

 

 

IS HATE SPEECH TOLERATED IN PUBLIC SERVICE-ORIENTED INSTITUTIONS?

Beatrice Fennimore October 9, 2020

IS HATE SPEECH TOLERATED IN PUBLIC SERVICE-ORIENTED INSTITUTIONS?

“…hate speech is understood as any kind of communication in speech, writing, or behavior, that attacks or uses pejorative language with reference to a person or group…”

United Nations Strategy and Action Plan on Hate Speech*

While traveling some years ago through an unfamiliar city, I made a wrong turn on my way to a major highway.  I found myself driving around a tree-lined neighborhood with many run- down and abandoned homes until I spotted some police officers standing on a street corner. As I pulled over to ask them for directions, they approached my car in alarm. One of them said, “Miss, do you realize that you are in a really dangerous neighborhood?” I explained that I was lost, and the officers quickly directed me to the highway entrance nearby. As I closed my car window, I was told, “You are probably OK getting out of here, because the animals in this neighborhood only come out at night.”

Those words chilled me then and they chill me now. I remembered them as I watched the horrible murder of George Floyd on the nightly news. Hateful words that demean others are never benign; they can lead to many forms of vicious human harm. Reflecting on the words of the officer as I drove home that day, I recalled a letter that I had received long ago from a former student who had accepted a teaching position in a major U.S. city after graduating. She had specifically chosen that position because she wanted to dedicate her career to children in urban schools located in impoverished communities. Unfortunately, my former student had written to tell me she had resigned from the new teaching position after just a few weeks.  The negative professional climate of the school had upset her a great deal; she felt that the children were being treated very badly. She wrote, “…I feel terrible leaving the children. They are not ‘little animals’ as they were described by some of the teachers and administrators in the school.”

These were two isolated incidents, of course. Generalizations about police, or teachers, or people who devote their lives in any way to service of others are never appropriate.  The outstanding and generous contributions of so many people can be made invisible by indisputably unacceptable behaviors of some. Nonetheless, these memories of people referred to as “animals” make it important for me to ask – is hate speech tolerated where you work? It may be behind the scenes, it may exist because of the tremendous challenges inherent in the job, it may exist because people have become frustrated and discouraged – but it still damages the very people you are responsible for helping. You can and should interrupt it and make it known that you find it unacceptable. I know that there is much disagreement about what actually constitutes hate speech, so for this blog I selected the above definition from the United Nations Strategy and Action Plan on Hate Speech. * That plan (see reference below) acknowledges that violence and genocide can begin with demeaning, disparaging talk.

There are many avenues that can lead to reform of public service-based institutions that appear to be harming those they are created to support and protect. We are nationally focused at this time on police brutality for urgent reasons, but our concern must extend to every public institution (including schools) in which discriminatory and disparaging in-house talk can lead to unacceptable outcomes. We currently hear calls for more diversity training for public servants, and I agree that this is an important need. But I would further argue that institutional language environments characterized by hate speech – disparaging, denigrating talk about those who are served—must become a central part of that focus.

While outside professionals can be very helpful in leading an internal examination of the language environment of public-service institutions, the hard work must be done by those for whom workplace hate speech has become normalized and acceptable. It is important to make connections between disparaging words used in their daily conversations and how they actually treat the people about whom they are speaking.  This work must go well beyond the idea of “speaking kindly” or “avoiding negative terms.” It must honestly recognize the ways in which racism, classism, and other forms of discrimination are being daily enacted through routine in-house talk. It must also seek to understand the documented historical oppressions that have done (and still do) great harm to the lives of many people in the United States. When these oppressions are acknowledged we can all “work with” others to create necessary change rather than “do to” others we see as inferior and undeserving.

Talk is a behavior – an action that leads to further actions and outcomes. If you would be hurt and insulted to be described as the people you serve are talked about where you work – it’s time to address the problem. Deciding to eliminate denigrating, disrespectful talk is the first step toward improving the way we treat those we should be serving. Compassion and understanding should be clearly represented in the words we speak, particularly if we are called to serve those who need help the most.

The first step is honest conversation about the language environment that exists in your workplace. List pejorative terms that are used regularly, and that disrespect and demean others. Decide on words that better describe problems and people without offense or insult – and which reflect care and concern. Draw up a basic code of language ethics as a start.  Start by eliminating negative generalizations about communities and groups of people. Keep working on this – and see how your work environment starts to grow stronger and more positive. This will carry over into more compassionate and equitable treatment of all the people you serve. Language is where democratic actions begin – and where love for others grows persistently stronger than hate.

This blog is written by Beatrice Fennimore (Bz Fennimore) an educator and activist whose career has focused on child advocacy, public school equity, social justice, and the practice of anti-bias education.     https://www.bzfennimore.

*Reference: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/hate-speech-strategy.shtml

 

 

Calling For a Code of Ethical Talk About Children in Educational Settings

Beatrice Fennimore May 27, 2020

There is a universally available way to accomplish a significant educational reform with positive outcomes. This reform requires serious work, but needs very few additional resources! It can be accomplished right now by people of common purpose who wish to make a significant change in their school or workplace. It can be individualized to any university teacher preparation program, K-12 school, or agency serving children in any capacity. This reform has the power to stand against the forces of bias and discrimination that are couched in the ways in which children and families are discussed every day. It is a practicable and doable way to improve educational opportunities for every child.

This reform would be the creation and adoption of a code of ethical talk about children in educational or child-service settings. Language is the cultural tool with which constructions of deficiency and superiority are made, and the “language environment” of an institution is how these constructions are put into practice.

My work focuses on the language environments created by “talk” in educational institutions. These environments frequently embody labels, stratifications, and classifications about children that can encourage or stifle their progress. In my experience, many dedicated and hard-working educational professionals have not had the opportunity to think about how their words should be guided by ethics whenever they are creating cultural representations of their students – in school and in society. Language embodying negative or discriminatory assumptions about some children and families can be the unexamined “norm” in many institutions. I enjoy working with professionals in a variety of settings who have the desire to reflect on their language environment and develop an ethical code for language about children. This new environment can be realistic and honest while also reflecting the most important educational ethic — no child should be harmed in the process of education!

Why are children harmed by adult conversations out of their hearing that demean their abilities, their characteristics or their families? They are harmed because talk is an action and a behavior that makes things happen and continue to happen. For example, although kindergarten entry readiness tests should not be used for placement purposes, a school might possibly group the children who score the lowest in a “transitional kindergarten class.” Ideally, that class should help the children catch up where needed. However, if the educators and administrators routinely refer to the class as “the kids who aren’t ready” – that becomes an unfair label of deficiency that can follow the children from grade to grade. This can continue to lower expectations in a way that negatively affects school outcomes. Unfortunately, the generalized use of a term implying deficits has an even more damaging impact when the children deemed to be “not ready” are experiencing poverty and/or have racial or ethnic characteristics that create further unjust marginalization.

Talk matters! The above scenario does not have to take place! A code of ethics implemented in a school or educational institution can focus on misuse of language about ability, classifications, tracking, test scores, family and community characteristics, and racial or cultural assumptions. Language can promote the kind of open-mindedness that helps educators to notice and capitalize on changes in children that labels of deficiency can hide.

Thank you for entering my blog! I will continue to write about ways in which “talk” has the power to create positive and negative outcomes for students – and how we call all be a part of a change for the better in the ways children are discussed in educational environments. 

Recent Posts
Archives

Announcing Beatrice Fennimore’s new Workshops and Professional Development program, “Talk Matters.”

Learn more about "Talk Matters"