If you wanted to reduce crime…if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every Black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. This would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do…but crime would go down (CNN, 2005, as cited in Fine & McClelland, 2006, p. 304).

It’s hard to look past the first sentence to analyze former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett’s words without wanting to yell back at the quote, as if it could hear me. This article, although a couple of years old, is relevant to what has transpired during and since the recent 2016 elections. As some of my students put it, it is ridiculous to think that minorities are evil, criminals, illegal, and in some ways even immoral.

In reality, however, we have confirmed that many Americans, not only of the hegemonic group, actually believe these notions. The truth of the matter is that even though the quote is offensive and ignorant, it is an ideology that lurks and grows within closed doors, casual exchanges, purse tightening reactions, and condescending glares. It has existed in our country’s social, political, and crime rate histories. Our students of color have been and are still vulnerable to “presumptions of guilt” because of this distorted, one-sided social stigmatization. The question is how do we turn this quote into an entertaining comment for our students and their children in the future, and eventually transition out of the offended and/or defensive reaction.

Moral social change is and has always been the answer. This new chapter in our country’s history is a start. It is a push for teachers to break the silence in the classrooms. It is an opportunity to fight more efficiently and swiftly now that the opponents have surfaced from the dark trenches and supporters have spoken up. For a fair fight is not only won when you know the identity of your opponents and how they think, but also when you know who your allies are.