{"id":1218,"date":"2024-08-05T08:36:36","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T12:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/?p=1218"},"modified":"2024-08-05T08:36:36","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T12:36:36","slug":"book-review-accountable-by-dashka-slater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/leadership\/book-review-accountable-by-dashka-slater\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: “Accountable” by Dashka Slater"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I first came across this book during an episode of The Daily<\/a>, \u201cThe Rise of Deepfakes in American Schools\u201d, where they investigated a terrible new trend about the use of generative AI use against young girls of colour. In the podcast, the hosts ask the question of schools,\u201d How unprepared can we be?\u201d One of the guests on the podcast was the author, Dashka Slater, who investigated and explored the cause and impact of a social media account on a small school in Albany, New York.<\/p>\n

This books brings the reader inside the students\u2019 lives, as a deeply anti-black and misogynist \u2018finsta\u2019 account is uncovered at Albany High School. You can read Slater\u2019s NYTs article HERE<\/a> \u2013 it is excellent, but I can recommend this book to educators because it follows the students from beginning to now using their own words, and that of their families, as well as from interviews that she conducted, and court documents plus minutes from school board meetings.<\/p>\n

You know that saying, Truth is Strange Than Fiction? This is a great example, you can\u2019t make this up. Unfortunately.<\/p>\n

I would recommend this book if you are:<\/p>\n

(1) An educator engaged in EDI+B work
\n(2) An education administrator
\n(3) A parent and \/ or educator interested in learning more about social media use in teens
\n(4) A teenager<\/p>\n

\n

The book reads very well, and I won\u2019t be going into detail because this book is driven by the stories of individuals as they unfold over time, and as the impact of the social media account is felt by those targetted by it, and also those who created, followed and engaged with the account. The intersections of where harm is done, where trauma is felt, where lasting impacts on the lives of those involved, and with the school\u2019s responsibility is complex.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The Role of Social Media in the Lives of Teens<\/h4>\n

Slater does an excellent job of explaining the role that social media plays in the lives of teens. She recounts the \u2018Rules of Instagram\u2019, explaining everything from what a \u2018Finsta\u2019 account is and how it is used, \u201cThis is the account people who really know you follow, the place where you spill tea\u2026\u201d (pg. 41), the power of comments, \u201cComments are worth more than likes, but the language of comments is complicated\u201d (pg. 42), to the implication of \u201cattention\u201d, \u201c\u2026what [attention] earns and what it costs.\u201d (pg. 43)<\/p>\n

It is in these Finsta accounts that many teens try out \u2018edgy\u2019 jokes. From her NYTs article, she recalls one of the students\u2019 saying about the finsta account in question, \u201che couldn\u2019t remember much other than that it had seemed \u201cedgy,\u201d in the same vein as YouTubers like\u00a0iDubbbz\u00a0and\u00a0Filthy Frank, whose accounts he followed and who were known for their provocative antics, which included everything from using racial slurs to baking cakes made of hair or vomit.\u201d It is this type of \u2018edgy\u2019 humour that this book is about \u2013 what is the purpose of edgy content, what does it mean to post, to follow, to like and comment on such accounts, and what does this say about you as a person when you do?<\/p>\n

The young men who created, followed, posted, liked and comment, on this private account largely identify as white and asian, and cis-gendered. They didn\u2019t see the harm of what they were doing until the account was discovered by their friends, who identify as female and black and of colour.<\/p>\n

\n

Racism<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>The account had posted images that are horrific, that drew upon significant stereotypes and \u201cRace Realism\u201d. By reading this book, I was exposed to new, insidious ways of manipulating thinking into strengthening stereotypes.<\/p>\n

Misogynoir<\/strong><\/em>. \u201cBlack feminist scholar Moya Bailey coined the term misogynoir \u2013 a combination of the word mysogyny and the French word noir (black) \u2013 to describe the particular ways that Black women are stereotyped and dehumanized.\u201d (pg. 127)<\/p>\n

Race Realism<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Also known as\u00a0scientific racism<\/em>, biological racism, <\/em>and human biodiversity.\u00a0<\/em>White supremist groups use this approach to promote their ideas through, what looks like, science. This is how one of the young men fed the flames of the account.<\/p>\n

Slater does an excellent job debunking Race Realism, while also pointing out the difficulties of race and how it is understood, taught, and taken up in education. Interviewing Dr. Ann Morning, a sociologist who studies the intersection of race and science, \u201cWhat makes people susceptible to this kind of thinking, Morning says, is the fact that we talk about race all the time as if it were a genuine scientific concept.\u201d (pg. 369)<\/p>\n

Stereotype Threat.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>When the anxiety and stress about being conscious of confirming a stereotype about your identity makes it more challenging to do an action successfully related to that stereotype. (pg. 317) Sadly, the account raised this threat to the young, black women who thought those boys were their friends. \u201cBut the feelings [of self-doubt, deceit, and shame] were always there, the feeling that maybe other people saw her the way the boys who followed the account must, as ugly or stupid.\u201d (pg. 317)<\/p>\n

Racism created a school environment where no one felt safe: not the students, not the teachers, not the adminstrators, and not the parents. Slater describes the school as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

Students running through the school. Students sobbing. Students slamming doors. Students pacing. Student who didn\u2019t seem to recognise their own teachers. Students coming into classrooms to rest and regroup, desperate for a sanctuary where they could take a calming breath. Student who were friends with the Instagram followers who had made thei calculation that they\u2019d better be out there protesting if they didn\u2019t want to be branded as racists. And hundreds of students sitting in the atrium and ont he steps and on the school\u2019s front lawn, waiting for the [accused] boys to come out. (pg. 228)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What follows is the story\u2019s nadir. When shame, guilt, revenge, love of a child, trust and broken trust and all the other emotions you can imagine, come together when edgy, online humour collides with the real world of those that it targeted.<\/p>\n

\n

What Makes Someone Racist?<\/h4>\n

In a chapter dedicated to this question, Slater writes, \u201cWhen you think of racism as a system, rather than as a state of mind, it can help sort out all the contradictory definitions [described above].\u201d (pg. 88) And this is significant, because through her interviews with the students involved, it is clear that while they are posting anti-black hate, they still don\u2019t see themselves as racist. For example:<\/p>\n

\n

When he got home after the movie, he posted a message to the 1,200 or so followers on his main Instagram account. \u201cI did not create this account,\u201d he remembers writing. \u201cI do not condone what was posted on this account.\u201d It went on, a paragraph-length defense against the accusation that he was racist.<\/p>\n

If anything, his post, which he labored over for hours, made things worse. \u201cBy knowing about it and not saying anything about it, you are condoning this,\u201d someone replied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So what does online engagement with \u2018edgy\u2019 accounts mean? The school administrators grappled with questions:<\/p>\n

(1) Was someone who followed the account but never liked or commented on a single post the same as someone who commented frequently?
\n(2) What about people who hit the like button, but never commented?
\n(3) What about the pope who commentd by didn\u2019t say anything racist? (pg. 91)<\/p>\n

And eventually, the lawsuits came. Which meant that the lawyers representing the administrators and the schools grappled with The Tinker Test.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>The Tinker test was established after a 1969 court case, \u201cTinker v. Des moines Independent Community School District<\/em>, where students were disciplined for wearing black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam war.<\/p>\n

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas wrote in the decision. Instead, the court held, school officials must prove that a student\u2019s conduct would foreseeably lead to a substantial disruption of school operations. (pg. 350)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so, this is where the discussion shifts: away from race trauma and towards the disruption of school operations.<\/p>\n

It is worth reading this book, because Slater does an excellent job, in plain language, conveying the different elements of the case put forward by both sides, and the judge\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents have the right to be free of online posts that denigrate their race, ethnicity or physical appearance or threaten violence, [the Judge continued]. They have an equivalent right to enjoy an education in a civil, secure, and safe school environment. [The account creators and followers] impermissibly interfered with those rights either by creating the harassing posts or by liking them or commenting on them in an approving fashion. That gave the school the right to discipoine them either by expulsion, in Charles\u2019s case, or suspension\u2026\u201d (pg. 396)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Intervention<\/h4>\n

This is a story that has many cautionary tales within. Originally, the Albany High School administrators didn\u2019t know what to do when students organized a sit-in, while the accused students were in the school. Administrators aren\u2019t given a playbook for events like this; however, this book is a great place to start. What went wrong, how would your school handle these cascading events?<\/p>\n

The administrators then called in an organization to help the healing; however, they didn\u2019t vet the organization thoroughly, and they proved not up to the task. Their \u2018session\u2019 actually turned up the heat because of lack of proper facilitation and safety in place prior to the session.<\/p>\n

Here, Slater does an excellent job helping educators understand (and dare I say create a playbook) events through a different lens. She calls on experts to delineate between shame and guilt, between calling out and calling in. \u201cShaming people can thus have the effect of making them double down on the behaviour they\u2019re being shame for\u2026Calling out happen when we point aout a mistake, not to addresss or rectify the damage, but instead to publicly shame the offender\u2026Calling in, by contrast, is always done with love.\u201d (pg. 251)<\/p>\n

The error was thinking that these students were ready to talk. But they weren\u2019t \u2013 the emotions were too high, the pain to real, and the words still inflamatory. Indeed, students didn\u2019t have the words yet to express how they were feeling, nor what they needed to feel whole again.<\/p>\n

Slater also calls upon the graduate work of Sarah E. Jones, who explored college students\u2019 attitudes towards the conditions on whether or not they would step in and intervene with something they saw online.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Honour Proximity: Respond only if you are close to the victim or know the story behind the interaction<\/li>\n
  2. Respond According to Severity: If it doesn\u2019t seem really harmful, keep scrolling<\/li>\n
  3. Embrace the Cultural Environment: Base your actions on what is considered acceptable in your peer group<\/li>\n
  4. Gauge from Others\u2019 Responses: If somebody elese says something, you can keep silent<\/li>\n
  5. Avoid Personal Consquences: Make sure that you don\u2019t end up being the next victim<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These are really unwritten rules of how to behave online, and they offer up reasons why youth won\u2019t intervene, and they explain how this finsta account kept going and going, despite so many people knowing it was wrong.<\/p>\n

    These also offer up a great tool for educators and parents to speak about cyberbullying with their students and children. Does this resonate with them? What does \u201charmful\u201d really mean \u2013 harmful to whom? What strategies might we have to intervene if we felt we wanted to?<\/p>\n

    \n

    Perspectives<\/h4>\n

    Out of this awful experience, Slater offers the reader the many different perspectives of what happened, what was felt, and why, as well as the historical, contextual experiences of the US in general, Albany\u2019s history, and the history of the people involved. She offers the legal perspective as well as the educators and education administrators. It is these perspectives that make this book the \u2018one good thing\u2019 to come out of this otherwise terrible experience.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    I think that this book would be a very effective read for school leaders, guidance and those that work closely with students on EDI+B work. It would even be an effective book club for educators.<\/p>\n

    On the author\u2019s website, there are a host of great resources to guide such discussions: https:\/\/www.accountablebook.com\/resources<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
    \n

    John Doe had continued the soul-searching journey that began after the account\u2019s discovery. By his sophomore year in college, he found that he was grateful for the way the experience had changed him. He was more serious now than he\u2019d been as a 15-year-old social butterfly, plagued by both anxiety and depression. Still, he thought he had gained more than he had lost. \u201cHad I just continued that trajectory at Albany, how I would be as a person \u2014 I think I would be worse off,\u201d he says. \u201cI would probably be less introspective, less critical. I would think less. Because I question things now in a way that I don\u2019t think I could have before, had I not gone through the experience like this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I first came across this book during an episode of The Daily, \u201cThe Rise of Deepfakes in American Schools\u201d, where they investigated a terrible new trend about the use of generative AI use against young girls of colour. In the podcast, the hosts ask the question of schools,\u201d How unprepared can we be?\u201d One of…
    Read more →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,131,132,23,72],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity","category-equity","category-inclusion","category-leadership","category-wellness","tag-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1226,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/1226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/garthnichols\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}