Dr. Joe-Joe McManus on Education and Systemic Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/06/13

Dr. Joe-Joe McManus, a renowned antiracism advocate and educator, shares insights from decades of work in education, diversity leadership, and institutional reform. Raised in a multicultural household, his early experiences shaped his antiracist values. He emphasizes teaching children critical thinking and active opposition to oppression from a young age, especially given modern societal influences like media and systemic racism. He recounts shifting from viewing racism as rooted in ignorance to understanding it as a systemic construct. McManus advocates reeducation, citing personal transformation and the necessity of providing youth with tools to question oppressive norms and build inclusive, just communities.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are joined by Dr. Joe-Joe McManus, a nationally recognized antiracism advocate, educator, and author. His work bridges personal experience with institutional transformation. Raised in a predominantly white town south of Boston, he grew up in a multicultural, interreligious family and witnessed firsthand the impacts of racism and antisemitism. These early experiences—particularly those involving his adopted African American brother, Kacey—shaped his lifelong commitment to equity and justice.

Over the past three decades, Dr. McManus has served in various roles across higher education, including positions at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Ivy League institutions, and international universities. He has held faculty, administrative, and executive positions, notably serving as Chief Diversity Officer at California State University San Marcos. His work advises education, corporate, and nonprofit leaders on antiracism, inclusiveness, and leadership. In his book A Brother’s Insight: Guidance on Defeating Racism and Advancing Freedom, he offers a deeply personal narrative that combines actionable strategies for dismantling racism. Motivated by his daughter’s challenge to do more in the fight against racism, he provides readers with tools to make everyday choices rooted in justice and equity.

]He is an influential voice on diversity, equity, and inclusion, serving on multiple boards and speaking at national and international forums. You can learn more about him at drjoejoe.com. So, Dr. Joe-Joe—Jojo Dancer, your life is calling. Now, what do kids need? I mean that in two senses.

First, in the perennial sense, kids have always needed certain things—care, safety, and provision. Second, in the modern sense, the introduction of the Internet and social media has transformed childhood over the past quarter-century. What do kids need in this newer phase of American civilization, where so much is exposed?

Dr. Joe-Joe McManus: Overall, kids need to be learning critical thinking skills more than ever. These skills have been removed from many curricula and much factual knowledge, particularly in the U.S. education system. It also needs to be an active process.

Young people need to learn antiracism. They need to develop an anti-oppression perspective. The reason is that we have slipped into this notion of being “non-racist”—as if staying neutral means you are not part of the problem. That is not true. Historically, those who do nothing have often been the most significant part of the problem. They allow the status quo—especially around racism, antisemitism, and other forms of oppression—to persist. That has been true across ages and different types of oppression.

So, teaching children to be actively antiracist—to oppose homophobia, heterosexism, antisemitism, and all forms of oppression—is essential. They need to be conscious of these issues, identify them, and then actively learn how to oppose them in age-appropriate and constructive ways. I believe that is what young people truly need to know today.

Jacobsen: And they need to learn from a younger age than most people think. When it comes to healthy development—how can things go wrong if a kid goes off track? There are many ways to live healthily during childhood and adolescence, but when things go off track, how can kids be reclaimed? Because my understanding is that if they get into gang life, for instance, then it becomes tough for them to leave. It becomes a new system of love, structure, hierarchy, leadership, and mentorship.

McManus: Sure. I think it is a similar issue. We could even look at white supremacists as a kind of gang, using the framework you’re describing. When it comes to antisemitism and other forms of oppression, it is difficult—it’s almost like a deprogramming process at first. You have to counter the narratives normalized in someone’s mind. That’s why so many people hold beliefs about race, religion, gender identity, and other issues that seem so illogical.

That’s one of the things I talk about in the book—how logic often gets set aside. It becomes almost a kind of faith. People believe in white supremacy, antisemitism, homophobia, heterosexism—in the way others might feel in a religious doctrine. So even when it defies logic, it persists as belief. You’ll see people argue with you even though there’s no logical path to follow. The facts do not support them. The research does not support them. Critical thinking skills are often left at the door regarding these belief systems. So yes, it can be tough to get through.

There was a researcher and theorist a long time ago—I believe his name was Morris Massey—who talked about the need for a “significant emotional event” to dislodge a belief that someone holds as an adult. That’s why it is so important to have these conversations with young people while developing their belief systems. Because that is precisely what we are dealing with: belief systems. We often refer to white supremacy as a “perspective,” but it is not—it is a belief system.

nd we have to see it and address it as such when we’re working with people who have been indoctrinated into these ideas, which are coming from many places. That’s why it is essential to have an actively antiracist, anti-oppression approach to helping children understand the world around them. If none of those toxic ideas came from media, schools, or other sources, we might not need such a deliberate approach. But they are. And that’s how we got lulled into the false idea that being “not part of the problem” is somehow enough. It is not. We have to counter those narratives.

Sometimes that happens through media—we do get some counternarratives. But young people need to read more. They need to be taught actively to oppose oppression. When we understand oppressive ideologies as belief systems, figuring out how to counter them becomes easier. That does not make it easy, of course. Even in antiracist households, it can be not easy to counter all that is coming at a young person.

And now, in the United States, we are dealing with book bans, edited and censored curricula, and the removal of African American history courses—or anything that even hints at social justice, according to some. So, what we are left with is much mythology in our education system. And young people believe their teachers.

And they are not taught enough to question what they are being taught, to ask what they are reading, and to seek other perspectives. Until that happens, we will need active parents and communities to teach differently—and hopefully, institutions that will step up somehow. But right now, of course, we are dealing with an intense racist and white supremacist backlash.

Jacobsen: When it comes to social awareness and child development, when are kids typically looking outward enough—not necessarily abstractly, but having a coherent sense of what is happening, at least in their friend group—so that some sociological analysis can be presented at a level that is age-appropriate and grade-appropriate, wherever the child happens to be?

McManus: Well, certainly by school age. One of the key movements in anti-bias and antiracist education emerged from early elementary educators who recognized exactly what you are talking about: that young people are perceiving and internalizing what is happening around them. I am sure this happens even before school age. I am not a psychologist, but young people always absorb this. They start to develop an idea of who they are within the social constructs they are part of. And those constructs are defined by everyone around them.

They fall in line very early and see themselves as whatever they are being told—whatever category they are placed into. Whether it be male, white, Christian, or any other identity, they understand social location early on. Even if they cannot articulate it in those terms, they are beginning to comprehend where they fit within the hierarchies built into much of our society.

Jacobsen: What is something, over your last three decades of work, that you used to hold as a core opinion based on the events of the time but then changed your mind about?

McManus: That is a good question. When I first started speaking globally on issues of race, racism, religion, and antisemitism, I believed that the roots of white supremacy, antisemitism, and other forms of oppression stemmed primarily from two things: ignorance and insecurity. I thought those were individual weaknesses that explained why people held such beliefs.

But over time, I learned about the systemic nature of oppression—its connection to economic structures and the processes that instill these belief systems in young people. There is a reason why white supremacists in the United States are working so hard to change what is taught in schools. It is not because we made massive progress in anti-bias or multicultural education but because we made some progress. That, combined with demographic changes in the U.S., has provoked fear in certain groups. And systems respond to defend themselves as they are designed to do.

My most significant learning was that these belief systems are not primarily caused by individual weakness but by coordinated systems designed to construct and reinforce social hierarchies and oppression. That realization came from mentors, advancing my education and learning under people who had been doing this work for decades. I also began to understand that opposition to oppression has existed since its very inception—and that part of the journey is reeducating ourselves.

Even though I had grown up in an actively antiracist and anti-oppression household, I still went to school—and I learned whatever I learned. Some of it I had to unlearn. Even more importantly, I had to learn entirely new canons concerning my education because I had not been exposed to them. There was nothing there. I knew nothing about abolitionists.

I knew nothing. I had heard a couple of names, but I did not understand what they meant. This was right after high school. None of it meant anything to me. And I was someone who was already actively trying to fight against racism.

So I had to reeducate myself and continue my education, and I still continue to do so today.

Jacobsen: What are your favourite quotes? What are the ones you bring up in your international talks?

McManus: Oh, Lord. Yes, I think, generally, I do not always have a single favourite quote, but the quotes that matter the most to me are not necessarily about who said them—they are about helping people see a different perspective.

If you can lean on a quote from someone the audience respects or someone they can acknowledge—whether historically or in current politics, education, or activism—and that helps shift their perspective even a little, then that quote becomes meaningful. Those are the kinds of quotes I value the most.

Jacobsen: All right, Dr. McManus. Thank you. 

McManus: All right. Excellent.

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