He's the man paid to make your child's school less racist.

For more than five years, the San Francisco-based consultant and his Pacific Educational Group have come to Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools to talk skin color.

His premise -- delivered in seminars, worksheets and videos -- is this:

"The most devastating factor contributing to the lowered achievement of children of color is institutionalized racism!"

Not family income. Not peer pressure.

To Singleton, it's racism, perpetuated mostly by well-meaning white educators oblivious that they reinforce notions of white superiority.

"To perpetuate racism does not require malice," Singleton said in an interview last week. "And that concept gets sticky for people."

Depending on which teacher you ask, Singleton is remarkably healing, enlightening or a waste of time.

But Singleton says he doesn't make trouble for schools. The trouble, he says, was already there.

White privilege

Teachers in Singleton's "Beyond Diversity" workshop are first asked to acknowledge white privilege -- the day-to-day benefits of having white skin.

In an exercise called "The Color Line," they answer 26 questions on a 0 to 5 scale, such as:

"When I am told about our national heritage or 'civilization,' I am shown that people of my race made it what it is."

Or "I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race."

Teachers who feel situations are "often true" put down fives. Threes are for "sometimes true" and zeroes are for "seldom true."

After tallying their scores, teachers write the number down, wear them around their necks and line up from highest to lowest.

This is just one exercise that starts what Singleton calls a "courageous conversation" about white America's blindness to its privileged status and its disconnect with other minority cultures.

Without acknowledging that privilege, he says, white teachers will never see classrooms the way black or Latino students do. And they'll never know how to reach them.

Black educators almost always embrace this message, Singleton said.

"Being a person of color, I felt these conversations needed to take place for a long time," said Dianne Jackson, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Federation of Teachers. "There were a lot of personal 'ah-ha' moments."

But these conversations are not meant to be comfortable. Especially for whites.

"Stepping into those shoes hurt," said Nathan Hester, assistant principal at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School.

After attending one of Singleton's earliest workshops with the school system, Hester, a white man, was angry. So angry that his wife asked him at home that night, "What happened to you today?'"

"I had gone in thinking, 'I'm not racist, so this should be OK,'" Hester said.

On day two, Hester recalls Singleton pulling him aside and gently saying, "I just want you to feel what it's like to be a black man every day."

That was more than five years ago. Hester now believes Singleton's work is crucial.

He's even a key player in his school's equity team, a group set up at each school to promote anti-racism.

"It was scary. I had never gone there before," Hester said. "But for people of color, it's painful every day."

The critics

Singleton is aware of his critics.

So is his mother, who punches her son's name into Google and doesn't like everything she sees.

Depending on the blog, he is a Maoist, waste of money or ideologically one-sided.

After Singleton came to a Madison, Wis., school system several years ago, a state representative demanded he be fired.

"I never knew that multiplication tables, spelling and scientific principles varied by a students' race," wrote Rep. Steve Nass in a 2003 press release.

The next year, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Harry Brighouse took on Singleton for demoralizing teachers with untested methods.

That's part of the reason Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board member Mike Kelley is skeptical.

School systems, Kelley said, should use programs and techniques that have been evaluated for effectiveness. Singleton's has not, he said.

"It's been a huge investment," Kelley said. "The worst outcome of this ... is we don't even know if it's effective or not. We don't even know if we should continue."

Singleton said he has repeatedly been asked "for some data that this is a worthwhile use of the public resource."

A valid question, he said. But the standard measures that always show blacks and Latinos falling behind -- SATs and end-of-grade tests -- are "norm-referenced on middle-class, white kids," Singleton said.

School systems should never hire him for a quick turn-around in minority students' test scores, he says.

"They should look for a gradual change over time in the culture and climate of a school," Singleton said.

Business booming

Singleton's business has never been better.

He and his small team hopscotch across time zones, catching flights to school systems from Colorado to Delaware.

He's appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and written books about race in schools. Just recently, Bellevue Community College in Washington looked to him after a math teacher posed a well-publicized and embarrassing test question about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and a watermelon.

But Singleton's bread-and-butter clients are public school systems, many of them high-achieving, some of them in university communities, with a premium on perfection.

"It's fascinating to me," he said, "that districts like Chapel Hill are off the charts in so many areas but lack such a basic understanding of race."

How does Singleton believe schools perpetuate white superiority without knowing it?

When white students walk into Advanced Placement classes and see few or no minorities.

When teachers avoid race by saying, "I'm colorblind." To disengage, he says, is racist.

Or when white parents jockey behind the scenes to get their children the best teachers, leaving less-connected minority parents with the luck of the draw.

This, Singleton says, is institutional racism at work.

"It's like my eyes have been opened," said Kate Stephanoff, third-grade teacher at Glenwood Elementary School.

"I don't ever feel it's implied that I'm racist," she said. "It's implied that institutions in our society are racist."

White teachers, Singleton says, usually have one of three reactions. Some share Stephanoff's sentiment and some timidly agree.

The rest are insulted.

"They express tremendous anger and take it as a personal attack rather than a conversation about the subject matter and the strategies," Singleton said.

"I don't ever want to insinuate that people of color come with the requisite skills to teach children of color," he said. "We all have a lot to learn."

Carrying on

After more than five years, Singleton is on his way out.

At every Chapel Hill-Carrboro school, two teams are set up to carry out his work.

There are equity teams, designed to help colleagues challenge their attitudes toward race.

Then there are Collaborative Action Research for Equity, or CARE, teams. These are classroom-focused groups that share tips on reaching minority students.

By training teachers and administrators, Singleton's plan is to "eventually work himself out of a contract," he said.

He's almost there. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system is ready to rely on itself more, Superintendent Neil Pedersen said.

But bringing in Singleton for the past five years has been money well-spent, he said.

"We've finally gotten to the root of issues we can't treat in a superficial way," Pedersen said. "I think people that have that talent are in great demand and are expensive."

Singleton's national profile is on the rise. He's busier than ever.

Still, his vision of a school system without racism is just that.

A vision.

"What does the end look like?" he said, speaking by cell phone shortly after finishing a session with six school districts.

"We aspire to see a school system that has eliminated the achievement gap. And we've never seen it."