This chapter feels like a side trip from the previous chapter of “I discovered that trying to play by the rules, and to discover the rules, was not enough. I needed to dig deeper.” In this chapter, Ms. Irving investigates why it is that the best efforts to resolve what she sees doesn’t dig far enough into the underlying reasons. More than knowing that there are discrepancies in academic achievement, she is beginning to see there are discrepancies in representation that lead to disengagement and a refocusing on other venues and areas for achievement
“I liked knowing an intentional diversification strategy existed. It ensured the kind of racial mix I’d come to Cambridge to be a part of.”
Ms. Irving had the hope that by resetting the academic environment, including a diverse student body, a new community could be achieved, one where students participated and thrived according to their own natural talents and curiosity.
“On the first day of kindergarten, I felt my prayers had finally been answered: the room was full of joyful children, with a variety of skin colors, playing side by side. At last, I thought, my children will grow up in a racially diverse world and be imbued with the kind of cross-cultural interaction and competence I long for.”
It looked like there would be a new beginning, because certainly if you start anew and fresh, all the old patterns and expectations can be broken—you can create a hopeful, diverse, happy set of children eager to learn and easily accommodating everyone.
“The power of this inclusive approach became especially potent for me in my oldest daughter’s third grade year…The potential realized by simply encouraging children to take care of one another—as opposed to having them compete for attention, grades, and social status—amazed me.”
NGL, this is a very attractive description. We long for this in our children, and some of us have a desire to see this in our society, where we love one another. Who wouldn’t want to see this happen?
“Yet even in this school, with its ample staffing and fervent intention to meet all children’s needs, something alarming happened before my eyes. Kindergartners who’d learned side by side became first graders who were split into different reading and math groups, uncannily along skin color lines.”
Yeah, this. This is fascinating in that building out the appearance of diversity, sincere and well-funded, was not enough. Something was happening outside the control of the classroom and the school—outside the knowledge of the staff and teachers and parents. Something was going on “out there,” and there were no easy answers that satisfied Ms. Irving.
“Finally, I’d gotten my child into the kind of environment I thought would result in racial equality, and all it seemed to be doing was reinforcing racial stereotypes.”
I find this interesting, because the first signs of this problem of endemic, systemic racism seem to be poor participation and results in primary school children, and the first temptation was to blame the poorly performing kids who were black or Latino or otherwise stereotypically expected to fail.
“I can see now how effortlessly the cycle of white domination can creep into young lives, generation after generation.”
This is the core of the problem. The classroom did not take place in a vacuum, away from the society where the children returned to at the end of the day, the society where their parents and family lived, the society that “branded” people into castes based upon color/race—and the castes were rigid and thoroughly enforced. A mere three or four hours in a classroom could not make much of a difference, when the entire community “out there” was waiting to collect their own and distribute the others.
“Of everything I saw that marked the pattern of white achievement alongside black and brown withdrawal, none disturbed me more than the sight of black boys sitting on the bench in the principal’s office, a near daily occurrence.”
It seems almost natural. Black students are trouble, especially black boys. And because “trouble” stands out, the easiest thing is to think and say the black kids are at fault, everywhere, because somehow being a black kid just generates…trouble. There was little desire to think more deeply about this. There isn’t a genetic fault with black kids, especially black boys, so something else was going on. Few people wanted to find out, though. Easier to put the black boys on time out.
“Why, I wondered, did black boys spend a disproportionate amount of time sitting on the bench in the principal’s office?”
The core question, indeed. Why did this happen, not just in the school Ms. Irving’s daughter attended, but in nearly every school in America where black boys are present?
“Without yet understanding that a system was in play, I looked to individuals for answers. Teachers were mostly kind and supportive. White children were mostly kind and supportive. There was no overt racism that I could detect.”
“I don’t see color” is where this leads to. We don’t want to see outside of our intentions and our solutions. When they fail to bring the results we want, instead of thinking “maybe my efforts were based upon ignorance and presumption,” jump to “what can you do with black kids?” There is something about our whiteness that leads us to the belief that we’ve discovered the expert solution because it works for us, and we don’t realize—and don’t want to realize—that we don’t want to dig into the problems to find the reasons for this discrepancy in outcomes.
“I could just imagine the parents of four white boys who missed a field trip storming the principal’s office in protest and flooding the parent Listserv with angry missives about the injustice.”
Ms. Irving makes the observation that white parents are protective of their white kids, and that they can make a fuss until their issues are resolved. Now, this is not entirely true: I have seen some absolutely passionate black parents demanding justice and opportunity for their children. The difference is, the system allows for white protest and has a way for that white protest and anger to be ameliorated. Not so for black parents. They are either absent or they are nothing but trouble. It is not often that the cries of black parents for better treatment of their children are heard by the school systems. Black kids are trouble, and so are their parents, and that’s that. We have to be honest that the voices of black people in America are usually silenced, muffled, or ignored. That’s the systemic part of systemic racism.
“Though my curiosity wouldn’t quit, I never considered asking one of the school’s few staff of color for their perspective on the trend.”
This is an extremely useful point to make. We white people don’t want to be ignorant or stupid or invasive, which is a useful social skill. We’re told not to make pejorative, ignorant, or bigoted remarks, and we interpret that as the command “Don’t talk to black people, and don’t ask them questions about their experiences, because you’ll offend them.” Yeah, it can happen—but the best people to tell us of the experience of being black, of being inside blackness, are the people who are black and who live as black in America.
“Because I so feared saying something stupid or embarrassing around people of color, I stuck to white adults, which I now see was a huge part of why it took me so long to find answers that would make sense.”
Well, yeah. I can see this. I do it, too. We are told that the best white people are “nice,” and nice people don’t stir the pot. So we go to our safe white neighbors rather than to our somewhat undefined and vaguely unhappy black community members.
“Why? I can see all those things too, but why are their lifestyles so different? Why does it get worse with every grade? Why can’t someone figure out how to give families the support they need to get out of this cycle?”
A great question. If such a question can’t be answered, is the question wrong? Or is the answer to hard to accept?
“I was witnessing the manifestation of cradle-to-grave headwinds and tailwinds that touch nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives, creating divergent outcomes that ultimately get misinterpreted as an ability to achieve or a lack of ability.”
This is indeed a core answer. There may be other parallel answers. But this is a strong answer, and it hits the center: we make it hard at every turn to be black in America. The individual moments where we try to make it “fair” are simply not enough to reverse the bone-wearying effort it takes to stay alive and healthy and secure in America if you’re black. Systemic racism is a real thing. It is an endless set of injustices and insults and roadblocks and even pushbacks, not coordinated but certainly consistence and unyielding to all but the strongest efforts, efforts that wear you out over one battle so you’re too tired to handle the next one. This is one of the hardest things to communicate to us white people, that fixing a single problem in the black community isn’t enough to fix everything in the black community. I’ve talked earlier about the situations where a young black lady was killed in the street by a garbage truck, and it wasn’t just the lack of a crosswalk, but an entire series of interlocking injustices, insults, and petty roadblocks that made her daily journey onerous and dangerous. Systemic means systems that interact with each other to achieve the desired results, which is the debasement and dehumanization of the black community. Continually.
“I kept wondering, Why? Why? Why? Why all these patterns together, at once? Why is an entire population experiencing lower socioeconomic standards? Why aren’t black and Latino parents as involved as white parents?”
Again, it isn’t just one thing. It isn’t that black and Latino parents don’t love their children, or don’t want to be involved, or don’t do what they can. Studies show, for example, that black fathers are more involved with their children than white fathers. But it could be as simple as the fact that black fathers are often incarcerated. Or that low-end, hourly jobs are available, which do not allow for time off, or that require overtime or long distances to travel by lengthy public transportation options, or…. It isn’t one thing. It is a collection of things, but we white people see it as “black and Latino parents just don’t love their kids the same way that white people do.”
“Now it seems obvious to me, but for most of my life I couldn’t see how much easier life is for most white people in America, and how that ease includes a level of comfort in taking one’s place as a leader—be it in a classroom or a boardroom. I couldn’t yet see how books and curricula that focused on the accomplishments of my race made me feel included and inspired. Nor could I see how as white people assume leadership roles, their voices and actions can squeeze out those of their peers and colleagues of color, reestablishing a pattern in which white people appear more able. Like so much about racism, the cycle is self-perpetuating.”
Another key point here: representation matters. If you’re told your whole life that white men can be President, because the previous 40 or so were white men, then for most people they’d assume that the presidency is not theirs to grab for. It takes an enormous effort to get elected, and expectations of voters and donors are going to be sympathetic to the white men and their desires. A school system that uses white paradigms and white exemplars for black and Latino children to see is going to produce the feeling among most of the children that success pathways for white people are blocked for people like them. It seems natural for white students to take their roles in the white leadership of this white nation. What ordinary child is going to think such leadership is available for them as well, if they aren’t the right race?
“Despite symptom-management programs and services, without awareness and intention, the gap will persist.”
This is the truth here: changing outcomes by themselves do not change the underlying systems. We’re performing Lysenkoism in our social changes, rather than digging into the true causes and finding the best ways to break racism. Simply having kids read stories with black and Latino heroes isn’t enough, although I applaud this. That’s an easy fix. We have to dig deeper and do the hard work of exposing the racism that we participate in.
And I don’t know if we will ever be able to do it.
Questions
Make a list of all the factors that you believe contributed to your own achievement as a student.
- Predictable home life
- Predictable home situation
- Access to the county library and all its books
- Access to a large home library
- Access to a large school library
- Learning to read by age 2 or 3, and having a daily newspaper subscription and access to a TV set
- Having new, or fairly new textbooks
- Having safe, clean, and modern classrooms
- Having plenty of school supplies.
How do you think being a white person or a person of color influenced each of those factors?
- My parents were married and were supported in their marriage and family by the surrounding community—the expectations were that families had a mom and dad, with the dad working and the mom staying at home. Dinner was at six and bedtime was at eight. I can’t presume there wasn’t the same desire for black families in the same county and same era, so I am going to mark this as “N/A.”
- My family and neighborhood were the desired environment for the 50s nuclear family. We had new streets and sidewalks, new schools and libraries. The 50s suburbs were clean and efficient, and there were few distractions from raising a family and being educated. Based upon what I know now, and looking back with that knowledge to the black communities we drove through to get to our entertainment (Watts Towers in Watts, Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine, USC campus and county museums in the heart of a distressed minority community), I can see that people of color were not afforded the same levels of quality homes and schools and libraries.
- My parents signed off on my access to any section in the library, so I was able to get any book I wanted from any collection starting in the fourth grade. I’d ride my bike to the library once or twice a week, get three or four books, read them, and do it all over again, again and again. I don’t have enough information about access or quality for people of color, so “N/A.”
- My parents and my relatives and my parents’ friends purchased books for all of us for gifts. We had two complete encyclopedia sets, the entire Scientific American reprint library, and several ten- or twelve-foot-long shelves of books just for us kids. We could read any book in the house, and I did, even the encyclopedias, which I found fascinating. I don’t know if people of color had the same number of books or the range of materials, but I would suspect that because the general income level and home life would not prioritize expensive books, that families and students in their community would not have as many books at home.
- Not only did both elementary schools have entire libraries for students—my sixth grade class was in the library due to school overcrowding, and it was like being in candy corn heaven. My junior high library had thousands of books, and my high school library was an entire building, all on its own. I still remember the wide variety of books I checked out back then, and any book was available to me. I can only suspect that poorer neighborhoods would have sparser collections and the books would tend to be older.
- I was unusual as I was a very early reader. My father taught me to read way before kindergarten because I’d pester him in the morning when he read the paper, so I was able to pore over the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner at a young age. We tended to watch the news in the morning and at night. I don’t have enough data on this situation for the community of color, so again, “N/A.”
- Our textbooks were either brand-new, or only a few years old. I don’t recall a single textbook older than five years. Textbooks are expensive, so I presume than in poorer school districts—and schools are funded by property taxes, and poorer districts have lower tax revenues—the text books would be older and less accurate.
- I took for granted that our classrooms were well-lighted, clean, with working desks and fresh air from windows and doors that opened into the outdoors. I don’t have enough information about schools in the communities of color, so “N/A.”
- We got new boxes of crayons the first day of school every year, several pads of paper, pencils, and as we needed them paints/paintbrushes and other drawing implements. I could not say whether these were part of the school budget or that our families contributed extra, but we always had this stuff. I could only presume that poorer schools could not provide these supplies as often or in such abundance.
For context on this series, see my kick-off post here:
To follow along with the others, see also:
Di Brown “Nixie” at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
This chapter: https://dianabrown.net/waking-up-white-chapter-24/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/