“A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect”
-W.E.B. DuBois
The beginning of the Reconstruction era (an era woefully understudied!) provided the United States the opportunity to re-imagine itself and dream of how to proceed as a nation with principled beliefs about democracy and the role of all citizens- particularly formerly enslaved citizens- in advancing American democracy. Unfortunately, this practice of re-imagining quickly became overwhelming for American leaders that wanted and needed the support of former slave holders and slavery sympathizers who refused to imagine any future America that involved “freedom and justice for all.” Soon this opportunity for re-imagining was divorced from the larger re-imagining of our post-civil war democracy. As a result, this opportunity was quickly reframed as a problem- dubbed “The Negro Problem.” It was left to schools to figure out how to manage this problem- the problem of how to educate and train the darker citizens of America to take their place in institutions and systems that were designed with the implicit assumption that these citizens were lesser human beings with limited intellectual capacity.
Systems are designed to get the results that they get. It is the backdrop of “The Negro Problem” that informed and continues to inform the systems of inequity that define educational experiences and outcomes of Black, Brown and Indigenous students- outcomes that lead to the maintenance of other systems of inequity and disparity. It is this backdrop that equity focused school communities must lean into as they create their own opportunities to re-imagine the systems of equity needed to disrupt the inequities that anchor our current system.
There is no political climate that will ever genuinely support the work of educational equity. School leaders cannot wait for their districts to lead this work. Teacher leaders cannot wait for their school leaders to do this work. Families cannot wait for teachers to do this work. The work of re-imagination is not easy work, but everyday we have choice and opportunity. Parents, faculty, staff, school leaders and community leaders have the opportunity to challenge the notion of schooling as spaces for managing and assimilating “problem” groups. We can all choose to disrupt inequity by re-imagining education systems as inclusive spaces that fiercely protect the hearts and minds of all children as we realize that children never were and never will be the problem.
How would you re-imagine schools? Leave your comments below. Stay connected- Follow us at @afro.scholared and join our Afro.Scholar EdCollective mailing list.
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