The Violence of the Everyday
By Michelle Molitor and Nicole Young
Source: The New York Times
Image: Yunghi Kim/Contact Press Image
Every day now, we are bombarded with images of more violence in the streets. Violence against Black people just living their lives. Brazen violence in the face of righteous protest. Violence that is itself a scorching desert, an insatiable thirst. And the people are revolting. The allies are assembling. In the scramble, every person, school, and organization wants to let you know that they stand against the violence. That they always have and that they always will.
But we, the Black, brown, Indigenous, queer, and disabled people who educate children, know better. The violence of billy clubs and tear gas is no worse than the violence of taped lines on floors and demerits for untucked shirts. #BlackLivesMatter press statements from school leaders and education unions are no more credible than kneeling and high fives from police officers who will later gas the protestors they dance with.
The schools where many Black parents send their children are inherently violent. They exist in an ecosystem of schooling that has been violent since its inception. Critical thought is to school principals as peaceful protest is to police officers: curtailed, punished, and aggressively silenced.
Adults are in charge. Young people are subordinate. Compliance is valued over inquiry. Sublimation is prized instead of advocacy. This is the state of the modern American school. Moreover, it is this orientation toward violence that fuels the school to prison pipeline and further exacerbates the over-policing of Black people throughout this country.
The writer Kiese Layman recently spoke of the “politics of humiliation” on Professor Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Under the Blacklight” podcast, the thread of which runs clearly throughout modern schooling. We, the adults and power wielders, seem hell-bent on reminding children that they are smaller and less in control, instead of reassuring them that we will shelter and protect them as their power grows.
If we have any hope of living up to the promise of this incredible moment of social upheaval, we must address the violence in schools with the same fervor we’re directing towards the violence in the streets.
1. Ground in history.
Since emancipation, Black existence in America has been and continues to be a dizzying and dangerous exercise in moving the goalposts. Even when Black people do everything that is “asked” of them by dominant race and culture — educate themselves, find jobs, create independent economies, etc. — those white gatekeepers have literally razed their successes to the ground. When Black Americans carve out their own niche of American life, both their government and their fellow Americans face them down with systemized humiliation, racialized terror, and ongoing violence.
Source: Zinn Education Project
Many more Americans now know about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which white citizens, deputized by the state, killed more than 300 Black Americans and left nearly 9,000 without homes. White vigilantes came specifically to destroy Black-owned property and businesses, to loot Black homes, and to bring an end to the thriving Black lives that existed there. When the fire cleared in 1921, despite the best efforts of armed Black citizens attempting to defend their community, white rioters had burned 40 square blocks to the ground.
But Tulsa was not an anomaly. In the Red Summer of 1919, white Americans launched a campaign of terror upon Black communities across the country, lynching people, burning property, and gaslighting Black citizens in white news outlets.
These facts are especially important to consider as we grapple with the ongoing violence in American schooling. The public is told that the current iteration of education reform is necessary because communities of color, especially Black communities, are deficient. Everything in American schools is designed to mitigate against the lack in Black communities of good grocery stores, quality health care, jobs, and economic development.
Tulsa Massacre survivors at the Supreme Court.
Source: Zinn Education Project
This narrative erases the truth of how Black communities were purposefully and repeatedly dispossessed of the resources they built themselves, not only by the American government, but by its white citizenry. Revisionist history feeds a violent education system that invalidates the voices and competency of Black parents and students.
2. Listen to those most impacted.
Children are experts on their own experiences in schools. And yet, when it comes to decision making about schools, their voices — especially those of Black children and teenagers — are conspicuously left out of the conversation.
Is it any wonder that modern American schooling leaves so many Black children disenfranchised and disengaged? By heavily policing students, whether through dress codes or other strict policies that are unrelated to education, we adults limit students’ ability to challenge us when things don’t feel right to them.
The call to rethink the draconian nature of modern schooling is not new. Student led organizations like Leaders Igniting Transformation and Youth In Action are challenging the construct of adult wisdom and demanding more freedom and autonomy for children in schools. They remind us that youth leadership does not lead to chaos; it actually leads to higher levels of student engagement.
Source: Leaders Igniting Transformation
Even before the current uprisings in support of Black lives, students across the country have demanded the abolition of repressive school environments. Leaders Igniting Transformation names “Freedom to Thrive” as one of their main focus areas, writing, “The systematic criminalization of Black and Brown youth, and youth with disabilities, in schools is one of the most blatant and egregious examples of systemic racism and violence in this country. The presence of police officers, guns, handcuffs and metal detectors in schools creates hostile teaching and learning environments that are reinforced by harsh, punitive and exclusionary school discipline policies.”
As educators, parents, policy makers, and community members, are we really listening to young people? How can we ensure that their voices will guide every major education policy governing their daily life at school?
3. Advocate for radical change.
There is a nationwide conversation happening right now around police abolition. Many believe that abolishing the police is impossible, but abolition, both in its current context and historically, is always framed this way. Anti-abolitionists lament, “How could we possibly get rid of this thing that is so essential to our understanding of society?”
But we must do it loudly and without compromise, in the same way that abolitionists in the 1800s advocated for the end of a slavery system that formed the very backbone of our national economy.
It is easy to assume that a dissolution of our current system of violent and repressive schooling is unachievable. But just as it was created, it can be undone.
Nothing about how school is designed serves childhood. With students themselves as our leaders, advocates should demand the end of school suspensions and similar policies that disproportionately harm and target Black children. We should demand schools that center anti-racism and not just “cultural competency” in their pedagogy. We should reconsider the relationship between “seat time” and learning and help create classrooms that look and feel inviting to students and families.
Most importantly, schools should create radical space that prioritizes community building as much as, if not more than, book learning. Schools should be intergenerational and multi purpose spaces that encourage dialogue and prioritize listening to students and their families, especially Black, brown, Indigenous, queer, and disabled people.
4. Build and iterate.
When it comes to race, there is an American obsession with getting things right the first time. It is why so many white people, white educators especially, struggle with talking about race. We cannot allow the fear of getting it right the first time to paralyze us. Instead, the moment calls for us to take bold, anti-racist action and prioritize learning, listening, and iterating.
That’s the only way we can build classrooms and schools where Assatta Shakur’s words ring true: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Want to learn more?
Read:
Watch: #YouthInAction: Leaders Igniting Transformation
This is the fifth in a series of blogs that examine current issues of race and equity through the lens of history. Read the first, second, third, and fourth in the series.