More Than Performative Activism/Allyship: Addressing Anti-Blackness in America’s Schools by Cecil T. Barnes

During Black Lives Matter Summer, Summer 2020, the United States sat transfixed to their televisions as the country birthed thousands of protests simultaneously. There was a chorus of voices that sought to affirm that Black lives indeed do matter. These voices sought an end to the extrajudicial murders of Black people like Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and the ever-growing list of Black people killed at the hands of the state or whose murders were sanctioned by the state (Kishi & Jones, 2020). These protests were spurred by COVID-19 as millions were working from home, were temporarily out of work, or were permanently out of work and were able to see the barbaric nature of state-sanctioned violence. Student involvement in the summer protests was colossal. Black students were experiencing an inequitable education that was exacerbated by COVID-19 as their schools provided inadequate resources (Fox, 2020).

Anti-Blackness has had deleterious implications for educational practice including suspension, expulsion, over-representation in special education programming, and under-representation in gifted/talented/advanced programming (Children’s Defense Fund, 1975; Fergus, 2017; Gregory et al., 2010; Townsend, 2000). Students have been acutely aware of the anti-Blackness in practice in their sites of learning (Gibson et al., 2014; Haight et al., 2014; Rios, 2011). Their voices were some of the loudest of the summer. They organized. They rallied. They advocated. They shared resources and provided support for those incarcerated because of their involvement in the protests (Rim, 2020). Students highlighted that schools were sites of contestation about the importance of Black lives.

There was a proliferation of white-performative allyship through written statements from companies, institutions, schools, and individuals (Endo, 2020). These statements were mostly created by white leaders and their position in those organizations enabled their words to reach massive audiences. Their statements were often lauded for their stance and consequently went viral. It was performative allyship, as those statements were largely symbolic, often ending with the statement itself (Kalina, 2020). Emboldened by the growing wave of activism that originated in the summer, the students shared stories on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media of the ways in which their schools mistreated Black students and upheld anti-Black policies (Rim, 2020). They highlighted the hypocrisy inherent in those statements.  

Recently, I interviewed a parent for a project studying disciplinary, Special Education, and Gifted/Talented Education disparities. The parent said, “there was a student in my son’s class who kept unmuting their microphone and shouting racial slurs.” A different parent described several racially charged, anti-Black incidents in her child’s high school, where the principal ignored the incidents. The community had to pressure the principal to force a response.

Both parents described incidents that repeatedly harmed Black students; it is demonstrative of the deprioritizing of the safety of Black students. Black students who successfully circumvent the minefield of school/classroom policies that produce the disproportionality patterns described above are still susceptible to harm caused by their peers when teachers and administrators fail to respond to actions that target them.

It is necessary to highlight this phenomenon because the school policies that engender the exclusion of Black students are often couched in a desire for a “safe school,” but the claims of safety apparently do not include Black students, if they encounter situations parallel to those described above. Teachers and leaders are responsible for the elimination of anti-Blackness in schools.

The elimination of anti-Blackness from schools starts with a few intentional actions:   

• Recruit, hire, and retain teachers of color, especially Black teachers (Carver-Thomas, 2018). But extend that diversity by working on the mindsets within the current faculty. There must be intentional and consistent professional development to address anti-Black mindsets. This includes Black teachers; a Black person can still maintain anti-Black attitudes learned through internalized white supremacy.

• Create consistent vehicles to solicit feedback from all students, particularly around their experiences of anti-Blackness in their places of learning. Students have asserted the potency, certainty, and accuracy of their voices. They are speaking, listen. This push must include students who are representative of the student body, not exclusively high performing students.

• Create systems for how they will communicate their responses to the feedback. This will build trust in the school’s commitment and invest students in continuing to work with teachers and leaders to impact change.

• Create diverse student organizations/clubs/activities, which would increase cross-cultural contact and decrease the likelihood that students would experience anti-Blackness from their peers (Fergus, 2017). This is a school responsibility because it is connected to how the school advertises and staffs their student organizations/clubs/activities.

The time is now for our words and our actions to align. Our students are speaking, we have an obligation to listen and honor their activism.  We must eradicate anti-Blackness in educational spaces and globally writ large.

Cecil T. Barnes is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in the Policy, Organizational, and Leadership Studies Department with a concentration in Urban Education at Temple University. His research interests are at the intersection of policy and practice around the educational experiences of marginalized students, particularly Black boys. Prior to attending Temple University, he was a teacher and administrator at the middle school and high school levels.

References

Carver-Thomas, D. (2018). Diversifying the TEaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.

Children’s Defense Fund. (1975). School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children? A Report. Cambridge: Washington Research Project, Incorporated.

Endo, R. (2020). On Holding Various Truths to (Not) Be Self-Evident: Leading During the Dual Pandemics of 2020 as a Racialized Body. Cultural Studies<–>Critical Methodologies, 116-121.

Fergus, E. (2017). Solving Disproportionality and Achieving Equity: A Leader’s Guide to Using Data to Change Hearts and Minds. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

Fox, M. (2020, August 12). Coronavirus has upended school plans. It will also worsen racial and economic inequalities, experts warn. Retrieved from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/12/impact-of-covid-19-on-schools-will-worsen-racial-inequity-experts-say.html

Gibson, P. A., Wilson, R., Haight, W., Kayama, M., & Marshall, J. M. (2014). The role of race in the Out-of-school suspensions of Black students: The perspectives of students with suspensions, their parents and educators. Children and Youth Services Review, 274-282.

Gregory, A., Skiba, R. J., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). The Achievement Gap and the Discipline Gap: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Educational Researcher, 59-68.

Haight, W., Gibson, P. A., Kayama, M., Marshall, J. M., & Wilson, R. (2014). An ecological-systems inquiry into racial disproportionalities in out-of-school suspensions from youth, caregiver and educator perspectives. Children and Youth Services Review, 128-138.

Kalina, P. (2020). Performative Allyship. Technium, 478-481.

Kishi, R., & Jones, S. (2020, September 3). Demonstrations & Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020. Retrieved from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project: https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/

Rim, C. (2020, June 4). How Student Activism Shaped The Black Lives Matter Movement. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2020/06/04/how-student-activism-shaped-the-black-lives-matter-movement/?sh=27ac5ef64414

Rios, V. M. (2011). Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York: NYU Press.

Townsend, B. L. (2000). The Disproportionate Discipline of African American Learners: Reducing School Suspensions and Expulsions. Exceptional Children, 381-391.