Black School, White School: What to do When the School is Divided by Race

1. Black School, White School: What to do When the School is Divided by Race MINORITY STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT NETWORK INSTITUTE APRIL, 2011 CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA DR. JEFFREY S. BROOKS UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA BROOKSJS@MISSOURI.EDU

2. Black School, White School: Racism and Educational (Mis)leadership • Book forthcoming from Teachers College Press • Broadly looks at various ways that racism influences leadership practice • 105 formal semi-structured interviews • 452 hours of observation • Technical documents such as the school’s School Improvement Plan, a regional accreditation report, discipline plans, meeting agendas, etc. • Quantitative data included • school climate data, student achievement data, and other data used in administrative procedures such as student discipline referrals, absentee rates, reports, and other various records.

3. Purpose of the Study The purpose of the study was to investigate how race and race relations influence school leadership practice.

4. Demographic Changes U.S. Census Bureau (2004) projections for the year 2050, the non-Hispanic, • White population of the United States is likely to increase by 7%. This modest increase is in stark contrast to projected increases among… • people of Hispanic origin (projected to increase by 188%), • the Asian population (projected to increase by 213%) • the Black population (projected to increase by 71%). • By 2050, the non-Hispanic, White population will comprise only 50.1% of the country’s total population, a sharp decline from the 77.1% of the population who reported their race as White in the 2000 census • But, there’s much more to it than that…

5. Regional distribution of percentage of White population in the United States, 2000

6. Regional distribution by percentage of Black population in United States, 2000

7. Regional distribution of percentage of Hispanic population in United States, 2000

8. Who will lead and teach in these schools? However, as the nation’s population grows increasingly diverse, schoolteachers and educational administrators are increasingly White. Gay (1997) estimated that the number of teachers of color has declined from 12% in the 1970s to 6% in the 1990s and that statistics for school administrators of color are similarly discouraging. The 2003-2004 School and Staffing Survey estimated the total distribution of “minority” principals in public schools at 17.6 percent, although the minority student population was estimated at 39.7 percent (Strizek, Pittsonberger, Riordan, Lyter, & Orlofsky, 2006).

9. These changes influence some school-based dynamics: Leadership and School Culture • Leadership and School Culture • Direct effects on teachers, indirect effects on students • Norms • Procedures, expectations of members, measures of success, forms of support • Beliefs • Personal, collective, and sub-group, failure-success, deficit vs. strength-based language • School Sub-culture • Racial School sub-cultures

10. Race • Race: An anthropological perspective • Race as phenotype • Race as a culturally constructed phenomenon used for the purpose of domination • So…race is not a value-neutral idea • It is not separate from racism

11. Race Relations: We don’t pay enough attention • Race relations: An anthropological perspective • Race relations, then, is the process of unlearning and undoing our miseducation about oppression and everyday acts of symbolic and actual violence • We must mend broken culture in schools • Complementarity • Reciprocity • Antithesis • Rivalry

12. A School Divided

14. A moiety of two racial sub-cultures

15. Finding One: Race Matters • Data analysis suggested that the school’s leadership culture operated as a distinct and separate culture • Each half had different • Norms: procedures, expectations of members, and measures of success • Beliefs: Personal, collective, and sub-group • The two halves interacted in a manner consistent with anthropological literature

16. Finding Two: Black Leadership, White Leadership • Black Women Leaders as Moral Compass: Gender and Black Leadership • I AM a Role Model: Black Leaders as Role Models and Advocates • Fear of a District Leadership “Lynch Mob” • Father Knows Best: Gender and White Leadership • Hard Work...and Who You Know: White Leaders’ Perspectives on the Keys to Success • “It is What it Is”: White Leaders and the Belief in Social Reproduction

17. Finding Three: Race Relations • Complementarity • The moieties worked together to accomplish certain technocratic tasks and goals • Reciprocity • Inter-moiety exchanges were usually transactional, while intra-moiety exchanges were transformational • Antithesis • Each half of the moiety harbored resentment and mistrust of the other, for different reasons • Rivalry • Members of each half of the moiety were in competition for scarce resources and trying to implement different social missions

18. Discussion Round Robin: How would you describe race and race relations in your schools? • 1: How would you explain the state of race and race relations in your school(s) to your students? • 2: How would you explain the state of race and race relations in your school(s) to your teachers? • 3: How would you explain the state of race and race relations in your school(s) to your administrators? • 4: How would you explain the state of race and race relations in your school(s) to your parents/families? • Debrief: how does this make us (re)think what we are doing in schools and how we communicate?

19. The Silent Language of Racism

20. The Silent Language of Racism • Beverly Tatum asked us to pay attention to who was sitting next to each other in the cafeteria, but there’s more… • Anthropologist Edward Hall (1959) identified ten discrete ways cultures express themselves, only one of which is spoken and written language. Collectively considered, these modes of expression constitute a silent language by which members and groups in a culture communicate to each other and to others. • Hall identified cultural expression as having the characteristics: interaction, association, subsistence, sexuality, territoriality, temporality, learning, defense, play, and exploitation

21. Interaction • At DuBois it was common for teachers, administrators and students to be critical of each other’s gestures and body language. Importantly, these critiques were different when leveled at members of one’s own race rather than another. • A White Assistant Principal who routinely criticized Black students for “not standing up straight,” “walking like a gangsta,” or “walking like a pimp” as he stood in the hallways between classes. He made no such comments to White students, though they often assumed similar postures. • Interestingly, Black teachers and administrators also singled out Black students to “correct” them more than White students. • It was common to see Black teachers urge their Black students to alter their body language. One teacher in particular routinely admonished his students for “walking like a thug” while another Black teacher told her students nearly every day that they wouldn’t get a job unless they “acted more professionally,” which meant “standing up straight, wearing your pants in the right place on your waist and carrying yourself like a CEO, not like a hustler.”

22. Subsistence • White administrator: “The cafeteria at DuBois High School serves fried chicken every day.” • “You may not like it—hell, I like it less than you, because I’ve got to eat it all the time—but I got to get parents’ and kids’ butts in those seats. They expect it now, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one to let them down just because someone might think it’s racist.” • Black teacher: “I don’t go near the cafeteria—that chicken smells like racism.” • “…seriously, how can they serve what they serve in the cafeteria? The kids see that, and they’re not stupid—they know what it means—they know what it says about the White people who run this school!”

23. Temporality • There were striking differences between the ways that Black and White educators in Dubois viewed time. White educators often expressed an impatience that drove them to great frustration: • “I’m a change agent. I’m here to shake things up and make things happen ASAP. I don’t have time and I don’t have patience for people who just make excuses.” • Black educators showed a great deal more patience and an understanding that for educational change to take hold, it would take among other things a great deal of time, sustained progress and steady change: • “There are no silver bullets, no quick-fix solutions to all of this.” • “We need to stop focusing on year-to-year gains and benchmarks, that is distracting us from the fact that real change takes years, even decades, to take hold.”

24. Play • Black educators and White educators joked and played differently, and did so in different spaces. • White educators tended to joke at the beginning of meetings or the day and then work quickly toward a sustained, serious tone. • Black educators tended to be more serious and guarded in faculty meetings, laughing if a joke was initiated but not offering one themselves. Black educators tended to be more guarded in this respect and, as one Black teacher explained, “I don’t want people here to accuse me of being lazy. If I tell a joke, rumors will start that I’m screwing around and not doing my job. White folks can tell jokes—it’s more dangerous for Black people.”

25. Discuss • With whom do you (and other educators) eat lunch? • What kind of car do you drive, and what cars do the students, teachers, and administrators drive? • What kind of clothes do you wear, and what kind do the students, teachers, and administrators wear? • How is the school’s space organized—Are there certain spaces for certain people? Where is it safe and dangerous? • What can/should students, teachers, administrators and families do about this?

26. Second Generation Segregation

27. Second Generation Segregation “As a beginning teacher, I was given low-level classes. Kids that need remedial help. They were predominantly black. As I gained years there, I started getting honors classes. They were overwhelmingly white. Right now I have one black child in my honors class, out of twenty-seven.” Teacher Peter Soderstrom, quoted in Studs Terkel’s (1992, p. 192) Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession.

28. Hidden Lessons of Second Generation Segregation In second-generation segregation programs, White students learn of their privilege and superiority through a hidden curriculum, while students of color learn an inverse lesson—they are inferior, academically and perhaps socially. And, since these tracks, programs and labels tend to stay with students throughout their school days the messages are reinforced over and over, from student to student and from generation to generation (Patton, 1998).

29. Findings: Claims without Evidence • International Baccalaureate and Special Education • Assumptions about programs fell out along racial lines • Teacher demographics • Student demographics • “Them” against “Us” • Tracking for teachers and students • Neither program was matched, in terms of diversity, with the student population of the school • Special Education program had 96% African American students • Clear evidence of second generation segregation

30. IB Program: Not such a clear-cut case • “Just last year, we had three National Merit Finalists, five National Achievement Commendations, and 100% of our students gained admission to a college or university. We sent a kid to Harvard and another to Yale. Our 53 seniors earned a total of 54 scholarships and 88% of our students earned the IB Diploma—and that’s quite a feat!” • Overwhelmingly, non-IB teachers said that the IB students were rich white kids and privileged white teachers • IB Teacher demographics: 44% White; 51% African American; 5% Other

31. IB Demographics

32. IB Program • Not as diverse as the school’s student population, but the most diverse IB program, by far, in the state • One of the most diverse in the nation • Administrator Perceptions • African American students and teachers in IB were “Acting White” • Program has never done anything for Black kids • …or has it? • Program is expensive • Would the school even be open without the program? • Minority success stories

34. Paradoxes: Is the IB Program sufficiently diverse?

35. Paradoxes • The Special Education program seems to be a clear case of second generation segregation, but whether or not the IB program is may be in the eye of the beholder • Not as diverse as the student population • But a vanguard when considered in national/international perspective • What are administrator and teacher responsibilities with regard to dispelling myths?

36. Think-Pair-Share • Find a partner you don’t know. • Explain the achievement/learning/performance gap in your school/district to your partner. Why does it exist and persist? • Tell them one of your success stories. • Tell them one thing your school/district does poorly. • What can be done? • Individually? • Systemically?

37. Final “So What” Point #1 • The definition of race is contested, and is by nature constantly under revision.

38. Final “So What” Point #2 • Research and practice that ignores issues of race is bad science.

39. Final “So What” Point #3 • Failing to include racial dynamics in educational leadership research and practice will render the field obsolete, and already leaves it incomplete

40. Final “So What” Point #4 • Race occurs simultaneously in multiple and ever-changing historical, social, political and economic contexts.

41. Final “So What” Point #5 • While issues of race are important for everyone, White men in particular must engage issues of race and race relations in educational leadership.

42. Final “So What” Point #5 • By omission or commission, we are all engaging issues of race.

43. An Open Discussion: What to do? • The Activist Role: Opposes or supports a position through vigorous deeds and proactive work. Often in a highly visible manner. • The Ally Role: Works with others for racial equity behind the scenes. • The Alchemist Role: Insists that lead is gold. Alchemists’ attitude toward issues of race is based on a false assumption that what they have always done is tantamount to social justice. This is often based on the “irrefutable proof” that they once had a student of color who graduated or that they “treat all students the same way, regardless of race.” • The Anti-racist Role. Develops and implements practices that actively fights racism at the interpersonal and organizational levels. Anti-racists seek to dismantle hegemony and eradicate oppression in their personal and professional work. • The Absolvist Role. Believes that race is not their problem. They may believe that they live in a racially homogeneous community, leave the work to others because it is too difficult, or simply be ignorant of racial dynamics. But, as we are part of a fluid global community and racial issues permeate all levels of society, the idea that engaging racial issues “is someone else’s job” is misguided. • The Apathetic Role. These people have some awareness and knowledge of racial issues, but they do not speak out or act on this awareness.

44. Questions and Discussion?