Can We Talk about Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation (12 page)

I believe that this kind of antiracist professional development is extremely important in transforming practice, and that there should be more of it. Should it be mandatory? I am often asked this question. My response is based in my experience. The most effective work that I’ve done has been with educators who were participating voluntarily. And yet when we talk about voluntary audiences, people often say, “Well, you are just preaching to the choir.” My response to that is always that the choir needs rehearsal!

It is hard to do this work, and gathering with others who are like-minded or who are focused on the same thing can in fact lead you to feel more empowered to do it. The educators who participated in the Massachusetts study went back to their classrooms, talked to their colleagues, and tried new strategies that they hadn’t tried before. They had gathered with other, similarly motivated folks with the result that—to continue with the choir analogy—they were learning to sing better. And when you sing well, you encourage other people to sing with you. I have always thought about this professional development work in this way: as gathering those who are interested and helping them to think about how to expand their own spheres of influence to bring about change through the ripple effect. Those educators who might never volunteer for such a course are inevitably influenced by the momentum generated by those working around them. And some of them learn by example that they might like to sing, too.

Singing in concert with others leads to a more powerful result than singing alone, and of course, change happens more quickly at the institutional level when the focus shifts from the individual to the systemic—to the policies and practices that cut across classrooms. In their recent book,
Courageous Conversations about Race
, Glenn Singleton and Curtis Linton make the important point that “we must not mistake personal anti-racist leadership for Systemic Equity Anti-Racism Transformation. Individuals and schools must be part of an entire community of courageous, passionate and mutually supportive leaders in the district.”
⁵²
In order for system-wide change to take place, there must be leadership at the highest levels to support the examination of continuing educational inequities, especially when there is community resistance to doing so.

Singleton and Linton offer as a case example the Lemon Grove School District near San Diego, California, a district that has been engaged in a system-wide antiracist focus for five years. In 2001 Lemon Grove was one of the most diverse school districts in San Diego County, with 34 percent of its students Latino, 34 percent White, 22 percent African American, and 10 percent representing other groups of color. Like many districts, there was an achievement gap that fell along racial lines, and a history of racial tension. Disproportionate numbers of Latino and African American students scored in the lowest quartiles, and only a few were in the top quartile. In an effort to bring about change and close the achievement gap, in 2001 the superintendent, Dr. McLean King, released a vision statement emphasizing a system-wide focus on equity.
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Like many districts, he identified the school mission as one of engaging and supporting “all students in achieving high academic standards.” In his vision he advocated for “a culture that embraces diversity, respects all cultures, and ensures the development and implementation of educational programs that maximize academic achievement for all students regardless of race, color, or creed.” While all of this was positive, it was not unusual. What set Dr. King’s vision statement apart from others I have seen was his explicit mention of the role of race and the personal responsibility that all of the educators in his district had to engage in self-reflection. He said, “It is equally important that all school leaders are personally aware of the role race plays in perpetuating a system of bias, prejudice, and inequity. Such awareness and each individual’s personal commitment are critical to the creation of a school environment that is free from racism.” He concluded his vision statement with these words:

With that kind of clear and powerful leadership, it is not surprising that Lemon Grove is making significant progress toward its goal of closing the achievement gap. Historically a low-performing school district, in the five years that this effort has been under way, the district has consistently scored better than schools with similar demographics. Despite the fact that 65 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged (eligible for free or reduced lunch), 20 percent have limited English skills, and state funding per pupil is slightly below the state average, the district is making impressive gains. In 2004 Black students in five of the eight schools and Latino students in four of the eight schools improved at a rate greater than their White counterparts, suggesting that the racial achievement gap is closing rapidly. At the same time, all students are showing achievement gains. Singleton and Linton conclude, “The transformation occurring in the district follows our equity definition: Raise the achievement of all students while narrowing the gaps between the highest and lowest performing students; and eliminating the racial predictability and disproportionality of which student groups occupy the highest and lowest achievement categories.”
⁵⁵

The case of Lemon Grove clearly illustrates that a commitment to breaking the silence about race at all levels of the educational system can indeed lead to improving performance for all students. We know what to do. We just have to have the courage and commitment to do it.

In her recent book,
Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships
,
¹
editor Emily Bernard invited a multiracial group of writers to join her in reflecting on the possibility of friendship across color lines. Women and men of diverse backgrounds attempted to address Bernard’s key questions: Which ingredients make interracial friendships possible? Which factors destroy them? Could individual friendships be the answer to some of our larger social problems? I was particularly struck by one writer’s answer to Bernard’s questions. In his provocative essay, “Secret Colors,” David Mura, a Japanese American man, wrote:

What kind of friendship is that? Indeed, Mura’s question highlights the core dimension of those relationships that go beyond the superficiality of warm acquaintanceship or the politeness of congenial collegiality. Genuine friendship generates enough trust to allow for honest exchange between oneself and the other about matters large and small, and permits the sharing of one’s true thoughts and feelings, even when those thoughts and feelings are troubling to the receiver. Genuine friendship is characterized by authenticity and mutuality, which is life giving and soul satisfying. Genuine friendship, repeating the words of the psychologist Jean Baker Miller as presented in
Chapter 1
, leaves us feeling “seen, heard, and understood.”
³

Perhaps such friendship is rare under the best of circumstances. Can it exist between those who have learned from firsthand experience or secondhand history to be wary of one another? Can it exist between those who have breathed in the smog of cultural assumptions of individual and cultural racial and ethnic superiority and those who have been labeled as inferior by the dominant culture? Can we have the kind of relationships across lines of race and ethnicity that are truly authentic and mutual? And in the end, what difference does it make?

In her classic 1988 essay, “Connections, Disconnections, and Violations,” Miller wrote eloquently about the constructive power of relational connections and the potentially destructive force of relational disconnections and violations. What happens when our experience
is validated
by another person in a mutually empathic relationship? We feel a strong sense of connection. We experience what Dr. Miller calls the “five good things.” When a relationship is mutually reinforcing, it gives you a feeling of increased zest, a sense of empowerment, greater self-knowledge, increased self-worth, and most importantly in the context of a friendship, a desire for more connection.
⁴
Those five good things are indeed a powerful incentive to seek mutual engagement with friends and loved ones. Certainly genuine friendships are rooted in love, but love is not enough.

In her reflection on interracial friendship, Emily Bernard observed, “In my experience being loved isn’t the same thing as being seen.”
⁵
Building on this theme, David Mura describes the ways he was invisible to his White friends and to himself in the context of their relationships.

Love does not guarantee equality, reciprocity, authenticity, or mutuality. But the variety of love one finds in friendship demands it. Can White people and people of color move beyond the inherited inequality embedded in our shared history—the history of Scarlett O’Hara and her enslaved Black servant Mammy being just one example—to forge the kind of authentic relational connections that Miller describes? For me, the answer to this question is yes, it
is
possible. I say yes because I have such friendships, but I recognize that they are not easily forged, and our capacity to form them is shaped by our own developmental process and willingness to engage with the historical and contemporary meaning of race in our society.

In childhood, who becomes a friend is governed largely by convenience and proximity; but in adolescence, and certainly in adulthood, we make more active choices. Our choice of friends is shaped in part, if not wholly, by our sense of self-definition, particularly in adolescence and adulthood. But self-definition does not emerge in a vacuum. It is shaped by a lifetime of social interactions, molded by messages received about who we are in the world, how others perceive us, and with whom we should seek connection. In a society where racial group membership is still a meaningful social characteristic, the development of racial identity is relevant to how our social connections are formed and maintained. I have written extensively about the meaning, significance, and development of racial identity for both Whites and people of color.
⁷
Here I want to briefly summarize the developmental process that unfolds in the context of a race-conscious society.

Let me begin with the assumption that in a society where racial group membership is emphasized, the development of a racial identity will occur in some form in everyone. Given the dominant/subordinate relationship of Whites and people of color in this society, however, it is not surprising that this developmental process unfolds differently for each. But regardless of one’s racial/ethnic background, I hold that a positive sense of oneself as a member of one’s group (which is not based on any assumed superiority) is important for emotional well-being.
⁸
For the purpose of illustration, I want to talk about this from the perspective of people of color, drawing upon the work of the psychologist William Cross.
⁹

In childhood, the young person is likely to have absorbed many of the beliefs and values of the dominant White culture—regardless of his or her own cultural background. The pervasive influence of the media, the socializing impact of school, can override countervailing messages at home, to the extent that those are also present. If there is the opportunity of proximity, it is common for children of color who live in racially mixed neighborhoods to have White friends at this stage of development. Of course, given the considerable social segregation, many young people grow up in neighborhoods where they don’t have opportunity or proximity with respect to children of different races. But where there is such proximity, certainly it is common for young children to have racially mixed groups of friends. Typically the personal salience of race is minimized for young children of color.

But in adolescence that starts to change. New experiences may bring new awareness of the meaning of one’s racial group membership. For example, when I interviewed young Black women who had grown up in predominantly White communities, one young woman described an interaction she had with a White girlfriend in junior high school. She said that when her friend introduced her to another White classmate, the classmate gave the Black girl’s friend “a look like, ‘I can’t believe you have a Black friend.’” The Black girl vividly recalled her friend saying, “She’s not really Black, she just went to Florida and got a really dark tan.” “And that upset me incredibly,” she recounted, “because it was like, What? Yes I am, wait a second here.”