More Than an Ally. Michael L. Boucher Jr.
by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. This new generation of activists was stirred after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Corresponding events and movements such as the Movement for Black Lives have pushed White Americans who want to work toward a more equitable society to examine history, structures, and the essential nature of the country.
This examination means that people are talking about race on a regular basis, yet the conversations are not yet producing the kind of increased awareness and empathy that lead to substantial change. Why is that? When race is discussed, the solution is seldom dismantling the structures that keep powerful people in power and others on the margins. In schools, talking about race, when it’s done at all, is done to people and not with them—making solutions elusive not because they are truly impossible but because their cost in money, place, and privilege is perceived as too high. Thus, the talk continues without results, often devolving into blaming the victims of racism.
After a successful career of teaching in urban schools, I began this research in 2009 when it seemed like Americans were ready to talk with clarity about race. The United States had just elected its first Black president, who campaigned on hope and unity. More people of color were coming into leadership positions in both the public and private sectors. From social media to popular culture, it seemed that Americans were on the verge of finally having an honest dialogue about race. What many of us did not fully understand, however, was that there was a storm of resentment brewing against that progress.
The election of 2016 blew in and exploded the fragile structure of White racial understanding (see “Capitalizing White” in the introduction). Instead of moving forward, many White people have become confused about the difference between lie and fact, concerned with their own position, and defensive of their personal status (DiAngelo, 2011; Coates, 2017). The last decade has been dizzying and has left many well-intentioned White people convinced that something must change but without a clear framework as to what that change should look like.
White teachers who seek relationships with students based on solidarity see #BlackLivesMatter and want to create classrooms that reflect that their students matter and that their experiences matter. However, other teachers have sometimes participated in the varied backlashes to the movement, such as denying that race exists, deliberately misunderstanding (#AllLivesMatter), and silencing student protests.
The election of Donald Trump was a gut punch to White people who assumed that the country was moving ahead in race relations (Sondel, Baggett, & Dunn, 2018). The current news climate has only increased the tempo and frequency of race conversations, but again they are frequently unproductive. As race, racism, and White supremacy are being debated hour by hour, the absurdity of our current discourse can be overwhelming to White teachers looking to create a more just and inclusive America. These teachers are trying to understand how they can become more than just casual observers of racism and more than nonracists. They are seeking to move to a deeper level of solidarity with people of color (Applebaum, 2011; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2012).
Given the tenor of the conversation around race, picking up this book and considering its contents is either an act of defiance or one of devotion. Whether it is defiance in the face of increasing polarization across the political and social landscape in all its forms, or if the motivation comes from a devotion to the art, craft, and calling of being an impactful educator, this book should be helpful in either endeavor. It is an attempt to empower White teachers and teacher candidates[1] to do the hard work of interrogating their own racial privilege and joining in caring solidarity with their students.
My research over the last decade has shown that White teachers seeking success in their work that serves predominantly African American students should look within and interrogate their own whiteness. They should look for ways to dismantle structures of racial oppression and privilege in their schools and communities. However, the road to that self-awareness is fraught with pitfalls.
No One Can Just Close the Door and Teach
Sullivan (2014) argued that the tendency of racially aware White people to enter spaces where they feel they can have an impact, such as a racially segregated neighborhood, does more harm than good. She argued that when these White people move into these new spaces, they express their own privilege and assume a missionary or savior standpoint (Warren & Talley, 2017). She exhorted, “Rather than setting aside one’s whiteness in an attempt to learn about other races, white people can begin to do effective racial justice work by cleaning up their own house” (p. 20).
Even in teacher education programs, because of segregated patterns of living in America, most teacher candidates have never had a meaningful exchange about race with a person racially different from themselves. It can be scary, treacherous, and unsafe to talk about race, and given the opportunity, most people avoid talking about it outside of their own racial or social groups. However, as educators devoted to students and to equity and justice in education, these uncomfortable conversations are necessary and should lead to action.
While Sullivan makes a compelling argument for self-knowledge before doing the work of dismantling privilege, White teachers working in schools with African American students have already crossed color lines and are living in the racial dynamic, meaning that inaction or delayed action is not a viable choice. White teachers in multicultural and multiracial schools do not have the luxury of deciding where and when to make a difference by waiting and assessing the situation from the sidelines. These teachers currently work across the color barrier, and thus it is not a question of whether they will influence their students and communities because, for better or worse, they do so every day.
The work of dismantling structures of oppression is currently being done in many fields and from many angles, including law, politics, policy, faith, and education. While all White people should participate in these multisided efforts, teachers have a special responsibility to care for, and about, our students and communities of color. This means that teachers must take control of the one place over which we have control, our schools.
In frustration, teachers will often say that they just close their door and do their work, effectively shutting out the cacophony outside. However, schools in a healthy republic are the gardens of democratic thinking, reasoning, and skills, not marketplaces engaged in a crass exchange of services. If anything is exchanged, it should be the narrow, flattened ideas of childhood for the complex, rich ideas of adulthood. Instead, too many view education as a value-laden transaction where those who shout the loudest are privileged in the marketplace of ideas while other voices are further marginalized.
Classrooms are the place to build a more equitable and sustainable society and should not be some neutral, or neutered, conduit for received knowledge. It is a foolish fantasy to believe that any neutrality is even possible, but to actively argue that schools should be mere conveyors of received knowledge is to reject our democratic ideals. In order to create a space where the pluralistic ethic can flourish, the mask of neutrality of culture in schools must be lifted. Thus, teachers in multicultural and multiracial schools are in the best position to do the work of dismantling structures of oppression and White supremacy and create a new, more equitable society. However, it will take more than reading the “I Have a Dream” speech every January and a bulletin board of heroes every February.
This book explains a new concept in teaching, caring solidarity. Building on the work of Gloria Ladson-Billings’s The Dreamkeepers (1994) and that of other scholars, the hope is to change the conversation about how White teachers approach teaching African American students. Solidarity with students and communities is built by replacing fear with understanding, discomfort with empathy, and avoidance with courage. Through education, care, and solidarity, educators committed to dismantling these structures move first themselves and then others to a deeper understanding and connection to empower and inspire students.
Even in teacher education programs, because of segregated patterns of living in America, most teacher candidates have never had a meaningful exchange about race with a person racially different from themselves. It can be scary, treacherous, and unsafe to talk about race, and given the opportunity, most people avoid talking about it outside of their own racial or social groups. However, as educators devoted