More than 60 years has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an end to segregation in America’s public schools, but inequality and racial prejudice have not disappeared from our classrooms. In fact, argue the authors of Racialized Schools: Under-standing and Addressing Racism in Schools, racism in education is today an even more pernicious problem, since it operates on a largely unconscious level.
To one of the book’s authors, UNLV’s Jesse Brinson, racism is so embedded in the human mindset that some people don’t even recognize its presence. Some scholars, he notes, even go as far as to assert that admitting one’s racism is indistinguishable from acknowledging one’s humanity.
“So the question is not whether an individual is racist,” says Brinson, a professor of educational and clinical studies. “The real question is whether an individual is mildly, moderately, or severely racist.”
For educational authorities, then, such acknowledgements are just a starting point: They must also be cognizant of how racist policies and practices play out in their schools. In other words, they must ask, “To what extent are school policies and procedures intentionally or unintentionally racist in development and implementation?” says Shannon Smith, Brinson’s co-author.
Unfortunately, says Smith, previous studies suggest policy makers and administrators are ill equipped to do much about the deeply entrenched racial biases manifested in schools.
“Racism is particularly important to address in schools, where creating a level playing field among kids of different ethnic backgrounds is critical to achieving positive educational outcomes,” says Smith, who is also a professor of educational and clinical studies.
The best administrators, the authors agree, are those who commit themselves to hiring staff who are less likely to perpetuate racist thinking and behavior.
Sadly, some school staff will undoubtedly bring their racial baggage to work with them; some will suffer from forms of bigotry that will rank them in the “severe racist” category. The authors say their new book will help school personnel identify and confront these educators in a direct and yet professional manner. When done correctly, they add, the process can be cathartic.
“For individuals who are challenged to identify their racism, if you are able to show them how their thinking is erroneous, many will tend to change their way of thinking,” Brinson says.
Racialized Schools supports its recommendations with data from various empirical models, including the authors’ own research involving online surveys distributed to some 3,000 U.S. education professionals, including school mental health personnel, teachers, administrators, and school board members. The results of their study almost immediately yielded insights into the scope of the problem.
“One of our first findings was how deeply embedded racism is as a societal taboo,” Smith says. “We received a number of contacts from teachers who were not willing to answer the survey because they were afraid that their principal could access the survey and discover how they really feel.”
Another telling discovery was the heavy price racism exacts in “opportunity costs” — that is, the way racial prejudice can turn the economic potential of millions of young people into a long-term financial burden.
“The school-to-prison pipeline alone is enough to warrant a radical new way of thinking about education,” Brinson says.
Brinson and Smith write that, “Certain kids, because of the way they’re perceived by teachers, are likely to be funneled into low-ability curriculum tracks and identified as being difficult to teach. As a result, they are stigmatized for their entire academic careers and rarely attend college.
“If they even graduate from high school, they will be identified as marginal and less likely to find meaningful employment. And, if they decide not to go into the service sectors because the wages are so low, many could turn to less legitimate ways to spend their lives attempting to earn a living.”
The authors suggest a number of ways we can do better for such children. In addition to curriculum guides, they present “interpretive acts” – short vignettes involving potentially racist encounters or situations.
The intent of the interpretive acts section is to enable readers to uncover their hidden racism, they say. They also hope some readers will be challenged to explore their own thought patterns and beliefs, particularly when the vignettes they’re reading aren’t, to them, read ily identifiable as offensive.
Racialized Schools is also intended as a practical learning resource, one that provides in-class curriculum guides. The guides, tested using focus groups, were designed to reduce race-based bullying and foster more effective interaction among different ethnic groups.
Curricula notwithstanding, success in school is strongly influenced by the student-teacher relationship. In societies where racism is prevalent, students become adept at identifying adults that they perceive as harboring a racial bias towards them.
“If teachers don’t find themselves able to have meaningful relationships with students of color, their ability to be effective teachers is extremely compromised,” says Brinson. “American teachers are 80 percent white, and many are not comfortable communicating with underprivileged students on an emotional level, nor are they adept at impressing upon them the importance of learning.”
Brinson, who is African-American, met Smith, who is white, at a program merger created by the College of Education’s Counselor Education Program. Brinson had a research interest in multicultural counseling issues. Smith focused on social justice and advocacy. It wasn’t long before they found themselves talking about issues that appeared to overlap between their respective research areas.
But it was only after Brinson began to discuss his experiences in academia that he and Smith shifted the discussion to racism in education. Both scholars acknowledged that Smith had a slight, but still unfair, advantage as a white male.
“We’re both equally qualified in our field,” Smith says, “and yet [in meetings] I would be called on more and would have the ability to address certain topics that Jesse wouldn’t. There were multiple examples of where I would have privilege in the academic environment. Even the simpler things, such as the seating arrangement, often reflected who had the most sociopolitical capital due to racism.”
After such meetings the two discussed these inequities, talks that led them to conclude they should team up to tackle a study related to racism in higher education. But soon Brinson and Smith determined that racism at the elementary and secondary levels would be a better place to start given that there was a greater need for empirical research in this area.
“In particular, we wanted to be able to produce a project that could potentially have public policy implications,” says Brinson, “one that would expose this problem to individuals within our state government. We felt that a book would have the greatest potential impact. Our society may never overcome racism, but the children in our schools do not have to be victims to individuals who may be unaware of their racist tendencies.”
Smith concurs. “If racist ideologies are to be dismantled from the American fabric, it must begin in our nation’s schools, and it must begin with our teachers and school administrators examining their own racism.”
