This winter, students across the country celebrated Black History Month. They read books by black authors, wrote research papers on civil rights activists, memorized Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and watched videos about the Underground Railroad. And as they learned about the struggles of the past, many began recognize it in their own present – when a cashier squints suspiciously when they walk into a store, when they turn on the news and see another person who looks like them lose his life to senseless violence. These lessons are anything but history.
My high school government students in Baltimore knew this intimately. When I set expectations that my tenth-graders remain on a college-bound track, they pushed back. “This isn’t one of those selective high schools,” they said. “Kids like us don’t go to college.” When I taught lessons on why their citizenship matters, they responded with real-world examples of times when their rights as citizens was not respected or valued.
In the face of these realities, we have no time to waste. This school year marked the first in which the majority of public school students are minorities. Our generation has a responsibility to work to ensure that each and every one of them is moving through a system that affirms their identities, shows them they’re valued and allows them access to the opportunities they have been denied for far too long.
While the “whites only” signs of the ’60s have come down, the reality of separate and unequal endures. Alongside glaring gaps in educational, employment and economic opportunity, people of color in this nation face a variety of subtler, no less damaging assumptions. A successful black lawyer hears whispers of affirmative action. A young black boy on a corner is seen as “lurking,” while his white peers “hang out.” A black college student is asked to give “the black perspective” to a seminar full of white students who are never asked to speak on behalf of their entire race.
Despite the stereotypes my kids have to fight against, they have reason to hope. They followed every twist and turn of the Obama campaign with a mixture of disbelief and pride. As they watched him win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency, their joy was indescribable. This man who shares their background won the right to run the free world. Each and every one of them had the potential to do the same.
I joined Teach For America largely because of my own educational experiences. I grew up in a predominately white suburb of Kansas City and did very well in school. I won awards and was often praised for my academic achievement. But when I looked around, I often felt isolated – the only person with my complexion in the room. I became an educator so fewer kids would experience this. I wanted more kids who look like me to have the same opportunities that I had.
We have a long way to go as a country before we truly achieve justice for all. To fix the systemic oppression that has created the gross inequality of the present will take the hard, dedicated work of countless leaders and change-makers – many who have experienced it first-hand, others who bear witness to it from further away. We must work toward these long-term changes as well as the immediate, urgent opportunities to change the way our students view themselves and their futures.
As teachers, we can play a central role in this. Every day, we can remind our kids that their thoughts, ideas, identities and opinions are important. We can share our own stories so that when our kids look to the front of the room, they see a little bit of themselves reflected back. We can remind them that they matter, that they always have and that they always will.
— Taylor Stewart, taylor.stewart@educationalequity.com