Racism, by Way of Politeness

Nikole Hannah-Jones tells us that white Northerners, on the outside, loved the Brown decision. They could put up a front of support for the decision, and come off looking really good — really progressive and much more open to change than the South. They thought Brown wouldn’t affect their lives, because they thought it only applied to segregation explicitly written into the law. Their schools weren’t explicitly segregated — instead they were more trickily segregated by other policies (housing, attendance zones, etc.) that white Northerners didn’t think would be affected by Brown.

But then, “for the briefest and rarest of moments, all three branches of government took the mandate of Brown seriously. The Supreme Court ruled that it was not enough for school districts to merely remove the language requiring segregation, they had to actually move bodies around and integrate their schools” (“It Was Never About Busing”). Desegregation required the courts to be incredibly race-conscious in order to undo/re-do the system. Kids, neighborhoods, teachers and administrators — all were assigned to schools based on race. They had to move kids around with buses — based on race. Every choice that was made had to be based on race, because they knew that if it wasn’t, if a single choice was left up to the existing system, desegregation wouldn’t happen.

They understood that, as Hannah-Jones quotes from the 1971 Swann vs. Mecklenburg County case: “absent a constitutional violation, there would be no basis for judicially ordering assignment of students on a racial basis. All things being equal, with no history of discrimination, it might well be desirable to assign pupils to schools nearest their homes. But all things are not equal in a system that has been deliberately constructed and maintained to enforce racial segregation.”

This rare moment of self-awareness displayed here by the court system makes me breathe a sigh of relief. This is the opposite of color-blind policies. They are aware that neutrality doesn’t work, they are aware that it is, as Myles Horton puts it, “a code word for the existing system.” In this case, they recognized that the existing system wasn’t working, and that they had to push past neutrality and politeness to ensure that change would be made.

The results of Brown vs. Board of Education were far more effective than white Northerners expected it to be. They thought it was simply there to “fix the backward South” but then when changes started happening in their communities and their schools, they flipped out. What happened in the North is significant because I think we have this very simplistic view of the North as always having been “on the right side of history,” in terms of slavery, the Civil War, and so on. We have this simplistic view that, throughout history, white Northerners have had good intentions and have been the good guys — and the South has always gotten it wrong. And this just isn’t true. White supremacy exists everywhere — and it’s so often much more potent when it’s being disguised as politeness and good intentions. White Northerners, before they realized what Brown was going to affect them, weaponized their brand of “good intentions” to hide their discomfort with black people coming in their spaces, and also (as always) to serve their own interests.

So What? In, “The Problem We All Live With,” Nicole Hannah-Jones tells the story of the school district and the high school that Michael Brown attended in St. Louis. Discuss points in this story that you find especially relevant and important in terms of the concepts and issues of education and racism in general we have been examining thus far.

Cameron Hensley’s experience at Normandy High School hit me really hard. It must be so exhausting to want to learn, to want to succeed, and to have all these narratives telling you that you can succeed if you want it enough and try hard enough — and then your teachers literally don’t show up, or if they do they hand you a middle school level worksheet and call it a day. And then, on top of that, I’m imagining what it is to feel like you missed your only opportunity to leave. Many of your classmates are attending this majority white school with actual teachers and science classrooms with ventilation, and you made the “choice” not to and missed out. These are perfect conditions for fostering internalized oppression and self-blame in students. And Cameron’s experience really brings our conversations about critical consciousness into perspective. If his school can’t even get enough resources to even have teachers, how can we ever expect schools like Normandy High to get teachers who can foster critical consciousness in students? All of this is so on purpose — it’s all different layers of the same structural mess.

Nikole Hannah-Jones states that “sitting next to white kids… ensures that [black kids] get the education we have always reserved for white kids in this country.” This is very true; I agree with her that integrating schools in the best and most feasible option for closing the achievement gap. It breaks up racial caste in this country and changes the trajectory of kids’ entire lives. But I also want to consider how closing the achievement gap is somewhat of an assimalist goal. If we think about test scores and AP classes and only those things, it leaves no room for conversations about the importance of creating a world that doesn’t just play by white standards. We are struggling so hard, in some places of the country, to ensure that black students get even the most basic of the rights white students get. Other important things which could change the system for good (for example, program which can foster critical consciousness) seem like an added, extra privilege that can only come after fixing the basic system. But is there a way that changing the standards, and talking about critical consciousness, can be incorporated into these very first steps to ensuring basic rights for black students?

Something else Hannah-Jones noted how the conversation in the gym at Francis Howell was “taking place in one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the country’ and yet race barely came up, except when white parents were aggressively asserting that it wasn’t the issue. For example, one of the women who went up to the mic said: “My husband and I both have worked and lived in underprivileged areas in our jobs. This is not a race issue. And I just want to say to — if she’s even still here — the first woman who came up here and cried that it was a race issue, I’m sorry, that’s her prejudice calling me a racist because my skin is white and I’m concerned about my children’s education and safety. This is not a race issue. This is a commitment to education issue.”

This is the same thing, I think, as using “busing,” this weird, race-neutral euphemism, to talk about desegregation in a really shady way. There are so many phrases (“busing,” “safety,” “commitment to education,” etc.) that white people use in place of what they really mean, to distract from and disguise their racist/white supremacist ideologies. It’s really a whole different language — this color-blind wording of things — and it’s really insidious. Color-blind policies and mentalities, as we read about last week, run our country. And they are seen as the default for how our society is and should be. These weird color-blind euphemisms are seen as neutral and tame and even good, because they are “better” (politer) than their non-race-neutral, non-color-blind counterparts. Across the nation, we have this mentality that only a racist person would use the rude words that bring race into everything — if you can say you’re “concerned about safety” instead of saying what you really mean, you can avoid being seen by other white people as racist.

Now What? In our next class, we will dig into the Marin county context in relation to these issues. Many of you already have some knowledge from your community partners about these issues. Irregardless of what you know or don’t know at this point: Note (possible) connections with your community partner and questions that you might ask to better understand how structural or institutionalized racism impacts people at your community partner site.

A few (scattered, not fully fleshed out) ideas:

Hannah-Jones’ work makes me understand why charting the history of an issue is so important and illuminating. I have questions about the generational cycle of poverty, and how this affects immigrant families over the course of the history of the Canal district. I have questions about how the Canal has changed (for example, I know that it has become much more Latinx over the past few decades). I also have a lot of questions about housing, and how it affects schooling, and how this has changed over time as population demographics have shifted?

I have questions about where kids in Marin go to school? I know Bayside MLK, and I sort of know San Rafael High because I live down the street. I’ve gathered over the years that San Pedro Elementary is a completely segregated school that students (mostly from the Canal?) are bused to, but I would love some confirmation on that.

I have questions about how much awareness/discussion of race and immigration is happening among policymakers and educators in Marin? Are people talking about race here, or are we pretending to be color-blind? It seems like the fact that Marin is largely wealthy and white allows everyone to generalize and assume that everyone is wealthy and white, and because we are all homogeneously privileged, there are no problems. How does this contribute to wealth inequality and lack of funding/resources to areas with low-income communities of color?

Also, San Rafael has a large Latinx immigrant population, and not a lot of black people. So I feel like I know some of these education issues we have been talking about, but they sometimes happen in a different way than they do in places with more black people and fewer Latinx people. And sometimes they don’t happen at all — because different issues are happening. I think this is not a specific question so much as it is a reminder to myself that applying Hannah-Jones’ work and the experiences of the people she is talking to (and all of our other course material), to the education systems in San Rafael requires a consideration of language and immigration — not just a consideration of race.