What If Black Male Educators Armed Themselves in the Classroom?
This conversation could go one or two ways…
Last year, while teaching in Chicago, we had an active shooter’s drill unannounced. I did what I was trained to do: line the children up in the coat closet, instruct them to get down, stay away from the door, and keep them quiet. Looking back, I think my seriousness of the drill had a lot to do with being a Columbine kid (if you are a Generation FleX baby, then chances are you are a Columbine kid, too). It is no badge of honor; we’re from that sad period in American history (late 90’s — early 2000s) where mass shootings, bomb threats, and school-wide evacuations became as much a part of our daily lives as Ms. Hill’s Miseducation and TGIF. Bomb threats on a weekly basis. Bomb threats on a daily basis. Lets just say I come from a School of Old where we did. not. play. with active shooters. Drills or otherwise.
Of course, my students took the drill as serious as seventh graders take anything (To be clear, few things they take serious beyond themselves). They were laughing, playing, banging on their desk, and just being ridiculous all because they could. It was about a month or so after 45’s election — that weird 2-weekish period after Thanksgiving, but before Christmas break where as a teacher, you’re just kind of on auto pilot. To put it frankly, I already wasn’t in the mood and their lack of seriousness pissed me off.
“I”m so glad yall found that hilarious,” I started. “But if that was real, we’d all be dead. Every last one of us. Bleeding out on the floor because you wanna be a FOOL.”
Then, as only a Black man can talk to a room full of Black children, We had a word. Well, Baba Eric had a word. A bunch of them. Some nice. Some not so nice (I may or may not have use the term nigganess in a sentence, I don’t know). Beyond the fact that my classroom was the FIRST room off of the main entrance to the school, I laid into them for one very real reason: the man just elected to the highest office in the land had routinely encouraged violence against those that opposed him or his views. “If you want to die and throw your life away, that’s on you,” I remember telling them, “But you better accept that you’re living in times now where violence against you is openly encouraged. Anybody can come in here and end all of us because of something they heard their President say on television. and here you are, DEAD because you wanna act a FOOL in the closet.”
I was pissed — and still haunted by those Columbine kid days. I was pissed mostly tho, at the fact that I even had to explain this to them, but partly at the fact that they really would’ve gotten us all MURKED.
A year and some change later, the threat of violence in the classroom has not subsided. In fact, on Valentine’s Day, America saw one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation’s history when a terrorist walked into a school with a semi-automatic rifle and murdered 17 people. Almost immediately, people began calling for Florida’s lawmakers to address access to fire arms in the state. What was Florida’s brilliant response? Create a 70 million dollar program that train and arm teachers, effectively turning them into law enforcement officers who happen to teach children.
Initially, I was sick to the stomach at the thought of children sitting in classrooms at the mercy of underpaid, overworked, highly irritable, and easily overwhelmed teachers — who are now armed. Given the current race relations in America and the fact that nearly 82% of school teachers are white , there is no peace in the fact in knowing that it would be a matter of time before some teacher “feared for his life” because Rasheed got loud. How long would it be before we turned on the news to see dozens of Black children recounting in horror how their teacher pulled out a gun and murdered their classmate right in front of their eyes? Guns in the classroom will no doubt translate into more grieving Black mothers — mothers who will mourn the deaths of their children murdered by their teachers. The picture is graphic because the picture is America. This is our reality.
But, here’s a crazy idea: what if the teachers at the helm of the “Arm The Educators” movement were Black men? What if Black male educators took the lead in arming ourselves and protecting our schools from the overwhelmingly white male terrorist that routinely and consistently attack schools? What if Black male educators sought the training, received the mental health screening, and became dual law enforcement-educators? What if Black men took the lead on this?
Guns in the classroom will no doubt translate into more grieving Black mothers — mothers who will mourn the deaths of their children murdered by their teachers.
Of course, That’ll never happen. The idea of a gun in the classroom is just too radical for many of us — myself included. Keeping it 100, 45's America, under no circumstances, would ever support arming an organized body of Black bodies, let alone educated, Black bodies. History is littered with evidence of the government using the law of the land to ban, confiscate, and curve gun ownership among Black people. From the 17th century “Le Codes Noire,” to the 1968 Mumford Act (many historians believe it was directly aimed at disarming the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense), Black people have consistently been reminded that the 2nd amendment applied to all but us.
But…what if Black men, armed with the law and our shiny new NRA membership cards, what if we answered the call? It would be something to consider, right? After all, Black males make up about 2% of all school educators which currently means there are about 93,000 Black male teachers in the nation and 5,150 in the state of Florida. That’s 5,000 highly-skilled, highly trained and armed teachers in the state of Florida alone. Not to mention, by metrics outlined by the state, many of these teachers are already in “high needs, high risk” schools in “high crime” neighborhoods (Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa, etc).
What if we took up this fight on the grounds of keeping our schools and our neighborhoods safe from domestic terrorism? What would happen to the gun rights debate if Black male educators took up the charge to arm ourselves in the classroom? What if we vowed to have our guns clawed from our “cold, dead, and Black hands?”
Is it a bad idea? Perhaps. Guns just do not need to be in the school setting, period. Matter of fact, the line between schools and prisons have been blurred so much since the rise of the zero tolerance discipline policy that on paper, they are nearly indistinguishable in language, design, and in the case of Black males, intent.
For the record, I am against arming teachers. But I do wonder how different this conversation would be if Black men were leading the conversation while leaning on the 2nd amendment. I know one thing is for certain: my favorite teacher had a gun. A really, big gun.
