Disrupting White Comfort
Anonymous students threatened their black peers with violence. This time, our school must choose antiracism over white comfort.
As I write this morning, my heart is heavy. A few days before we wrapped up the first semester, our school made the news for all the wrong reasons:
Anonymous students had threatened their black peers with violence.
In response, many black students and students of color opted to learn remotely during finals week — a choice that was supported by their confused, heartbroken, and grieving teachers and administrators. That week, as I welcomed students into my emptier-than-usual classroom, I was at a loss for words. How do you apologize to your students when you’ve failed to provide for their most basic need: safety?
The answer is, you can’t, because words — and even some well-meaning actions — aren’t enough.
Over the years, many students and faculty have taken action to combat racism and discrimination on our campus. We’ve partnered with the Anti-Defamation League, training students and staff members on antiracism, anti-bias, and religious diversity and tolerance. We’ve asked school and community members to sign a pledge to stand up against hate and to model empathy, kindness, and courage. We’ve reevaluated the texts we teach and materials we use to include diverse and underrepresented voices that reflect the backgrounds, interests, and experiences of our students. We partnered with students to create the Black Student Union, Latino Student Club, and Multicultural Club so that our students of color had spaces in which they felt empowered to build community and advocate for themselves and their peers.
And it wasn’t enough. We knew it then, and we are reminded of it now. Because, in spite of our best intentions and efforts, racism in our schools, in our country, is structural. It’s systemic. It’s both blatant and insidious. It’s rooted in white supremacy and American exceptionalism. And it will continue to terrorize and traumatize our students and staff members of color until sweeping legislative and social changes are made, both within our community and across the country.
During the last school year, a year of an election and disinformation and deep fakes and a pandemic and the Capitol riot and Critical Race Theory hysteria, a vocal minority of our white students and families chose to stand up — not against hate, but our school’s attempts to acknowledge and address racism on campus. Staff members, myself included, found ourselves on the receiving end of email and phone rants regarding our attempts to “brainwash” students about antiracism. This small yet vocal group spoke out on social media, in the front office, and at board meetings to make their outrage known — and terrify us into an unforgivable and complicit silence. As one of my former administrators put it, there had been “too many complaints” for us to continue our fight against racism at the institutional level.
And this, I now realize, is epitome of “white comfort”: ensuring that white students and their families remain unchallenged in their biases at the expense of the safety and wellbeing of students of color and their families. As theologian Danté Stewart argues in his remarkable book, Shoutin’ in the Fire (2021):
“Many [white Americans] wanted to talk about racism but didn’t want to deal with white supremacy. Many wanted to talk about injustice but didn’t want to deal with anti-Blackness. Many wanted to talk about unity but didn’t want to deal with justice. Many wanted to center white comfort and not Black liberation” (p. 2014).
So what is next for our school as we seek to disrupt white comfort so that we can ensure the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual safety and wellbeing of our students of color? I don’t have the answers, but I do have the willingness to examine my own biases and racism so that I can lead by example. I don’t have the solutions, but I do have a community of students, staff members, and families that is grieving this pain and and figuring out how to do better for the sake of our students, all our students, these incredible human beings who deserve to be and feel safe and loved in our schools. And this time, together, we will not capitulate to the demands of white comfort.
