The well-being and life outcomes of children are immutably tied to the social status of their family. The social status of families are strongly correlated to levels of educational attainment of parents or adults. North Carolina State Representative Alma Adams once said during a press conference on poverty that “children are poor because they are connected to poor families.” I would like to add to Representative Adams’ astute observation that most poor families are headed by poor women. Women, who for example, can’t afford to attend a school board meeting at 3:00 in the afternoon on a weekday to fight for equity and fair treatment of their children in school. Or, women who are often mischaracterized as being apathetic about their child’s education but who, to the contrary, are limited in the flexibility they have over their work schedules or the type of work they must do to provide the basic necessities for their children.
It is with these women in mind that I—along with 18 other courageous social justice fighters representing a mosaic of race/ethnicity, age, profession, and socioeconomic statuses—elected to take a stand against the regressive practices and policies of the Wake County School Board on July 20, 2010. For the record, I, like the others who make up the group I refer to as “The Courageous 19,” did not go to the Wake County school board meeting looking to get arrested but to participate in a democratic process called an open public meeting. However, by the heavy presence of police—some on foot others on horses and the two prisoner-transport buses that were parked outside upon our arrival—it became apparent that our presence as peaceful and concerned citizens was not welcomed by some board members but instead met with trepidation and hostility.
While it wasn’t a pleasant place to stand, it was through moral conviction that we knew standing on the sides of justice and equity for ALL is always the right place to stand. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter From A Birmingham Jail:”
“An unjust law is no law at all…one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
Our act of civil disobedience was not novel but modeled after the examples of great Civil and Human Rights advocates who helped to make democracy a lived experience and not merely words on paper—including Henry David Thoreau, the Boston Tea Partiers, Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the students in the People’s Republic of China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, to name a few. History reminds us that democracy comes with a heavy price. We have come too far to turn back the hands of time by instituting policies that will deepen racial and class divides instead of uniting us as “one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”
The decision of the Wake County School Board to eliminate the district’s diversity policy takes us to a place that reminds us of a frightening and not too distant past. It is reminiscent of a time when Americans, in particular southerners, were forced to live the lie that separate was also equal and when seemingly innocuous terms like “neighborhood schools” or “choice” were codes for the preservation of white privilege and the sociopolitical disenfranchisement of Blacks.
Contrary to the assumption that after electing our nation’s first black president, that we have been catapulted into a post-racial society, empirical evidence suggests that racism in the 21st Century is just as real and pernicious as it was in the 19th and 20th century. Instead of manifesting in conspicuous ways like de jure segregation, implementing poll taxes at voting sites, or terrorizing neighborhoods by extremist hate groups like the KKK, the new racist practices are manifested in things that are all too easy to take for granted or that are disguised as harmless, necessary, or conventional e.g. racially polarized neighborhoods or residential segregation, gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the academic achievement gap, or racial disparities that plaque our prison system.
Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, renowned race scholar at Duke University, argues that racism today is very much a part of the American social and political fabric and extends beyond the realms of how people feel or what they think; it is a structure or network of social relations at social, political, economic and ideological levels that shapes the life chances of the various races. I argue that we can not relent on our fight for equity and justice in education because it is through education as an institution that these networks of social, political, and ideological relations are shaped, reinforced, and reproduced.
Dr. Ron Haskins, with the Brookings Institution wrote in the introduction of his report on Education and Economic Mobility (Economic Mobility Project: An Initiative of the Per Charitable Trusts, 2009), “most Americans believe that the road to achieving the American Dream passes through the schoolhouse door.” Unfortunately, for many children the road to the schoolhouse is similar to the yellow brick road that Dorothy had to travel on her way to OZ—filled with unleveled terrain, blocked paths, and threats, while for other children, the road is paved with golden opportunities and enriching excitement.
Make no mistake about it—the process of schooling is far more than just teaching children to read, write and do arithmetic in order to become productive adult members of society. Education systems are the seed beds whereby cultural capital and social capital—two essential mechanisms that are used create and reproduce social inequality--are planted and nurtured. Douglas Massey (2007) defines cultural capital as manners, behaviors, speech, and knowledge that enable individuals to be effective as actors within a particular social context i.e. elite settings (which are often homopholous e.g. same race/ethnicity, class, gender). Massey contends that the possession of cultural capital makes an individual more productive not because he or she can perform a given operation better or faster (e.g. high scores on a standardized test), but because he or she can navigate structures of power with greater ease, feeling relaxed and comfortable in certain social settings and thus interacting with persons of influence and power to get things done. Massey (2007) further submits that cultural capital represents a symbolic resource that privileged groups can manipulate through opportunity hoarding and social closure to perpetuate stratification and increase inequality. For example, teachers who attend the same social functions or routinely interact with the same groups as the children they serve are particularly vulnerable to acting in ways that place these children and parents at a greater advantage than the children and parents they only see or relate to within the class room setting. I argue that the same applies to children if they are not redirected as is the case with the tendency of children to self segregate in educational settings, i.e. sitting in segregated groups in the cafeteria (see Tatum 1997).
The bottom line is that our children learn from us—the adults. Unfortunately, integration and equality doesn’t happen naturally but requires adults acting for the greater good and not our own self interests to create a humane and socially just society. Today’s political climate doesn’t afford persons the luxury of a free ride in our Democracy but it demands protest (when warranted) and civic engagement at all times. Dr. King warned that civil disobedience is a type of “constructive, nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.” If we are to grow into a “more perfect union,” we can’t be afraid to stand up and push back against ultraconservative factions or segregationist who seek to promote racial discord and division and white supremacy or elitism as natural laws. For our children and the preservation of our democracy we all must stand up and declare “forwards ever, backwards never.”
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