For Black parents, there’s a cultural cost associated with placing their child or children in schools where their peers don’t look like them, their teachers don’t look like them, their administrators don’t look like them, and the parents that are involved with the school and district don’t look like them. These schools are often well funded.
Certainly, there are benefits to exposure and where resources are non-issue. African-American students can benefit from exposure to different people, cultures, ways of thinking, and seeing the world. However, you don’t necessarily have to take a Black child from around those who share their culture to be exposed to different ideas or the idea of a quality education.
Yet many Black parents fail to account for the cultural cost of providing their children with what they believe is a quality or better education than they would receive where Black children are in abundance. Typically, the phenomenon I’m talking Black children out of schools where they are Black students, and the families—with “Black problems”—in the inner city and enrolling them in suburban schools. That happens, but Black children are also removed from schools in Blacker suburbs to schools in whiter suburbs for a “quality” education.
But there is a cultural cost.
Likely, Black history isn’t taught. If it is, it’s likely not taught from a Black perspective. Behaviors or norms that are specific to African Americans are not only devalued but misconstrued for poor behavior whereby Black children are subject to being disciplined disproportionately when compared to their white peers. The experiences that Black children have in white spaces are either minimized, ignored, or dismissed because the perspective of a Black person doesn’t hold value or weight in a white space.
Black faces that appear in the faculty or administration are likely espoused as proof that the space is not racist when in fact, the racism can be seen, and felt, in the policies, postures, and procedures of the institution. All of this is to say that while it is okay for a Black child to attend school in a predominantly white space, it comes at a cost to the Black psyche, in more ways than one.
Parents have to weigh the cost that they and their children will pay in the name of achieving a better education than with a “Black” school. Black families have to check themselves and evaluate what they think about education and Black people if they believe that their child will receive a better education in a white space versus a Black one.
The Brown vs Board case was not about the desire of Black families to have their children attend white schools. Rather, the case was about convenience. Black parents didn’t have a problem with the schools that their kids were attending, even if they lacked resources or quality facilities because their children were being poured into by Black faculty; they used resources from black scholars, such as the textbooks and academic journals of Dr. Carter G. Woodson.
Today, Black students and their families wonder if books in the Black literary canon that speak about racism, white supremacy, racial capitalism, settler colonialism and intersectionality (to name a few topics) will be banned in the districts they attend school due to the war on Black history.
However, if that school or district is predominantly African-American (students and educators), that war is fought on an even footing.
I get the fear that some parents have. We live in a time of economic precarity. For Black people living in an anti-Black society, the dangers of systemic racism make our circumstances even more precarious. Black parents desire to provide their children with the best opportunities they can to equip them with the critical thinking skills and fiscal potential to best navigate an anti-Black society.
But Black parents don’t have to sacrifice the opportunity for their children to be affirmed as Black people, by Black people in the name of providing their kids with a “quality” education.
I would never disagree with Black parents use of their autonomy to give their children the best education they can. But what I am saying is that sometimes what’s best for Black children is to be around Black people; not just Black students, but also Black teachers and Black administrators. While the Urban proverb is very true, all skin folk ain’t kinfolk, representation in spaces, particularly education spaces, does matter.
Ask me how do I know…
Black representation in white spaces doesn’t guarantee that Black people won’t encounter racism and won’t encounter challenges as a result of that racism. But what it does mean is that Black children have a fighting chance to be heard, defended, and protected. Additionally, they may learn a thing or two about their history; what their history actually is versus what it’s not.
My message to Black parents is to strongly consider keeping their children or enrolling their children in to Black education spaces. My message to Black educators is to consider working and serving in Black education spaces. I’m not advocating for segregation, but I’m advocating for community uplift and protection of Black peace; academically and otherwise.
