One of the recurring stories in Black educational life is the departure of people who seemed indispensable while they were here. Not the disengaged ones. Usually the opposite. The people who read deeply. The people who organize. The people who seem to carry around an almost unreasonable belief that schools can become something better than they currently are. For a long time, I assumed this was burnout.
Public education is difficult work. Some people leave because they are exhausted. Anyone who has spent enough time in schools knows this. But I am no longer convinced that exhaustion explains everything. The more educators I have met across different cities, districts, universities, and organizations, the more I have noticed a pattern that feels strangely familiar. Different people tell the story. Different circumstances surround it. Yet the shape of the story often remains the same. Someone begins by doing exactly what they were hired to do. They build relationships. They create opportunities. They solve problems. They become trusted. Then, gradually, something changes.
Not always dramatically. Sometimes it is difficult to identify the precise moment when the shift occurred. The same person who was once praised for initiative begins encountering resistance. The same ideas that were welcomed become sources of concern. What troubles me is that I have seen this happen to people I admired. People who made me believe the work was possible. A few left quietly. A few fought. A few convinced themselves they were simply ready for something new. Maybe some of them were. I am no longer certain that all of them were.
History offers some clues. I often think about the thousands of Black educators who lost their positions following Brown v. Board of Education. It remains one of the least discussed ironies in American educational history. A decision intended to expand opportunity for Black children coincided with the displacement of many of the Black educators who had spent their lives serving them. School boards rarely described these decisions as opposition to Black leadership. They talked about qualifications. They talked about restructuring. They talked about efficiency. They almost always do.
Looking backward, the pattern becomes easier to recognize than it was for the people living through it. Perhaps that is what history does. It reveals the things that were once hidden behind ordinary language. I keep using the word institution as though I know exactly what I mean. I don’t.
Sometimes I mean a school district. Sometimes I mean a university. Sometimes I mean the habits that develop when people stop asking why things are done a certain way. And sometimes I mean something harder to describe. A feeling. The moment a conversation changes direction without anyone announcing that it has changed. You can feel it before you can explain it. The room doesn’t become hostile. Hostility would almost be easier. It becomes careful.
Someone who had been speaking freely begins choosing words with greater precision. A concern that felt worthy of discussion suddenly becomes a question of protocol.
“We should probably run that through the proper channels first.”
“Let’s make sure we’re aligned before moving forward.”
The conversation is still happening. But somehow it is no longer about the thing everyone was talking about. I am not suggesting that procedures do not matter. They do. The question is whether we are willing to examine procedures with the same critical eye we apply to everything else. Because procedures are not self-executing. They are interpreted by people. Activated by people. Enforced by people. Like every human creation, they reflect assumptions, priorities, and fears. Perhaps that is part of what makes conversations about race so difficult today.
Contemporary racism rarely resembles the forms most people expect. It often appears not through explicit declarations but through systems that allow unequal outcomes to emerge without requiring anyone to openly defend them. Or perhaps that is only part of the story. I am not entirely sure. Procedural racism may be one way of describing what is happening. Institutional self-preservation may be another. There are days when I think those are different phenomena. There are days when I think they are the same thing viewed from different angles.
I have also been the person who remained silent. There were meetings where I knew a conversation was moving in the wrong direction and chose not to say anything. I do not say this with pride. I say it because institutions shape all of us, not just the people who lead them. Perhaps that is what keeps drawing me back to this question.
What happens when institutions become uncomfortable?
Not angry. Not openly hostile.
Simply, uncomfortable.
What happens when the people most committed to an institution’s stated values begin asking whether those values are being fully realized?
History suggests that institutions rarely recognize these patterns while they are occurring. Recognition usually comes later, once enough distance exists to make the contradictions visible. That is what troubles me. Every generation imagines it would have recognized the contradictions of its own moment. History offers little reason for confidence. What I do know is that every few years another educator I respect leaves. And every few years I find myself wondering whether we have learned to recognize the pattern, or simply become better at explaining it away.
