Recently, I attended back-to-school nights for my children at a middle school and elementary school in our district. In each school, I saw that most teachers were white women. As an educator and advocate, I know the national numbers; according to the National Center for Education Statistics, white women are 61% of teachers nationwide. Yet the demographics, when in my face, were hard to ignore.
As part of back-to-school night, teachers share personal information about themselves to build relationships and provide peace of mind to parents; marital status, if they have kids, and where they went to school for example. The teachers I sat with shared that they’ve taught in the district for over twenty years and that they live in the district. But what caught my attention was this: some attended school in the district.
You’ve heard of the good ole boys’ club or the old boy network, the “informal system of friendships and connections through which men use their positions of influence by providing favors and information to help other men.” I’ve heard of it too. According to Psychology Today, these networks of connections and favors exist “in any setting, from corporate to religious, to social and political associations among white males.”
White women have their own networks. The place where it is most visible is in schools.
Again, 61% of all teachers nationally are white women. In New Jersey, where I live, the percentage of white women is 63%. In my county, it’s 64% and in the district where my children attend school, 78% of teachers are white women. In my son’s middle school, 66% of all teachers are white women. In my daughters’ elementary school, it is 90%.
This doesn’t happen absent an informal network of friendships and connections through which white women use their positions of influence by providing favors and information to help other white women. This results in 6 out of every 10 teachers (and principals) in a school being a white woman.
These networks aren’t open to Black teachers and other teachers of color. Such networks don’t exist for Black teachers, particularly outside urban school districts. One might argue that the teaching profession is diversifying and it is. This is particularly true in urban schools; more Black (and Latino) teachers teach at urban schools.
However, Black teachers—specifically in urban schools— are often invisible tax hires. This means that Black teachers are hired to police Black students, teach Black students the importance of code-switching, instill the politics of respectability within Black students, and the magical Negro for white teachers on all matters concerning race and racism.
With that being said, Black teachers remain underrepresented in the classroom.
Black teachers are 6.1% of all teachers nationwide; only 1.5% are Black men. In New Jersey, Black teachers make up 6.4% of all teachers; only 1.5% are Black men. In the district where my children attend school, a suburban district, only 2.9% of all teachers are Black; Black men are virtually non-existent, but I digress. The Black student population in the district is 27.8%. There is only one Black teacher where my daughters attend elementary school. I had to petition the principal to ensure my girls became her students.
This is unacceptable.
I get hiring graduates of a school district as teachers. That institutional knowledge means something. I also understand districts hiring teachers according to recommendations from informal networks. But it also means that considering the systemically racist design of how communities are formed, teacher hiring continually perpetuates white women dominating the teaching profession.
It’s a problem because, despite their good intentions, white women teachers are too often likely to have misinformed, deficit social and cultural perspectives of racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students—likely due to their lack of interaction with people of color before teaching. This translates into the disproportionate disciplining of Black students and a lack of belief in the potential for Black students’ academic success. White female teachers can believe they are empathetic, but be the complete opposite; exhibiting what law professor Richard Delgado calls false empathy. That is the unintentional marginalization of the very people they intend to help or serve.
There are some aware of this; that there are too many white women in classrooms across the country. One white female teacher shared:
“I leaned hard into my identity as an Interchangeable White Lady in 2016. I started naming the awkward truth that students of color often experience an endless parade of white women who all seem to be controlling them, policing them, and boring them.”
Another shared:
“I taught at many a school that served all Black and brown kids, though the teaching staff was mostly white. Yes, I loved my kids, I taught my heart out, and we all grew miles and miles. But I’m pretty sure my students would have grown more if I wasn’t just one more white teacher in front of them.”
None of this means that white women are incompetent or incapable of teaching Black children or any student of color. However, the data is clear: students of color perform better academically when taught by a same-race teacher—particularly Black students—and all students prefer being taught by teachers of color. And yet, this good ole girl network exists in teaching, where white women are being referred for jobs or outright hired by other white women.
White people can touch and agree philosophically; believing that anti-racism is the right path and that schools must work to diversify their faculty to meet the changing racial demographics of students. Yet they fail to produce the necessary action that gives weight to such an idea. Is it that schools—particularly those where white children are the majority—don’t want to hire Black teachers or any teachers of color for that matter?
That’s entirely plausible; this is America. Numerous industries have failed to hire Black people; from STEM professions to professional football.
What is true is that the network exists and no one in a position to do anything about it, is doing anything about it, which speaks volumes about how white institutional spaces—which public schools are—maintain racism no matter who is in charge. Even more, it speaks to the reality, that while white people may abhor racism in the abstract, it is too tangible a benefit worth keeping.
