White Saviors, Brown Schools
I’ve Got A Testimony
“Why does the city think that in order to fix a school the DOE has to flood it with white people to make it better? White doesn't mean better Ms. McNeal ”, my perceptive student cried out, after my entire AP class had just vented to me about their new teacher who’d just told them that, “Everything is not about race” & “Black people need to take responsibility for their poor behavior”. Not at all shocked by Ms. Bailey’s articulation of the collective, I sat for a minute and exhaled, knowing that my students are now being inundated with what I had been inundated with throughout my 34 years of Black experience: White saviors in schools of color.
When the Saints Go Marching In
Speaking of the White Savior Industrial Complex Teju Cole explains, “ The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege”. This complex is a vital part of systematic racism & Anti-Blackness in the U.S. . As an educator of color, I have seen saviorism first hand in charter schools in particular. Most charters I have worked at have been both founded and run by white people, with a student body of 98% children of color erecting from impoverished neighborhoods. Black building leaders hit an embarrassing 9%, while Latinx make up just 3% of building leaders around the U.S.. All too often within the charter world people of color are only granted promotions to Dean positions with the idea that if your are of color, “You can control the kids”. There is a figurative glass ceiling within the educational field where white leaders quickly pull white teachers out of the classroom abruptly and put them on the road to leadership, whilst pigeonholing dynamic teachers of color into the classroom for decades, until they burn out and leave the field at alarming rates. I have seen this cycle of inequity for over a decade and always ask myself why? Why aren't teachers of color being nurtured to lead schools as white teachers are? Why is there still no equity within school leadership? Why is there not enough cultural competency training given for not only the teachers in front of the students, but also administration? These questions have always stalked me like unwanted DMs from men who just “wanna be friends”.
Revelations
This young one in particular reminded me so much of myself at 16, hyper aware and questioning why things are the way they are. As I sat staring at my her round troubled face, searching for an answer that made sense in her head of box braids, I bowed my wrapped head and had nothing to tell her. These are questions I still have no answers to but Wayne says, “Numbers don't lie”. The importance of educational equity is apparent and impacts the school suspension & expulsion rates, graduation rates and college attendance rates, if that is the pathway children choose.
Benediction
Yet and still the lack of diversity within leadership is painfully obvious, as new leaders enter schools like seasons come. Under 2 schools of initial Black leadership, I have seen the Education departments swarm in spaces of color with all white consulting agencies, white principals and executive directors who present as superheroes, red cape and all. These magnanimous like figures swoop in, egos first much like the White Jesus dawned on many church walls, straight stringy hair and blue eyes of pity to the poor Black and Brown children that need saving obviously. What is the worst is seeing students cling to the hem of off white garments, rather than becoming confident in their own right and merit, they become content in being pitied for being poor and Black for no other reason than familiarity from the beginning of their educational life. I have seen students of color devolve from ambitious spirits to entitled and unmotivated, feeling that things need to be given to them, not earned. These saviors appear to be less concerned with giving students access and more concerned with some weird self fulfilling gratification that eases white guilt at night. Ms. Bailey is a megaphone, disrupting docile sleep and false allyship. James Baldwin once said, “The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated”. Decades later I share the same sentiments, hands up in lengthy wooden pews praying that change is near.