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Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership
An incisive case study of changemaking in action, Stuck Improving analyzes the complex process of racial equity reform within K–12 schools. Scholar Decoteau J. Irby emphasizes that racial equity is dynamic, shifting as our emerging racial consciousness evolves and as racism asserts itself anew. Those who accept the challenge of reform find themselves “stuck improving,” caught in a perpetual dilemma of both making progress and finding ever more progress to be made. Rather than dismissing stuckness as failure, Irby embraces it as an inextricable part of the improvement process.
Irby brings readers into a large suburban high school as school leaders strive to redress racial inequities among the school’s increasingly diverse student population. Over a five-year period, he witnesses both progress and setbacks in the leaders’ attempts to provide an educational environment that is intellectually, socioemotionally, and culturally affirming.
Looking beyond this single school, Irby pinpoints the factors that are essential to the work of equity reform in education. He argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. Irby emphasizes how schools must strengthen and leverage personal, relational, and organizational capacities in order to sustain meaningful change.
Stuck Improving offers a clear-eyed accounting of school-improvement practices, including data-driven instructional approaches, teacher cultural competency, and inquiry-based leadership strategies. This timely work contributes both to the practical efforts of equity-minded school leaders and to a deeper understanding of what the work of racial equity improvement truly entails.
Irby brings readers into a large suburban high school as school leaders strive to redress racial inequities among the school’s increasingly diverse student population. Over a five-year period, he witnesses both progress and setbacks in the leaders’ attempts to provide an educational environment that is intellectually, socioemotionally, and culturally affirming.
Looking beyond this single school, Irby pinpoints the factors that are essential to the work of equity reform in education. He argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. Irby emphasizes how schools must strengthen and leverage personal, relational, and organizational capacities in order to sustain meaningful change.
Stuck Improving offers a clear-eyed accounting of school-improvement practices, including data-driven instructional approaches, teacher cultural competency, and inquiry-based leadership strategies. This timely work contributes both to the practical efforts of equity-minded school leaders and to a deeper understanding of what the work of racial equity improvement truly entails.
- GenresEducationNonfiction
264 pages, Paperback
Published September 14, 2021
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March 29, 2023
* Black and Brown People's Influential Presence
* Curated White Racial Discomfort
* Courageously Confrontational Communication Culture
* Collective Awareness of Racial Emotions and Beliefs
* Race-Conscious Inquiry Cycles (Leadership) 4
In mostschools, White people possess influential presenceeventher. they are numerically underrepresented or not at all present. They contes and influence power in decision-making and structural resources such as what is taught, how it is taught, the bell schedule, and the program of professional learning, to name a few. Simply put, White presence is by default influential. Therefore, whiteness is a well-established feature of day-to-day life in a school organization. Its counterpart is usually Black and Brown mere presence. Black and Brown students attending school experience White people doing school "to them" as opposed to "with them." As Black and Brown representation and mere presence increase, White people become more intentional in their exercise of influence over what "schooling" looks like and feels like. Indeed, increasing Black and Brown presence often results in more entrenched White efforts at reifying White influential presence. White educators focus their energy and concerns on controlling Black and Brown students movements and behaviors rather than with educing and expanding students' knowledge of self and experiences, or cultivating intellectual curiosity. 14
People write the "N" word on the bathroom stalls. The hate is literally right on the surface for us to see. I see nobody [adults] trying to find out who's doing it or to stop it. If I even inquire about it, it's just, "Let's just erase it." That's the kind of energy in this building. I often wonder ... how is this affecting these kids on a day-to-day basis, to be in this kind of environment? 18
White people lack experiential knowledge and thas have lower capacities to make sense of racism. So they do as Jason did: ignore the racist writing that White people put on the wall, in emails.
They erase As White people engage in the cultural practice of erasing racial problems, and in particular ones that Black and Brown students experience, they relieve and absolve themselves of the need to do any thing to fight racism. Increasing Black and Brown presence counters this tendency because Black and Brown people are more likely to notice and name racism, which are essential steps required before taking action. 42
Consoling students does not by itself do anything do reshape the organizational conditions that make consoling necessary.
Having more Black and Brown adults in multiple positions not only benefits White administrators, faculty, staff, and students but also ere-ates conditions that increase the likelihood that Black and Brown col. leagues will proliferate antiracist practices and thinking. Having high numbers of faculty of color fosters community, buffers them from racial retribution, and reduces the potential for racial tokenism and racial taxa-tion. These protective factors improve retention.
As the number of Black and Brown adults grew, CWHS's capacity to see racism expanded. Black and Brown adults influenced their White colleagues, making everyone more forthright in pointing out racism, making it difficult to claim race-neutrality and to erase Black and Brown experiences as so often happened. 43
The reforms maintained the same underlying structures that worked for the White kids they were initially designed to support. They required adults to do nothing fundamentally different. The structure demanded that students arrive early and stay late, like White kids. Pay the fees, like White kids, even if through the provision of a scholarship or fee waiver.
Find a club advisor, like White kids do when they form their student or. ganizations. The subtle message to students: it's on you. Take advantage of the resources and supports offered to you. If you want to participate, make the sacrifice to do so. Arrive early. Stay late. Apply for the fee waiver. These "opportunities" didn't reflect a possibility that many students home responsibilities did not allow them to arrive early and stay late. The fee waiver itself was an additional step (barrier) to participation and potential badge of shame that reminded students of theirfinancial need. 45
White people learn about race through up-close encounters that compel them to see Black and Brown people's goodness. Ultimately, White people be. lieving and believing in Black and Brown people is good for Black and Brown students. The influential presence of Black and Brown adults, be it teachers, families, or relatively unaffected people, is also good for Black and Brown students. But as I hope to have made clear, Black and Brown people possess distinctively higher capacities to address racism. They learn to do this out of necessity and survival. This racial knowledge is a re-source. White educators don't have to gain such knowledge as a matter of survival. So they are less likely to possess it. When they are asked to learn What they don't know or know less about, it leads to intense discomfort. 49
Curated white racial discomfort relies on the ongoing planning and development of "dangerously safe" racial learning opportu nities that contrast with conventional race-neutral change management overemphases on psychological safety. Although psychological safety is important, it is a mere part of a more meaningful whole of change.
When it comes to school-based racism, White educators' psychological and emotional well-being is upheld at the expense of Black and Brown students' well-being. Thus, an essential requirement for enacting racial equity change is to ensure that White educators continually experience levels of racial discomfort that ensure their continued learning and by extension the continued betterment of learning opportunities for Black and Brown students. 52
When White people get comfortable, white supremacy resumes its normalization. White racial discomfort keeps racism and white supremacy on display, in con-sciotisness, and thus available for continued critique and challenge. In other words, the goal is to do more than start a paradigm shift. The objective is to sustain it. 53
Five hundred years ago, there were no Black people. There were no White people. Because the construct of race did not yet exist. Of course, different humans had different skin tones and phenotypes. But Europeans in their quest for global colonial domi nation developed the practice of identifying humans by racial categories to justify their genocide, enslavement, and exploitation of the globe. Racial categorizations are a consequence of Europeans intention to dom. inate people. Race and racism were refined and solidified in the United States.' Racial categorizations were and remain unnatural. You are ra-cialized to be White. You are racialized to be Asian. I am racialized to be Black. These categorizations are so well constructed and institutionally sanctioned that they now imprison us. Two. Interlocking institutions (family, schooling, labor, religions) socialize us to associate and confiate racial categorizations with certain character attributes, belief systems, values, and cultural practices. It is not natural that White is associated with cleanliness, innocence, and redemption. It is not natural that Black is associated with dirtiness, deviance, and deterioration. Three. The cultural practices that emerge from your belief system, ways of thinking and being stem from your racial socialization. In other words, your belief system is a racial belief system. Your cultural forms are facial formations. 56
The problem is that a true shared vision isn't seventeen carefully word-smithed words in a handbook, but that's what we say it is, and that's what we pretend that we do. 60
When people are not afforded opportunities to learn, frustration sets in. It becomes easy to see what everyone else is doing or not doing and ultimately to judge and point fingers, especially if they are not doing what you think or want them to do. The insistence that "others do as I do, think as I think, be as I am" is a cornerstone of white supremacy: you should be like me. 63
Because increased communication would reveal and require the school to confront racism-the belief that white middle class values, norms, beliefs, and ways of being are inherently better than those of
"others." Fear, denial, and defensiveness about racism have become commonplace in the school. The fear of being called a racist is perva-sive. Fear leads to avoidance of addressing specific students' behaviors, talking openly and honestly with colleagues, and voicing concerns to administrators, parents, and students. 69
White people who experience the "pain of being conscious of others" find themselves in a dilemma that is par for the course for Black and Brown people What should a person do when the know "I'm right and they're wrong Black and Brown people wreste with this very question as a matter of life.76
Because most White people fear a truly equitable racial order as we as the racial conflict necessary to bring forth such a reality, leaders must situate racial equity change within a language and context of danger and discomfort. In other words, learning must be dangerous, a second principle of curating white racial discomfort. For White educators, dangerous means counternormative and antioppressive and, in particular, antiracist. Ensuring learning is dangerously safe requires continually assessing what discomfort means for educators. 88
These data begged us to stop expressing a desire to create "safe spaces" for racial learning because the stories of change revealed the necessity of danger, discomfort, and anxiety as integral to change and improvement. 90
Curated white racial discomfort advances racially equitable change by disrupting a specific racial narrative and constructed reality: White people deserve to be comfortable, and thus they are. Black and Brown children do not benefit from White people's professional com-fort. 91
many adults felt they "got it and grew fatigued from having to continually address their own discomforts about race as well as those of their colleagues. They also realized their increasing capacity to work through discomfort applied mostly to spaces with trusted colleagues. 92
First, people routinely act within their sphere of influence to confront problems head on. Second, people default to racism and racial socialization as a cen-tral, but not singular, lens for analyzing the pervasiveness or emergence of school-based problems. Third, people leverage conflict and confrontation as a wellspring of learning. Learning from and through conflict offers the opportunity to at minimum acknowledge and move forward and at best to forgive, heal, and accept responsibility for the well-being of people who are often at odds with one another. 96
nial schools operate with a façade of niceness and get-alongness that breed deep-seated racial resentment and misunderstanding by masking racism and racial conflict. Professional friendliness drives conflict un. derground, festers gossip and passive-aggressive behaviors, and seeds suspicion and mistrust. Collegial school cultures are characterized by high levels of teacher-to-teacher communication, collaboration, and problem solving aimed at adult growth and ultimately improved student experiences and outcomes. 97
Some people have to fight. And while some people fight, people who do not share their experience judge and criticize the people who have to fight in order to just be. At CWHS, Black and Brown students have to fight. So they walk out. And they sit in. They confront. They tell trusted teachers their problems. They curse. They take their time getting to class.And sometimes, not often, they make it a priority to physically harm a schoolmate. They know the consequences of fighting. Yet they do it anyway. They receive their punishment, and they come back to school yet again to learn. That is courage. The problem is that the capacity to be so courageous at fifteen or sixteen years old stems from coming of age in a racist society that cares nothing for Black bodies. Black and Brown students possess immense courage. They have to because being bom Black and Brown into a racist society requires one to consciously and unconsciously fight. To be recognized. To be heard. To survive. To love oneself. Fights take many forms. 128
I want to challenge this inclination to write people off as thaugh they do not know what they're talking about. If a person of color can't quite "put into words" why they hate police, it makes their disdain and critique no less legitimate. People's "ridiculous" talk is a learning resource. If a White person can't quite put into words why they hold the police in high regard, it does not mean they cannot or will never achieve an understanding of why US policing is racist and problematic. 133
Racial self-talk does not intend to sway or convince others. Race self-talk is a practice of self-exploration that, because it is expressedalo offers layered opportunities for self and collective learning. It sounds like "I don't understand the disconnect between Black kids and police Why do Black kids hate the police so much? I need to understand that' It sounds like "I don't like it. I find it offensive, but I don't know vis to do when a kids wears a 'Make America Great Agair' hat or shit?! sounds like "Am I being White?" Racial self-talk causes people to pats. self-evaluate, and self-reflect. When it doesn't do that, it is not self talk. Selftalk statements are invitations to explore. When shared palit they create opportunities for others to learn through gaining aces how people think and believe.
Racial self talk is most powerful when people learn to 'read tel logical underpinnings of their own and others racial emotions 154
White supremacy seeks out racial authenticity and attempts to stamp it out with hostility, violence, and hatred. So I think I've become socialized to not share. I've experienced silencing critiques too many times over the course of my life. Silencing critique discourages, dismisses, and suppresses racial self-talk. Silencing tells Carla, "Yes, you are racist. And you clearly don't like Black people." It tells Latinx students, "Trump won.
Get over it." It tells fifteen-year-old White students that "if you want to build a wall, you are racist as hell," as though they are unredeemable, Silencing feels right and I want to believe it's justifiable. People's self-talk suggested something about the capacity for racial equity improvement. 158
But racist ideologies and beliefs cause tremendous harm. The dilemma is that silencing critiques diminish the potential for the awareness of racial emotions and ideologies to openly flourish. In contexts where awareness is continuously cultivated and leveraged, organizational racial learning grows. But at whose expense? As with all aspects of antiracist and equity work, practices and routines that cultivate a collec tive awareness of racial emotions and beliefs create a dilemma o letting people belong" even if they don't believe the same. Treating people like they belong, Even when their actions are harmful and their thinking and beliefs deeply flawed, is a radical act. It assumes that all people possess redemptive qualities 160
Racializing school problems requires intentionally mining the school for stories of white racial privilege and racism that are ubiquitous, routinely erased, and therefore invisible.172
than experienced frustration because he was much further along in understanding and practicing relational discipline approaches that cre. ate a more racially equitable school. He split his energy between deepen. ing his own practice; collaborating and supporting others to deepen their practices; and defending, rationalizing, and explaining the importance and effectiveness of restorative approaches and peace circles to those who were not "on board."
One thing Elizabeth continually made clear: "The train is out of the station." Her priority was forward movement. So the continued dilemma throughout the project was how to know when to go deeper and with whom. So the challenge and opportunity became keeping everyone mov ing forward without holding back the progress of people who moved at a more accelerated pace or who developed more ambitious visions for change.180
For Black and Brown students, and all students for that matter, school is the real world where they learn from their experiences what is and what is not possible, what is unjust and what is fair. White girls who cheat should be given the opportunity to retake tests. Why? Something must be wrong with the teaching. Black girls who fight at school should lose the opportunity to attend senior prom. Why? Something must be wrong with the girls. Starting with white "whys" is less effective than creating opportunities to learn by starting with why not, a perennial Black ques tion. 212
A school that is stuck improving has a critical mass of educators who work toward racial equity change with a full understanding that racism and white supremacy are continuousl at work thwarting their efforts to achieve and sustain racial equity. It is experienced as making progress and not making progress. Itis accepting that racism is permanent while also committing to making it imperma nent. It is the sobering realization that our understandings, visions, and theories of how to achieve racial equity are more developed than our ability to enact the theories we espouse. 214
* Curated White Racial Discomfort
* Courageously Confrontational Communication Culture
* Collective Awareness of Racial Emotions and Beliefs
* Race-Conscious Inquiry Cycles (Leadership) 4
In mostschools, White people possess influential presenceeventher. they are numerically underrepresented or not at all present. They contes and influence power in decision-making and structural resources such as what is taught, how it is taught, the bell schedule, and the program of professional learning, to name a few. Simply put, White presence is by default influential. Therefore, whiteness is a well-established feature of day-to-day life in a school organization. Its counterpart is usually Black and Brown mere presence. Black and Brown students attending school experience White people doing school "to them" as opposed to "with them." As Black and Brown representation and mere presence increase, White people become more intentional in their exercise of influence over what "schooling" looks like and feels like. Indeed, increasing Black and Brown presence often results in more entrenched White efforts at reifying White influential presence. White educators focus their energy and concerns on controlling Black and Brown students movements and behaviors rather than with educing and expanding students' knowledge of self and experiences, or cultivating intellectual curiosity. 14
People write the "N" word on the bathroom stalls. The hate is literally right on the surface for us to see. I see nobody [adults] trying to find out who's doing it or to stop it. If I even inquire about it, it's just, "Let's just erase it." That's the kind of energy in this building. I often wonder ... how is this affecting these kids on a day-to-day basis, to be in this kind of environment? 18
White people lack experiential knowledge and thas have lower capacities to make sense of racism. So they do as Jason did: ignore the racist writing that White people put on the wall, in emails.
They erase As White people engage in the cultural practice of erasing racial problems, and in particular ones that Black and Brown students experience, they relieve and absolve themselves of the need to do any thing to fight racism. Increasing Black and Brown presence counters this tendency because Black and Brown people are more likely to notice and name racism, which are essential steps required before taking action. 42
Consoling students does not by itself do anything do reshape the organizational conditions that make consoling necessary.
Having more Black and Brown adults in multiple positions not only benefits White administrators, faculty, staff, and students but also ere-ates conditions that increase the likelihood that Black and Brown col. leagues will proliferate antiracist practices and thinking. Having high numbers of faculty of color fosters community, buffers them from racial retribution, and reduces the potential for racial tokenism and racial taxa-tion. These protective factors improve retention.
As the number of Black and Brown adults grew, CWHS's capacity to see racism expanded. Black and Brown adults influenced their White colleagues, making everyone more forthright in pointing out racism, making it difficult to claim race-neutrality and to erase Black and Brown experiences as so often happened. 43
The reforms maintained the same underlying structures that worked for the White kids they were initially designed to support. They required adults to do nothing fundamentally different. The structure demanded that students arrive early and stay late, like White kids. Pay the fees, like White kids, even if through the provision of a scholarship or fee waiver.
Find a club advisor, like White kids do when they form their student or. ganizations. The subtle message to students: it's on you. Take advantage of the resources and supports offered to you. If you want to participate, make the sacrifice to do so. Arrive early. Stay late. Apply for the fee waiver. These "opportunities" didn't reflect a possibility that many students home responsibilities did not allow them to arrive early and stay late. The fee waiver itself was an additional step (barrier) to participation and potential badge of shame that reminded students of theirfinancial need. 45
White people learn about race through up-close encounters that compel them to see Black and Brown people's goodness. Ultimately, White people be. lieving and believing in Black and Brown people is good for Black and Brown students. The influential presence of Black and Brown adults, be it teachers, families, or relatively unaffected people, is also good for Black and Brown students. But as I hope to have made clear, Black and Brown people possess distinctively higher capacities to address racism. They learn to do this out of necessity and survival. This racial knowledge is a re-source. White educators don't have to gain such knowledge as a matter of survival. So they are less likely to possess it. When they are asked to learn What they don't know or know less about, it leads to intense discomfort. 49
Curated white racial discomfort relies on the ongoing planning and development of "dangerously safe" racial learning opportu nities that contrast with conventional race-neutral change management overemphases on psychological safety. Although psychological safety is important, it is a mere part of a more meaningful whole of change.
When it comes to school-based racism, White educators' psychological and emotional well-being is upheld at the expense of Black and Brown students' well-being. Thus, an essential requirement for enacting racial equity change is to ensure that White educators continually experience levels of racial discomfort that ensure their continued learning and by extension the continued betterment of learning opportunities for Black and Brown students. 52
When White people get comfortable, white supremacy resumes its normalization. White racial discomfort keeps racism and white supremacy on display, in con-sciotisness, and thus available for continued critique and challenge. In other words, the goal is to do more than start a paradigm shift. The objective is to sustain it. 53
Five hundred years ago, there were no Black people. There were no White people. Because the construct of race did not yet exist. Of course, different humans had different skin tones and phenotypes. But Europeans in their quest for global colonial domi nation developed the practice of identifying humans by racial categories to justify their genocide, enslavement, and exploitation of the globe. Racial categorizations are a consequence of Europeans intention to dom. inate people. Race and racism were refined and solidified in the United States.' Racial categorizations were and remain unnatural. You are ra-cialized to be White. You are racialized to be Asian. I am racialized to be Black. These categorizations are so well constructed and institutionally sanctioned that they now imprison us. Two. Interlocking institutions (family, schooling, labor, religions) socialize us to associate and confiate racial categorizations with certain character attributes, belief systems, values, and cultural practices. It is not natural that White is associated with cleanliness, innocence, and redemption. It is not natural that Black is associated with dirtiness, deviance, and deterioration. Three. The cultural practices that emerge from your belief system, ways of thinking and being stem from your racial socialization. In other words, your belief system is a racial belief system. Your cultural forms are facial formations. 56
The problem is that a true shared vision isn't seventeen carefully word-smithed words in a handbook, but that's what we say it is, and that's what we pretend that we do. 60
When people are not afforded opportunities to learn, frustration sets in. It becomes easy to see what everyone else is doing or not doing and ultimately to judge and point fingers, especially if they are not doing what you think or want them to do. The insistence that "others do as I do, think as I think, be as I am" is a cornerstone of white supremacy: you should be like me. 63
Because increased communication would reveal and require the school to confront racism-the belief that white middle class values, norms, beliefs, and ways of being are inherently better than those of
"others." Fear, denial, and defensiveness about racism have become commonplace in the school. The fear of being called a racist is perva-sive. Fear leads to avoidance of addressing specific students' behaviors, talking openly and honestly with colleagues, and voicing concerns to administrators, parents, and students. 69
White people who experience the "pain of being conscious of others" find themselves in a dilemma that is par for the course for Black and Brown people What should a person do when the know "I'm right and they're wrong Black and Brown people wreste with this very question as a matter of life.76
Because most White people fear a truly equitable racial order as we as the racial conflict necessary to bring forth such a reality, leaders must situate racial equity change within a language and context of danger and discomfort. In other words, learning must be dangerous, a second principle of curating white racial discomfort. For White educators, dangerous means counternormative and antioppressive and, in particular, antiracist. Ensuring learning is dangerously safe requires continually assessing what discomfort means for educators. 88
These data begged us to stop expressing a desire to create "safe spaces" for racial learning because the stories of change revealed the necessity of danger, discomfort, and anxiety as integral to change and improvement. 90
Curated white racial discomfort advances racially equitable change by disrupting a specific racial narrative and constructed reality: White people deserve to be comfortable, and thus they are. Black and Brown children do not benefit from White people's professional com-fort. 91
many adults felt they "got it and grew fatigued from having to continually address their own discomforts about race as well as those of their colleagues. They also realized their increasing capacity to work through discomfort applied mostly to spaces with trusted colleagues. 92
First, people routinely act within their sphere of influence to confront problems head on. Second, people default to racism and racial socialization as a cen-tral, but not singular, lens for analyzing the pervasiveness or emergence of school-based problems. Third, people leverage conflict and confrontation as a wellspring of learning. Learning from and through conflict offers the opportunity to at minimum acknowledge and move forward and at best to forgive, heal, and accept responsibility for the well-being of people who are often at odds with one another. 96
nial schools operate with a façade of niceness and get-alongness that breed deep-seated racial resentment and misunderstanding by masking racism and racial conflict. Professional friendliness drives conflict un. derground, festers gossip and passive-aggressive behaviors, and seeds suspicion and mistrust. Collegial school cultures are characterized by high levels of teacher-to-teacher communication, collaboration, and problem solving aimed at adult growth and ultimately improved student experiences and outcomes. 97
Some people have to fight. And while some people fight, people who do not share their experience judge and criticize the people who have to fight in order to just be. At CWHS, Black and Brown students have to fight. So they walk out. And they sit in. They confront. They tell trusted teachers their problems. They curse. They take their time getting to class.And sometimes, not often, they make it a priority to physically harm a schoolmate. They know the consequences of fighting. Yet they do it anyway. They receive their punishment, and they come back to school yet again to learn. That is courage. The problem is that the capacity to be so courageous at fifteen or sixteen years old stems from coming of age in a racist society that cares nothing for Black bodies. Black and Brown students possess immense courage. They have to because being bom Black and Brown into a racist society requires one to consciously and unconsciously fight. To be recognized. To be heard. To survive. To love oneself. Fights take many forms. 128
I want to challenge this inclination to write people off as thaugh they do not know what they're talking about. If a person of color can't quite "put into words" why they hate police, it makes their disdain and critique no less legitimate. People's "ridiculous" talk is a learning resource. If a White person can't quite put into words why they hold the police in high regard, it does not mean they cannot or will never achieve an understanding of why US policing is racist and problematic. 133
Racial self-talk does not intend to sway or convince others. Race self-talk is a practice of self-exploration that, because it is expressedalo offers layered opportunities for self and collective learning. It sounds like "I don't understand the disconnect between Black kids and police Why do Black kids hate the police so much? I need to understand that' It sounds like "I don't like it. I find it offensive, but I don't know vis to do when a kids wears a 'Make America Great Agair' hat or shit?! sounds like "Am I being White?" Racial self-talk causes people to pats. self-evaluate, and self-reflect. When it doesn't do that, it is not self talk. Selftalk statements are invitations to explore. When shared palit they create opportunities for others to learn through gaining aces how people think and believe.
Racial self talk is most powerful when people learn to 'read tel logical underpinnings of their own and others racial emotions 154
White supremacy seeks out racial authenticity and attempts to stamp it out with hostility, violence, and hatred. So I think I've become socialized to not share. I've experienced silencing critiques too many times over the course of my life. Silencing critique discourages, dismisses, and suppresses racial self-talk. Silencing tells Carla, "Yes, you are racist. And you clearly don't like Black people." It tells Latinx students, "Trump won.
Get over it." It tells fifteen-year-old White students that "if you want to build a wall, you are racist as hell," as though they are unredeemable, Silencing feels right and I want to believe it's justifiable. People's self-talk suggested something about the capacity for racial equity improvement. 158
But racist ideologies and beliefs cause tremendous harm. The dilemma is that silencing critiques diminish the potential for the awareness of racial emotions and ideologies to openly flourish. In contexts where awareness is continuously cultivated and leveraged, organizational racial learning grows. But at whose expense? As with all aspects of antiracist and equity work, practices and routines that cultivate a collec tive awareness of racial emotions and beliefs create a dilemma o letting people belong" even if they don't believe the same. Treating people like they belong, Even when their actions are harmful and their thinking and beliefs deeply flawed, is a radical act. It assumes that all people possess redemptive qualities 160
Racializing school problems requires intentionally mining the school for stories of white racial privilege and racism that are ubiquitous, routinely erased, and therefore invisible.172
than experienced frustration because he was much further along in understanding and practicing relational discipline approaches that cre. ate a more racially equitable school. He split his energy between deepen. ing his own practice; collaborating and supporting others to deepen their practices; and defending, rationalizing, and explaining the importance and effectiveness of restorative approaches and peace circles to those who were not "on board."
One thing Elizabeth continually made clear: "The train is out of the station." Her priority was forward movement. So the continued dilemma throughout the project was how to know when to go deeper and with whom. So the challenge and opportunity became keeping everyone mov ing forward without holding back the progress of people who moved at a more accelerated pace or who developed more ambitious visions for change.180
For Black and Brown students, and all students for that matter, school is the real world where they learn from their experiences what is and what is not possible, what is unjust and what is fair. White girls who cheat should be given the opportunity to retake tests. Why? Something must be wrong with the teaching. Black girls who fight at school should lose the opportunity to attend senior prom. Why? Something must be wrong with the girls. Starting with white "whys" is less effective than creating opportunities to learn by starting with why not, a perennial Black ques tion. 212
A school that is stuck improving has a critical mass of educators who work toward racial equity change with a full understanding that racism and white supremacy are continuousl at work thwarting their efforts to achieve and sustain racial equity. It is experienced as making progress and not making progress. Itis accepting that racism is permanent while also committing to making it imperma nent. It is the sobering realization that our understandings, visions, and theories of how to achieve racial equity are more developed than our ability to enact the theories we espouse. 214
September 2, 2022
This is a super helpful case study of one school’s multi year effort to engage in racial equity work and navigate many obstacles to try to have real impact. It is frustrating, relatable, and offers great insights on how schools get “stuck improving.”
January 25, 2024
My greatest takeaway is that systems change, especially involving race and education, is tough. It takes time. It takes WORK! And we NEED to fix our broken systems.
April 24, 2022
A must for Equity leaders
October 27, 2023
Careful and detailed framework of racial equity change processes using an extended case study
March 23, 2024
A deep dive into one school's years-long effort to engage in racial equity work. Frustrating but very real!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews