In 2017, thirteen-year-old DeAndre Yates was shot while chaperoning at a birthday party in Indianapolis. An innocent bystander, the young man will now spend the rest of his life as a non-verbal quadriplegic.
His mother, DeAndra, feels the same pain as the family members of those killed in the Parkland school shooting in February. She says she welcomes the protests that have erupted at schools and capitol buildings across the country. But DeAndra can’t help but wonder where all this energy, attention, and cooperation was when her son was shot and injured. In a February interview with ABC News, she put it bluntly: “nobody did anything.”
Pamela Bosley has a similar feeling. Her eighteen-year-old son Terrell, who graduated high school early with plans to attend college and dreams of becoming a famous bass player in a gospel choir, was shot and killed outside of the church where he worshipped. Like DeAndra Yates, Ms. Bosley doesn’t feel society treats loss equally.
“We are in the same situation. But they get the outpouring of support and I don’t get anything,” she said. “Nobody says anything when it’s a black life. When it is our children, no one cares.”
“Nobody says anything when it’s a black life. When it is our children, no one cares.”
Gun violence is not the only area where “no one cares” about children of color. A large and growing body of research reveals a segregated America where children of color suffer from crushing racially driven economic and educational challenges, as well as the emotional costs of living with daily violence. Too many city, state, and federal systems continue to implement policies that create opportunity gaps for children of color.
What if, instead of asking ourselves how we can make our schools less dangerous, we asked how we can make our schools more loving?
Across the country we see children of color failing because of lack of community-based support. A recent report from the Schott Foundation calls for addressing these systemic issues by institutionalizing love into community-based support systems. Reporting on ten U.S. cities, the Schott Foundation’s Loving Cities Index shows how racial and income segregation creates opportunity gaps.
In Denver, black youth are more than five times as likely as white youth to be living below the poverty line. In Little Rock, where the entire population is significantly segregated by income and to an even larger degree by race, 31 percent of Latino and 15 percent of black people working full-time have salaries below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, compared to only 5 percent of white people. And in Charlotte, where I make my home, poor children have the lowest odds of making it to the top income bracket of any place in the United States.
What if, instead of asking ourselves how we can make our schools less dangerous, we asked how we can make our schools more loving?
The Schott Foundation’s Loving Cities Index shows how access to healthy food, affordable housing, sustainable wages, public transportation, and other forms of “loving” community support all have a proven connection to academic and economic success. The report exposes how the standards-based approach that has dominated education reform for decades. And it provides a framework for aligning policy-makers, philanthropists, and community members around a supports-based agenda.
The violence in Parkland has given rise to a renewed spirit combatting the hate, bias, and anger festering in our nation. Whether the focus is gun violence or racist public policies, people are collectively recognizing how we currently put the lives of our children at risk—some children more than others. A critical step in this journey is assessing the levels of care, stability, and commitment in every city to provide young people with the loving systems that they all deserve.
We must say to the parents who have lost children, or seen them wounded, that they are not forgotten. We must show we care by working together to create community support systems injected with the love that every child needs to be able to achieve.
Provided photo
Dr. John H. Jackson
Dr. John H. Jackson is the President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education.