Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute
130705-A-AB346-001
Black History Month Civil Rights in America poster. (Courtesy of Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute)
Black history is American history. It is a history rooted in resistance, not compliance. But a tradition of school reform uses historical African-American leaders to preach compliance in the name of promoting academic achievement in under performing schools.
In many urban schools, especially those labeled as failing, you’ll find posters and quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Malcolm X, and other black leaders. The posters are used to inspire students to focus, work hard, and seek academic achievement above everything else. These posters suggest that no matter your skin color, you can achieve.
On the surface, this is purely inspirational. Yet, while many of these black leaders provide us with examples of resistance to cultural norms, they are being used by schools to cultivate a culture of compliance and conformity they think will help them improve test scores.
These schools—many of them run by charter organizations—exercise “no excuses” discipline, controlling environments, and increased classroom time to achieve better test scores. To get parent and student buy-in to their approach, they align themselves with key figures of African American culture and key tenets of the black freedom struggle taught in African American households, such as “you have to work twice as hard as everyone else.” But there is often little room for restorative justice in an atmosphere of no excuses, and any message of resistance is left off the table.
Education has always been a means to an end in the African-American community—not simply the end. The end in the African-American community continues to be resisting and overcoming white supremacy.
And that’s a disservice to Black History. Education has always been a means to an end in the African-American community—not simply the end. The end in the African-American community continues to be resisting and overcoming white supremacy.
Slaves learned to read and write to empower themselves and escape their condition. During Jim Crow, black people educated themselves to challenge segregation in schools, restaurants, and stores, and to secure and protect their right to vote. Today, black people continue to use education as a means to fight for justice for the African-American community as a whole.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X stressed the need for black people to receive an education, but their quotes decorating school hallways are being used to preach a lie to black students. Fostering pride in one’s own academic achievement is worthwhile, for sure, but pursuing such an endeavor in isolation of the whole gospel of the black freedom struggle is like building on quicksand.
In New Jersey last year, black students accounted for 53 percent of students enrolled in charter schools, compared to 14 percent in traditional public schools. Whether charter schools realize it or not, they are in the business of educating black children. Their duty to educate should not be merely about improving test scores on standardized tests—which are Eurocentric, if not overtly racist, and fail as accurate measures of what students know. Urban charter schools also fail by over-disciplining black children and teaching them about achievement without acknowledging their context of learning.
Resistance, not compliance, is the legacy of education in the African-American community.
Schools that educate black students have an obligation to educate and empower them to challenge injustice.
Traditional public schools aren’t off the hook; they have the same mission. But I say to charter school leaders, “You chose to walk in black neighborhoods. You have no choice but to empower the youth who live in them.”
Rann Miller directs the 21st Century Community Learning Center, a federally funded after-school program located in southern New Jersey. He spent 6 years teaching in charter schools in Camden, New Jersey. He is the creator, writer and editor of the Official Urban Education Mixtape Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @UrbanEdDJ.