July 25, 2018 • 25 mins
From the denial of education for Black people to school segregation, the American education system is rooted in systemic racism. Yet America still places blame on the very children affected by this racism. Bridget and Yves talk about creating purposefully anti-racist schools and curriculum with Matthew Kincaid, the founder of Overcoming Racism.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
It's four fifteen am. You're eight years old. In forty
five minutes you'll be at the corner waiting for the
bus in the dark. But first you get your six
year old brother up, You dress, you brush your teeth.
You hear your dad come in from his shift and
your mom getting ready for her. After almost two hours
(00:40):
on the bus, you're at school now, and at seven
am you're about to start nine hours of instruction. Nine
hours vocabulary, spelling, geometry, cities and states, shifting from one
area to another, walking past bullies, the class clowns. You're
in and out of chair, shuffling up and down halls,
pushing it's a ton of people. For nine hours, you're
(01:04):
expected to be completely present and accepting of everyone and
everything in front of you, And by four thirty you're tired.
Mm hmm. You climb up the steps to a crowded
bus and you take your seat. The bus seems to
(01:30):
circle around and around, and by six thirty, when the
entire bus is empty, you're back where you started. The
bus stop. You do this every day you show up.
The question is who's showing up for you? I'm even
(01:53):
Jeff Coke, and I'm Richard Totton. You're listening to Africa
Punk Solution sessions. Africa Punk is a safe place, a
blank space to freak out in, to construct a new reality,
to live our lives as we see fit while making
sense of the world around us. Here at Afro Punk,
we have the conversations that matter to us, conversations that
lead to solutions. You know, there's this myth or this
(02:24):
notion that kids in the inner city they just don't
want to learn, or perhaps if they just worked harder
in school then they could overcome these barriers. That's Matthew Kincaid.
He runs Overcoming Racism, a program that works with schools
and teachers to help confront and disrupt racism and white
supremacy in schools. Well, my kids will get to school
(02:46):
at seven o'clock in the morning, many of whom were
waiting on the bus stop from five that morning. They
went to school from seven in the morning to four
thirty in the afternoon or the evening, to then return
home m with hours of homework, fifteen minutes of recess,
twenty minutes of lunch. And these are the kids that
(03:08):
we say are lazy and ungrateful. I know, I was
never asked to work that hard in school. And despite
these realities and despite these perverted systems, my kids still
came in every single day with the audacity to believe.
And so I want to help to create educators that
meet their belief with passion and purpose, and the training
(03:31):
to teach them to navigate systems of oppression, to navigate
economic disadvantage, to invest in themselves, and to invest in
their communities. Along the way, I found it overcoming racism
because teachers need intentional anti racism training, so we can
develop teachers who are anti racist practitioners and agents of change,
(03:54):
and we can also develop equitable and culturally responsive schools.
During his time as a teacher and assistant principle, Matthews
started noticing things like that most of the teachers are
white and the students they were teaching were black. And
he noticed that white teachers and administrators never acknowledged racism.
(04:17):
It was a start contrast to the kids who couldn't
pretend racism didn't exist, who faced it every day. You
would imagine that in schools and institutions all over this country,
we would have already started to have these conversations about race.
But to be a teacher in America, you don't have
to go through any anti racist training, and currently of
(04:39):
our teaching force is white. You would imagine in a
country those built based on the labor slaves on the
land of natives, that we would have a curriculum about
race in schools. You would imagine that in a nation
where parents used to bring children to the lynchings of children,
we would have a curriculum about race and racis them
(05:00):
in schools. You would imagine in a country in which
integration was something that had to be forced upon us,
and yet fifty years later we are still woefully segregated,
that we would have a curriculum about race and racism
in schools. But once again, in order for us to
overcome racism, we have to acknowledge. Our country has to repent,
(05:25):
but we have to repair the vestiges of systemic racism
and white supremacy in our society. We'll have more solution
sessions after this quick break. Teachers may be able to
pretend that racism doesn't exist once they enter a classroom,
but all the student has to do is turn on
the news, are log on the Facebook for a reminder.
We were in there, and then they started shooting, and
(05:49):
then my mom came in and taught us to get
on the floor and then get up until it stops.
And then they stopped and one person died in the police.
You know what I think about, particularly the Black Lives
Matter movement and the access that my young people have
(06:10):
just seeing violence done upon black bodies without once again,
in school, people explain to them, you know, generations of
police brutality and you know, the relationship that law enforcement
has played in the black community, without explaining to them
the connection of that violence to patterns of lynchings, um
(06:31):
or or violence that existed, you know, dating all the
way back to the days of enslavement. To place those
things into a context for young people. It's it's been
one of the most challenging things that I feel like
I have to navigate as a teacher. Even before um
founding overcoming racism, was my students coming into school after
one of the prominent cases of police brutality took place
(06:54):
and really asking me, you know, missing and k like,
what what's going on? And my safe You know, how
am I supposed to process this? Is this person going
to be punished for what has happened here? And so
you know there are these reports and data that's coming
out now that's just that you know, when black Duck
goes viral, it can trigger PTSD like trauma. And many
(07:16):
of our kids, as a result of system and criticism,
are already in environments where they have a closer proximity
to trauma. And now social media has provided to our
young people another means to continue to be re traumatized
without schools being really well equipped to explain to young
people kind of what's going on. There is growing outrage
(07:46):
tonight after an unarmed African American teenager were shot and
killed by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri,
but there are conflicting reports about what led up to
the shooting. On the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, outrage and
anger protesters of different ages and races demanding answers, and
(08:10):
the shooting death of eighteen year old Michael Brown at
the hands of a policeman. Police to shot this man.
Pr J. Crenshaw, who took the cell phone video, says
she saw those shots from her apartment balcony. He's running
this way. He turns his body towards this way, hands
in the air being compliant, he gives shot his face
(08:31):
and chest and goes down and dive. I was a
and histing not too long ago, and I was talking
to someone that she there, and I was talking to
them a little bit about myself, and I was telling
them about how after Michael Brown's death, my students protested
and you know the way for which we organized that.
And you know, they looked at me and they're like,
we we didn't do anything when Michael Brown was killed
(08:54):
her when any of the people after that, you know,
we didn't talk about the Black Lives Matter moment. We
haven't talked about the Black Lives out of movement in schools.
And I think about just like how unfair that is
two young people to have them have such close access
to something that is, you know, really emotionally triggering, and
without them to have very much of an outlet or
(09:16):
those explains, and then you know what's going on in
the context that these things existing in reality, a lot
of these kids are carrying the legacy of racial trauma
on their shoulders, go along with their backpacks and books.
And you can't discipline away trauma. You know, many of
the things that people pull their hair out about that
are taking place in urban schools. If you really melt
(09:38):
it down, it's a result of racial trauma that young
people are during outside of schools, and also the result
of racial trauma that's been realified inside of schools for
those young people. For some reason, the solution that many
schools are opting into in terms of trying to address
the educational inequity is to place black and brown kids
in the most restrictive, the most exclude gineering environments possible.
(10:02):
And I just don't quite understand how that is an
appropriate response to the cause of the source of why
many times these young people are not able to achieve
at the same rate as their peers and other communities
who have access to better resources. Their proximity to things
like crime, their proximity to things like healthy food are
(10:25):
very different for many of the kids who grew up
in inner city environments and go to inner city schools.
Bruck youth, gay activity, shooters, drive bys. You know, there
are there are things that are dealing with and which
average kids may not have to deal with. It was
(10:45):
shooting two guys dead, two more hurt to teenagers were
shot outside of a busy fast food restaurant and one
of the most extensive studies on post traumatic stress disort
of in the community was done here in Outlanza. I
haven't found the staggering statistics, but all those who live
in low income areas in this city suffered from PTSD.
(11:07):
That is a rate much higher even than soldiers who
have seen or everyone in this section. Put above your
hands above your heads. Put them up you old people
represent the seven of our students who just failed the
practice exam seven. But that is not their failure. Keep
(11:32):
your hands up high because you are failing to agitate them.
This is the posture that many of our students will
wind up in, only they will be staring down the
barrel of a gun. I haven't seemingly not okay on
the microphone right now, So he's even seen this movie?
(11:55):
Lean on me, h, No, I haven't. It's a black
to you mean to get on that? Basically, I think
it really illustrates a lot of what Matthew was saying.
So here's the plot. The basic plot. Ron Clark is
this sort of hippie to be teacher. He's teaching in
like a hippie to be school. Um, he's wearing a
day Chiki. He's barefoot, he's sitting cross like on the
desk and so behind the ear. Yeah, he's that kind
(12:17):
he's that kind of teacher, and he getting transferred to
the worst performing school in New Jersey. It's like the
worst performing school in the state. It's East Side Hid.
So the students in the school are troubled, and the
movie really makes that point very clear. But the subtext
is really that all these kids are dealing with immense
amounts of trauma. And you know, you see the girl
(12:37):
who's at school every day but her mom is a
crack addict. Or you see the kid who's you know,
hasn't had a decent meal however long, but he's still
showing up every day. Do they do that in kind
of a montage way or do they actually go deep
into the characters and do that. They do a pretty
a fairly good job of going deep into the characters.
It's still eighties movie, so there's still cheesy montages. But
(12:57):
so you know how in eighties movies they always do
that thing where there's a montage of the person working
really hard and trying to get better, and then at
the end, you know they're going to get better this
movie kind of follows that model. But one reason why
I bring it up in this episode is because I
saw this movie when I was a kid, and the
scene sticks with me. So they're doing the typical eighties
(13:18):
movie montage of you know there, they've got their confidence up,
they're got their pride up. You know, they're working hard
late at night, like cracking the books and kids falling
asleep on his hand because he's so tired, but he
gets up and keep studying, okay, And so you're thinking, well,
so you're thinking, of course, these kids are gonna pass
this test. And there's this one scene during the montage
(13:39):
where it's from the perspective of the teacher who's proctoring
the exam and she looks over the shoulder at the
kid who's taking the practice exam for this big test.
And it's a multiple choice question, and it's one of
those test questions it's like blank is to blank as
blank is too blank, And I can't remember the exact question,
but it involves the question is asking what is a
(14:02):
healthy breakfast? And the answers are milk and cereal, soda
and this you know nothing. And obviously anybody looking at
that test question would say milk and cereal, Like it's
a very obvious what the answer to that question is,
if you know what a healthy breakfast looks like, it's
milk and cereal. But the kid circles one of the
answers that is clearly wrong, and so you know, the
(14:23):
movie does go on, like in that moment, they don't
do very well on the test. I think at the
end of the movie they do. But that scene really
illustrates that even though they are doing this feel good
montage of oh they got their confidence up there, working
really hard, working really hard isn't gonna help you if
you don't know what a healthy breakfast looks like, if
your if your reality is so tarnished by white supremacy
(14:45):
that you live in a household where you have no
idea the concept of healthy, healthy breakfast. So it's pretty
realistic about the things that are going on in these
children's lives at home. They don't just exist in a vacuum, right,
and that no amount of grit or hard work, or
staying up late or easy fixed movie montages is going
to help real systematic inequality. And that's what these kids
(15:06):
are up again. So the movie is kind of cheesy,
and it ends cheesy, and certainly it's problematic in lots
of ways. But that one's seeing stuck with me, and
that it doesn't matter how many montages you have. It
doesn't matter how hard working these kids are, how many
good speeches you make. If you're a kid and you're
up against that kind of systematic inequality, it may not
help you that much. Keep your hands up. Now you
(15:29):
are getting all hint of the kind of hopelessness and
shame that makes those failing students throw up their hands
at the thought of facing the world for which you
have not prepared them. You are getting the merest inkling
of the despair they see, oh when enought to the
mercy of the streets. There will be more solution sessions
after this quick break. Matthew says schools are dealing with
(15:56):
or not dealing with this trauma in two ways. Either
they tell students the way to escape the legacy of
racial trauma is to work harder, or they teach them
to ignore it altogether. I think that when we don't
provide young people with the tools to critically analyze and
understand the systems of oppression that they navigate on a
(16:17):
daily basis, it's can engender a lot of really unhealthy
responses two stimula that really are very external of themselves.
But you know, oftentimes school environments promote a myth of meritocracy,
the notion that you just work hard and if you
just show more grits, then that is the ingredients to
(16:38):
overcome any smith. They of this in your way. But
when you tell a kid who is on the receiving
end a generational poverty, manufactured generational poverty through redlining policy,
you know, through employment discrimination, you name it, um, the
kids on the receiving it of generational lack of access
to quality education, that all they need to do is
(16:59):
just work their way out of it. Um. That's a
really unfair message to provide a child without providing any
sort of historical or present day context of socio political
awareness around the obstacles that they're navigating in the daily
With experience in effect, in these neighborhoods, children's brains are
measurably growing up faster because of what they're exposed to
(17:19):
that affects their ability to learn and makes it difficult
for them to build relationships, makes them more susceptible to
depression and to drug use. Unlike soldiers who come home
for more and now they no longer in that dangerous environment,
a lot of the children in this study are still
living in that dangerous environment. And so I think for
(17:41):
a young person is very easy to turn that UM
pain that comes as a result of racial timas inward
upon themselves. And so I think that a lot of
the responses that we see in schools around ways in
which young people resist rules or expectations, or UM teachers
who may look different from them, or teach who come
from different communities or areas, I think very much is
(18:03):
a defense mechanism response to these triggers that they're experiencing
both outside againside of schools. How many spiritual should we see?
How many spiritual should we see? Tell me how many
spiritual should we see? When they fit in in their
(18:24):
bones and they don't do? How many battles must see fights?
How many battles must we fight? Tell me how many
battles must sweet fight? When him and when we when
they're don't treats right. And so the schools that we
(18:47):
work with UM teaches being able to provide these identity
safe faces for young people, you know, really allowing people
to name their oppression and thus work against that. You know,
you can now pick your anger out at a system
versus taking the anger upon yourselves. So what do we do?
How do we make sure our schools aren't failing black children.
(19:11):
I've heard a lot of this idea that love can
conquer all. You know, all you have to do to
make a Nazi not a Nazi anymore is give a
mug or this idea that young kids today don't need
to be taught about racism because they won't pass it down. Well,
I think we can both say that that wouldn't be
effective at all. It's not effective, and I think research
(19:32):
shows it's not effective. I understand how people cling to
it because it's very comforting, because it feels nice to say,
and even as someone who knows it doesn't work, I
find myself sort of comforted by it. But it doesn't work.
It doesn't it's not a good thing to cling to
it. It It doesn't actually get us anywhere. I think it's
something that we aspire to. It can be very easy
to try to imagine a world that we wanted to be.
(19:54):
We have to be realistic about the world that it is,
and that means addressing problems that are very uncomfortable, um,
hitting those places of trauma, and I think that's necessary
to teach you to you know, I think that there
(20:16):
is this strange sentiment that systemic racism will just get
better over time. You know, sometimes when I go into trainings,
people say things like, well, yeah, I understand. You know
in my generation, um, how these realities played out. But
you know, my kids they're color blind. They don't see color.
(20:37):
And in reality, what we do by not giving young
people the tools to have a kind of literacy around
how race functions, then you know, they're swept up by
what they see in the media, They're swept up by
what they see in other popular forms of entertainment. They're
swept up by what they see and learning schools. Schools
should deal with race head on, and they should deal
(20:59):
with that early. I think this again goes back to
the idea that young people can't be racist, babies can't
be racist. But you know that's not true. Yeah, It's
shown that racism is instilled in children very early. I
think self esteem helps young black children who resist the
negative messages and negative stimula that they're advertised about themselves
(21:20):
on a daily basis. Racial pride also helps, you know,
Dr Just Duncan and Dry talks about how your culture
is your medicine right and how you know, really one
of the things that is one of the most significant
death of the enslavement of African people was the depth
of culture um and you know, there are ways in
which you know, obviously we've created our own culture through
(21:42):
struggles to sacrifice, but to be disconnected from your culture
is something that has this dramatic impact. And so, you know,
representation builds self esteem, it builds racial pride, which I
think builds students armor to navigate, you know, the oppressive
systems they have to navigate, you know, throughout their lives.
(22:03):
In addition to lifting all kids up, schools need to
take a long, hard look at why they do what
they do when it comes to disciplining kids. After the
first year of implementing the anti racism trainings at my school,
we reduced our suspensions by while increasing student happen is
by and raising our school performance score. And people say, well,
(22:25):
how did you reduce your suspensions by so much? We
decided to stop suspending kids because the main reason why
kids are being suspended in the first place was because
of some sort of disconnect that was happening in school.
So you're respond to that by kicking a kid out
of school and only making them more confused when they
come back. What we've been doing doesn't make sense. In
(22:48):
the words of Andre Perry, there is no problem facing
black and brown children in America today that ending systemic
racism won't solve. W B the Blaud once said that
education is anywhere and everywhere political, and that the political
goal of education for people of oppress groups must be
(23:08):
aimed at finding your means to end their oppression. If
we're not teaching kids how to navigate oppression, and if
as educators were not working to find means to end
their oppression, then what are we doing exactly. My personal
(23:30):
belief as a person of color is that it's not
necessarily our job to get white people to understand what
we go through every day or the challenges of what
it means to be a black person. I think white
people should work to understand white supremacy. There's a great
quote that says, if you've come to help me, then leave.
But if you come because you believe that your liberation
is bound up in mind, then let us work together.
(23:52):
What's the solution? Bridget teach kids about race early. What's
the solution? Bridget be realistic, not idealistic when discussing racism
with kids. What's the solution? Bridget demand that schools meaningfully
addressed the issues that black children face. What's the solution?
Bridget speak up for children. Afro Punk Solution Sessions is
(24:21):
a co production between Afro Punk and How Stuff Works.
Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve's Jeff Cope. Executive
co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill.
Dylan Fagan is supervising producer, and Kathleen Quillian is audio engineer.
Chandler Mayze was our audio editor this week. Many many
thanks to Casey Pegram and Annie Reese for their production
(24:42):
and editorial oversight, and many thanks to her on the
ground Atlanta crew Ben Bowland, Corey Oliver, and Noel Brown.
The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers. The song
Deja Vu by Makya Javan was performed live with Cool
Nasty on December five, seen at the Medicine Show, New Orleans.
The Medicine Show was presented by Red Blue and Apico
and produced by New Creatures at the Civic Center in
(25:04):
New Orleans, Louisiana. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram at afropark h
It's four fifteen am. You're eight years old. In forty
five minutes you'll be at the corner waiting for the
bus in the dark. But first you get your six
year old brother up, You dress, you brush your teeth.
You hear your dad come in from his shift and
your mom getting ready for her. After almost two hours
(00:40):
on the bus, you're at school now, and at seven
am you're about to start nine hours of instruction. Nine
hours vocabulary, spelling, geometry, cities and states, shifting from one
area to another, walking past bullies, the class clowns. You're
in and out of chair, shuffling up and down halls,
pushing it's a ton of people. For nine hours, you're
(01:04):
expected to be completely present and accepting of everyone and
everything in front of you, And by four thirty you're tired.
Mm hmm. You climb up the steps to a crowded
bus and you take your seat. The bus seems to
(01:30):
circle around and around, and by six thirty, when the
entire bus is empty, you're back where you started. The
bus stop. You do this every day you show up.
The question is who's showing up for you? I'm even
(01:53):
Jeff Coke, and I'm Richard Totton. You're listening to Africa
Punk Solution sessions. Africa Punk is a safe place, a
blank space to freak out in, to construct a new reality,
to live our lives as we see fit while making
sense of the world around us. Here at Afro Punk,
we have the conversations that matter to us, conversations that
lead to solutions. You know, there's this myth or this
(02:24):
notion that kids in the inner city they just don't
want to learn, or perhaps if they just worked harder
in school then they could overcome these barriers. That's Matthew Kincaid.
He runs Overcoming Racism, a program that works with schools
and teachers to help confront and disrupt racism and white
supremacy in schools. Well, my kids will get to school
(02:46):
at seven o'clock in the morning, many of whom were
waiting on the bus stop from five that morning. They
went to school from seven in the morning to four
thirty in the afternoon or the evening, to then return
home m with hours of homework, fifteen minutes of recess,
twenty minutes of lunch. And these are the kids that
(03:08):
we say are lazy and ungrateful. I know, I was
never asked to work that hard in school. And despite
these realities and despite these perverted systems, my kids still
came in every single day with the audacity to believe.
And so I want to help to create educators that
meet their belief with passion and purpose, and the training
(03:31):
to teach them to navigate systems of oppression, to navigate
economic disadvantage, to invest in themselves, and to invest in
their communities. Along the way, I found it overcoming racism
because teachers need intentional anti racism training, so we can
develop teachers who are anti racist practitioners and agents of change,
(03:54):
and we can also develop equitable and culturally responsive schools.
During his time as a teacher and assistant principle, Matthews
started noticing things like that most of the teachers are
white and the students they were teaching were black. And
he noticed that white teachers and administrators never acknowledged racism.
(04:17):
It was a start contrast to the kids who couldn't
pretend racism didn't exist, who faced it every day. You
would imagine that in schools and institutions all over this country,
we would have already started to have these conversations about race.
But to be a teacher in America, you don't have
to go through any anti racist training, and currently of
(04:39):
our teaching force is white. You would imagine in a
country those built based on the labor slaves on the
land of natives, that we would have a curriculum about
race in schools. You would imagine that in a nation
where parents used to bring children to the lynchings of children,
we would have a curriculum about race and racis them
(05:00):
in schools. You would imagine in a country in which
integration was something that had to be forced upon us,
and yet fifty years later we are still woefully segregated,
that we would have a curriculum about race and racism
in schools. But once again, in order for us to
overcome racism, we have to acknowledge. Our country has to repent,
(05:25):
but we have to repair the vestiges of systemic racism
and white supremacy in our society. We'll have more solution
sessions after this quick break. Teachers may be able to
pretend that racism doesn't exist once they enter a classroom,
but all the student has to do is turn on
the news, are log on the Facebook for a reminder.
We were in there, and then they started shooting, and
(05:49):
then my mom came in and taught us to get
on the floor and then get up until it stops.
And then they stopped and one person died in the police.
You know what I think about, particularly the Black Lives
Matter movement and the access that my young people have
(06:10):
just seeing violence done upon black bodies without once again,
in school, people explain to them, you know, generations of
police brutality and you know, the relationship that law enforcement
has played in the black community, without explaining to them
the connection of that violence to patterns of lynchings, um
(06:31):
or or violence that existed, you know, dating all the
way back to the days of enslavement. To place those
things into a context for young people. It's it's been
one of the most challenging things that I feel like
I have to navigate as a teacher. Even before um
founding overcoming racism, was my students coming into school after
one of the prominent cases of police brutality took place
(06:54):
and really asking me, you know, missing and k like,
what what's going on? And my safe You know, how
am I supposed to process this? Is this person going
to be punished for what has happened here? And so
you know there are these reports and data that's coming
out now that's just that you know, when black Duck
goes viral, it can trigger PTSD like trauma. And many
(07:16):
of our kids, as a result of system and criticism,
are already in environments where they have a closer proximity
to trauma. And now social media has provided to our
young people another means to continue to be re traumatized
without schools being really well equipped to explain to young
people kind of what's going on. There is growing outrage
(07:46):
tonight after an unarmed African American teenager were shot and
killed by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri,
but there are conflicting reports about what led up to
the shooting. On the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, outrage and
anger protesters of different ages and races demanding answers, and
(08:10):
the shooting death of eighteen year old Michael Brown at
the hands of a policeman. Police to shot this man.
Pr J. Crenshaw, who took the cell phone video, says
she saw those shots from her apartment balcony. He's running
this way. He turns his body towards this way, hands
in the air being compliant, he gives shot his face
(08:31):
and chest and goes down and dive. I was a
and histing not too long ago, and I was talking
to someone that she there, and I was talking to
them a little bit about myself, and I was telling
them about how after Michael Brown's death, my students protested
and you know the way for which we organized that.
And you know, they looked at me and they're like,
we we didn't do anything when Michael Brown was killed
(08:54):
her when any of the people after that, you know,
we didn't talk about the Black Lives Matter moment. We
haven't talked about the Black Lives out of movement in schools.
And I think about just like how unfair that is
two young people to have them have such close access
to something that is, you know, really emotionally triggering, and
without them to have very much of an outlet or
(09:16):
those explains, and then you know what's going on in
the context that these things existing in reality, a lot
of these kids are carrying the legacy of racial trauma
on their shoulders, go along with their backpacks and books.
And you can't discipline away trauma. You know, many of
the things that people pull their hair out about that
are taking place in urban schools. If you really melt
(09:38):
it down, it's a result of racial trauma that young
people are during outside of schools, and also the result
of racial trauma that's been realified inside of schools for
those young people. For some reason, the solution that many
schools are opting into in terms of trying to address
the educational inequity is to place black and brown kids
in the most restrictive, the most exclude gineering environments possible.
(10:02):
And I just don't quite understand how that is an
appropriate response to the cause of the source of why
many times these young people are not able to achieve
at the same rate as their peers and other communities
who have access to better resources. Their proximity to things
like crime, their proximity to things like healthy food are
(10:25):
very different for many of the kids who grew up
in inner city environments and go to inner city schools.
Bruck youth, gay activity, shooters, drive bys. You know, there
are there are things that are dealing with and which
average kids may not have to deal with. It was
(10:45):
shooting two guys dead, two more hurt to teenagers were
shot outside of a busy fast food restaurant and one
of the most extensive studies on post traumatic stress disort
of in the community was done here in Outlanza. I
haven't found the staggering statistics, but all those who live
in low income areas in this city suffered from PTSD.
(11:07):
That is a rate much higher even than soldiers who
have seen or everyone in this section. Put above your
hands above your heads. Put them up you old people
represent the seven of our students who just failed the
practice exam seven. But that is not their failure. Keep
(11:32):
your hands up high because you are failing to agitate them.
This is the posture that many of our students will
wind up in, only they will be staring down the
barrel of a gun. I haven't seemingly not okay on
the microphone right now, So he's even seen this movie?
(11:55):
Lean on me, h, No, I haven't. It's a black
to you mean to get on that? Basically, I think
it really illustrates a lot of what Matthew was saying.
So here's the plot. The basic plot. Ron Clark is
this sort of hippie to be teacher. He's teaching in
like a hippie to be school. Um, he's wearing a
day Chiki. He's barefoot, he's sitting cross like on the
desk and so behind the ear. Yeah, he's that kind
(12:17):
he's that kind of teacher, and he getting transferred to
the worst performing school in New Jersey. It's like the
worst performing school in the state. It's East Side Hid.
So the students in the school are troubled, and the
movie really makes that point very clear. But the subtext
is really that all these kids are dealing with immense
amounts of trauma. And you know, you see the girl
(12:37):
who's at school every day but her mom is a
crack addict. Or you see the kid who's you know,
hasn't had a decent meal however long, but he's still
showing up every day. Do they do that in kind
of a montage way or do they actually go deep
into the characters and do that. They do a pretty
a fairly good job of going deep into the characters.
It's still eighties movie, so there's still cheesy montages. But
(12:57):
so you know how in eighties movies they always do
that thing where there's a montage of the person working
really hard and trying to get better, and then at
the end, you know they're going to get better this
movie kind of follows that model. But one reason why
I bring it up in this episode is because I
saw this movie when I was a kid, and the
scene sticks with me. So they're doing the typical eighties
(13:18):
movie montage of you know there, they've got their confidence up,
they're got their pride up. You know, they're working hard
late at night, like cracking the books and kids falling
asleep on his hand because he's so tired, but he
gets up and keep studying, okay, And so you're thinking, well,
so you're thinking, of course, these kids are gonna pass
this test. And there's this one scene during the montage
(13:39):
where it's from the perspective of the teacher who's proctoring
the exam and she looks over the shoulder at the
kid who's taking the practice exam for this big test.
And it's a multiple choice question, and it's one of
those test questions it's like blank is to blank as
blank is too blank, And I can't remember the exact question,
but it involves the question is asking what is a
(14:02):
healthy breakfast? And the answers are milk and cereal, soda
and this you know nothing. And obviously anybody looking at
that test question would say milk and cereal, Like it's
a very obvious what the answer to that question is,
if you know what a healthy breakfast looks like, it's
milk and cereal. But the kid circles one of the
answers that is clearly wrong, and so you know, the
(14:23):
movie does go on, like in that moment, they don't
do very well on the test. I think at the
end of the movie they do. But that scene really
illustrates that even though they are doing this feel good
montage of oh they got their confidence up there, working
really hard, working really hard isn't gonna help you if
you don't know what a healthy breakfast looks like, if
your if your reality is so tarnished by white supremacy
(14:45):
that you live in a household where you have no
idea the concept of healthy, healthy breakfast. So it's pretty
realistic about the things that are going on in these
children's lives at home. They don't just exist in a vacuum, right,
and that no amount of grit or hard work, or
staying up late or easy fixed movie montages is going
to help real systematic inequality. And that's what these kids
(15:06):
are up again. So the movie is kind of cheesy,
and it ends cheesy, and certainly it's problematic in lots
of ways. But that one's seeing stuck with me, and
that it doesn't matter how many montages you have. It
doesn't matter how hard working these kids are, how many
good speeches you make. If you're a kid and you're
up against that kind of systematic inequality, it may not
help you that much. Keep your hands up. Now you
(15:29):
are getting all hint of the kind of hopelessness and
shame that makes those failing students throw up their hands
at the thought of facing the world for which you
have not prepared them. You are getting the merest inkling
of the despair they see, oh when enought to the
mercy of the streets. There will be more solution sessions
after this quick break. Matthew says schools are dealing with
(15:56):
or not dealing with this trauma in two ways. Either
they tell students the way to escape the legacy of
racial trauma is to work harder, or they teach them
to ignore it altogether. I think that when we don't
provide young people with the tools to critically analyze and
understand the systems of oppression that they navigate on a
(16:17):
daily basis, it's can engender a lot of really unhealthy
responses two stimula that really are very external of themselves.
But you know, oftentimes school environments promote a myth of meritocracy,
the notion that you just work hard and if you
just show more grits, then that is the ingredients to
(16:38):
overcome any smith. They of this in your way. But
when you tell a kid who is on the receiving
end a generational poverty, manufactured generational poverty through redlining policy,
you know, through employment discrimination, you name it, um, the
kids on the receiving it of generational lack of access
to quality education, that all they need to do is
(16:59):
just work their way out of it. Um. That's a
really unfair message to provide a child without providing any
sort of historical or present day context of socio political
awareness around the obstacles that they're navigating in the daily
With experience in effect, in these neighborhoods, children's brains are
measurably growing up faster because of what they're exposed to
(17:19):
that affects their ability to learn and makes it difficult
for them to build relationships, makes them more susceptible to
depression and to drug use. Unlike soldiers who come home
for more and now they no longer in that dangerous environment,
a lot of the children in this study are still
living in that dangerous environment. And so I think for
(17:41):
a young person is very easy to turn that UM
pain that comes as a result of racial timas inward
upon themselves. And so I think that a lot of
the responses that we see in schools around ways in
which young people resist rules or expectations, or UM teachers
who may look different from them, or teach who come
from different communities or areas, I think very much is
(18:03):
a defense mechanism response to these triggers that they're experiencing
both outside againside of schools. How many spiritual should we see?
How many spiritual should we see? Tell me how many
spiritual should we see? When they fit in in their
(18:24):
bones and they don't do? How many battles must see fights?
How many battles must we fight? Tell me how many
battles must sweet fight? When him and when we when
they're don't treats right. And so the schools that we
(18:47):
work with UM teaches being able to provide these identity
safe faces for young people, you know, really allowing people
to name their oppression and thus work against that. You know,
you can now pick your anger out at a system
versus taking the anger upon yourselves. So what do we do?
How do we make sure our schools aren't failing black children.
(19:11):
I've heard a lot of this idea that love can
conquer all. You know, all you have to do to
make a Nazi not a Nazi anymore is give a
mug or this idea that young kids today don't need
to be taught about racism because they won't pass it down. Well,
I think we can both say that that wouldn't be
effective at all. It's not effective, and I think research
(19:32):
shows it's not effective. I understand how people cling to
it because it's very comforting, because it feels nice to say,
and even as someone who knows it doesn't work, I
find myself sort of comforted by it. But it doesn't work.
It doesn't it's not a good thing to cling to
it. It It doesn't actually get us anywhere. I think it's
something that we aspire to. It can be very easy
to try to imagine a world that we wanted to be.
(19:54):
We have to be realistic about the world that it is,
and that means addressing problems that are very uncomfortable, um,
hitting those places of trauma, and I think that's necessary
to teach you to you know, I think that there
(20:16):
is this strange sentiment that systemic racism will just get
better over time. You know, sometimes when I go into trainings,
people say things like, well, yeah, I understand. You know
in my generation, um, how these realities played out. But
you know, my kids they're color blind. They don't see color.
(20:37):
And in reality, what we do by not giving young
people the tools to have a kind of literacy around
how race functions, then you know, they're swept up by
what they see in the media, They're swept up by
what they see in other popular forms of entertainment. They're
swept up by what they see and learning schools. Schools
should deal with race head on, and they should deal
(20:59):
with that early. I think this again goes back to
the idea that young people can't be racist, babies can't
be racist. But you know that's not true. Yeah, It's
shown that racism is instilled in children very early. I
think self esteem helps young black children who resist the
negative messages and negative stimula that they're advertised about themselves
(21:20):
on a daily basis. Racial pride also helps, you know,
Dr Just Duncan and Dry talks about how your culture
is your medicine right and how you know, really one
of the things that is one of the most significant
death of the enslavement of African people was the depth
of culture um and you know, there are ways in
which you know, obviously we've created our own culture through
(21:42):
struggles to sacrifice, but to be disconnected from your culture
is something that has this dramatic impact. And so, you know,
representation builds self esteem, it builds racial pride, which I
think builds students armor to navigate, you know, the oppressive
systems they have to navigate, you know, throughout their lives.
(22:03):
In addition to lifting all kids up, schools need to
take a long, hard look at why they do what
they do when it comes to disciplining kids. After the
first year of implementing the anti racism trainings at my school,
we reduced our suspensions by while increasing student happen is
by and raising our school performance score. And people say, well,
(22:25):
how did you reduce your suspensions by so much? We
decided to stop suspending kids because the main reason why
kids are being suspended in the first place was because
of some sort of disconnect that was happening in school.
So you're respond to that by kicking a kid out
of school and only making them more confused when they
come back. What we've been doing doesn't make sense. In
(22:48):
the words of Andre Perry, there is no problem facing
black and brown children in America today that ending systemic
racism won't solve. W B the Blaud once said that
education is anywhere and everywhere political, and that the political
goal of education for people of oppress groups must be
(23:08):
aimed at finding your means to end their oppression. If
we're not teaching kids how to navigate oppression, and if
as educators were not working to find means to end
their oppression, then what are we doing exactly. My personal
(23:30):
belief as a person of color is that it's not
necessarily our job to get white people to understand what
we go through every day or the challenges of what
it means to be a black person. I think white
people should work to understand white supremacy. There's a great
quote that says, if you've come to help me, then leave.
But if you come because you believe that your liberation
is bound up in mind, then let us work together.
(23:52):
What's the solution? Bridget teach kids about race early. What's
the solution? Bridget be realistic, not idealistic when discussing racism
with kids. What's the solution? Bridget demand that schools meaningfully
addressed the issues that black children face. What's the solution?
Bridget speak up for children. Afro Punk Solution Sessions is
(24:21):
a co production between Afro Punk and How Stuff Works.
Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve's Jeff Cope. Executive
co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill.
Dylan Fagan is supervising producer, and Kathleen Quillian is audio engineer.
Chandler Mayze was our audio editor this week. Many many
thanks to Casey Pegram and Annie Reese for their production
(24:42):
and editorial oversight, and many thanks to her on the
ground Atlanta crew Ben Bowland, Corey Oliver, and Noel Brown.
The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers. The song
Deja Vu by Makya Javan was performed live with Cool
Nasty on December five, seen at the Medicine Show, New Orleans.
The Medicine Show was presented by Red Blue and Apico
and produced by New Creatures at the Civic Center in
(25:04):
New Orleans, Louisiana. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram at afropark h
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.