A response to integration that I’d never thought I would write (although I am glad I did)

I am a White parent and teacher. I did not support pairing schools as an answer to segregation in my community when the rezoning fight was active a few months ago in our city school system. I never thought that I would feel this way about integration because I believe in equity and justice. My children benefit immensely from being in an integrated school. They are less likely to make assumptions, more likely to point out injustice when they see it, and when they become adults, they will more likely seek to connect with people who are different from them. Because of their experiences growing up, I hope they will always recognize that success and failure often depends on race, gender, and class. A parenting goal for me is making sure that my daughters can begin to claim their individual privilege and relate it to the systemic racism that occurs in almost every aspect of American life. They will at least be armed with the knowledge as they benefit from being white. Integration is crucial for my own children.

I have a lot of other children that have much more at stake in the arguments over integration. I am a public school educator and I teach at my neighborhood high school, a Title One school that is struggling with chronic absenteeism, a building that is crumbling around us, and a lack of supplies and technology that makes learning less enriching everyday. When my daughter was in eighth grade, she applied to a specialty program that allowed her to go to school outside of our school zone, avoiding the school in which I teach. I know that school choice keeps people who have options from leaving the city for “better” county schools. I took advantage of school choice to benefit my own children. As I have gotten to know my students and my school community, my views about integration have evolved. I have a different experience than many of my progressive White neighbors. One fact has stayed constant in my mind. White children need to learn next to Black children to become more robust learners. They need to witness and celebrate Black excellence. They need to learn Black stories, complete histories of our country with all of their many truths, and they need to benefit from the dedication and pedagogy of Black teachers. I believe that the ultimate success of our country depended on integration. But there is a huge difference between creating diversity and creating integration. How can equity exist in a diverse school when public education has been set up for segregation? This fact has become more blatantly obvious the longer I teach in a funding-starved, but a community- rich school.

I decided to teach at my current school after 12 years of teaching in a suburban, diverse school with a lot of funding. In those 12 years, I rarely witnessed integration. I saw my advanced classes filled with White students. I saw my basic classes filled with Black and Latino students. I saw more White students playing sports and becoming more involved in after school clubs, running for office and commanding student leadership. I saw White students running the school newspaper and putting together the yearbook. Students of color lost opportunity to thrive while witnessing the segregation that occurred within my diverse school. The discipline record was what you might expect. I even witnessed blatant discrimination from students, teachers, and an administrator occurring in my community. Instead of integration, diversity brought disparity in treatment and opportunities to my students of color.

I believe that the Black students that I currently teach do not need White people to thrive. They don’t need to learn next to White children to be curious and caring learners. In fact, from my point of view as an educator, studying and learning next to White children, allows Black children an up-close picture of bias and discrimination that they will be faced with for the rest of their lives. In my new school, Black children achieve without having to measure themselves against the achievement of White students. I don’t teach any White students. My students aren’t forced to recognize the myth of the achievement gap that allows our culture to believe that White children are smarter than Black children. When my students see their peers achieve in school, they are seeing Black faces and Black bodies creating a model for their own success. My students have the chance, if they take it, to feel loved and supported by adults who believe in their capabilities to create and innovate and be change makers.

Black learners are, however, missing the increased funding that comes with more diversity. Racism prevents my students from benefiting from fully funded schools. The tragic fact of public school funding, is that it is tied to the decisions of its citizens to buy homes in segregated communities. When schools have to rely on surrounding communities for their funding, high poverty schools cannot possibly have the resources that they need for education. These concentrations of poverty, resulting in poor school funding, have grown because of inequity in all aspects of society and culture.

I am well-aware that the students that I teach now all suffer from the effects of racism every day and it is systemic and unwieldy. There are mice in our walls and roaches roaming our hallways. The temperatures of our classrooms mimic the temperatures outside. Our athletic fields don’t have stadiums or even lights. My students have reduced access to technology and do not have enough books to read in the library that allow them to learn about unfamiliar places and about their own worth. Textbooks are hard for teachers to acquire. Our PTA is tiny and parent involvement is sometimes just not possible. Most of the chairs in my classroom are broken and I’ve witnessed kids falling out of their chair when they break. With our population of students with childhood trauma always increasing and our community living with the effects of generational poverty, our school should be providing more for our children, not suffering with less. This is unacceptable.

So here is where school pairing should come to the rescue. Schools with White children have more money! When White children suddenly enter through our doors, will they bring the much needed funding with them? Let me point out the trauma of this seemingly simple solution. If White families bring a more active PTA and more money for our necessities, what will my students begin to believe about themselves? Will they internalize the fact that everything is “better” when the White children arrive? Will they receive the benefit of “involved parenting” and at the same time question the loyalty of their own loving parents? Will they begin to doubt their intelligence and potential to be successful when children with better resources and opportunities cause the achievement gap to appear? It certainly makes integration much more complicated than it seems. How will schools integrate? Will school administration be able to magically erase the bias and hegemony that have hurt Black children for centuries so that equity can be reached? Will students of color begin to be recommended for gifted and enrichment programs at the same rate as White children? Will curriculum and pedagogy change so that Black children remain proud of who they are? Will we suddenly begin to teach about colonialism and the effects of genocide and racial terrorism on our country so that White children can know a more complete truth? Will we teach White children why they statistically succeed more than Black children? This is far from being a realistic future.

In my city, where racial terror comes to life every day in the monuments that line our streets and the t-shirts that proclaim proud southern heritage that some of our citizens wear, my students are not insulated from cultural violence. They are aware of the inequity of their education. I think that the White people who know, as I do, that their own children will benefit from integration, need to stop talking so much and LISTEN. My neighbors need to step aside so that the families that have lived with underfunded schools for generations can lead the discussion and actions around integration. The people that attend our segregated schools are not symbols of oppression to be used for ideological gain or to satisfy the progressive ideas of the privileged. The students who I teach are individuals with hopes and dreams, obstacles and challenges, and each of these students has an identity that deserves to be fully realized. I think that the proponents of school pairing in my city are not recognizing these identities. The negative consequences of steam-rolling integration will disrupt the school communities that are currently in place because it is being thrust upon them without the supports needed to make a diversified school truly integrated and equitable for all children.

The worst part of this, is that pro-integration White parents are calling people who are wary of school pairing, racists. They call out hesitancy for integration as cowardliness and fear. They are disregarding voices of color that are pushing for more equity in public education. They are declaring a moral victory by erasing the specific wants and needs of the people that they are supposedly trying to help. They preach an ethical higher ground as they simplify voices of color to fit their agenda. Integration advocates are missing the point. Anti-racism is not just about calling people racist, its about working to undo oppressive, ingrained institutions that prevent America from being just. Integrating schools as they are now will do very little to fix racism. Putting children in proximity to each other does not change the realities of inequity.

Public school will be truly integrated when the systems of oppression are rejected by the American people. Public school will be truly integrated when more people work to erase housing and transportation discrimination, and a criminal justice system that is ruining families and communities of color. When people fight to decrease poverty and health disparities, Black children will thrive. Championing integration is self-serving for White people. We are the ones who will benefit from integration with the current systems in place. Instead, start fighting for equity by voting for local officials and state politicians who work tirelessly to acquire the funding and programs that we all deserve. We fight by showing up to speak out against the funding crisis, against administrative misuse of public funds, against our leaders who make public education a low priority. When funding is equitable, schools will be closer to what we expect for all of our children.

I know this is an unpopular opinion. Sharing it makes me uncomfortable. Thanks goes out to the amazing activists who are fighting for just communities and resources and to public office-holders who have been publicly shamed for believing in the children that I teach but still use their voice for a better future for our city.