Our Schooling Condition

Much of the present US American schooling condition is a legacy of colonialism.  In the same way that European settlers planted flags on foreign lands with missions of civilizing indigenous people through occupation and domination; leaders of no-excuses charter systems, including Seth Andrew through Democracy Prep and now Democracy Builders, plant their institutional flags in Black and Brown communities with the same missionary zeal.  We do not expect reformers to request the perspectives of community-centric Black and Brown experts and educators, nor do we require them to seek permission from the community’s leaders, children, or parents in the places they are entering.  We just join in this 500-year history of white-domination over Black and Brown beings, blindly. Perhaps it is too painful to consider how we have been complicit in continuing this ugly legacy of dominance in American history.  Perhaps, because we have endured our own miseducation, studying history from books that erase the terroristic truths of eugenics and Native American boarding schools, or the triumphs of community schools and Black-led universities (HBCUs), we haven’t a clue of the atrocities that have happened here or of those that are still happening.  For those of us who hold core values of equity and justice, we must deeply interrogate the parallels between 16^th century settler-colonialists and 21^st century neocolonialists.  We must question why, if we can now name the harm in one, that which resulted in the theft of indigenous lands and the enslavement of Black bodies, we cannot seem to see the harm in the other, that which shackles Black minds and spirits.  Whatever the reason, let us no longer allow ignorance to destroy our humanity.

Over 200 people have submitted stories to the Black & Brown at DP Collective.  While not everyone who attended Democracy Prep Public Schools perceive the institution negatively, many do.  I do.  My experiences with racial discrimination and trauma at Democracy Prep’s Charter High School largely inspired my zeal for designing and leading social justice education in education reform organizations.  What I saw there was horrible.  I can confirm that several of the anonymous submissions to BNB@DP align to my observations and experiences at the institution between 2009-2010.  Regardless of this, the bigger issue is the problematic orientations of DPPS’s founder, Seth Andrew, through whom these conditions of racial harm were born and allowed to fester even after his exit.  At present, he has chosen non-response when invited to reconcile and rectify these issues, likely to protect his ego.  Somehow he does not suffer the same critique as the Black and Brown folk who do respond, but do not reveal themselves, in order to protect their psychological and economic safety.

There are students and faculty who had great experiences with DPPS, just as there are others who suffered abuses.  What will it take for us to resist the restrictions of “either/or” thinking and welcome the healing of “both/and”?  One truth does not negate the other.  When harm is being communicated, at any level and in any way within our schools, we have a legal responsibility to investigate.  The onus is not on victims to subject themselves to additional injury for the sake of satisfying public curiosity.  It is on us, the citizens of communities where these institutions exist, or are being installed, to ask questions about, and to push against the trends of racial injustice that are being communicated.  That said, if we find ourselves hyper-critical of the Black and Brown people sharing truths under the cover of an anonymous collective (just as several other grassroots activists have chosen to do), yet we are, at the same time, confident in narratives offered by white people and the institutions they control (alongside their access to money, press, powerful partnerships, and racial privileges that Black and Brown activists are not privy to), let us also name and accept this truth as evidence of our affinity to the culture of white supremacy.  In that vein, let us then own the limitations of our perspectives and honor that we are not yet equipped to interpret or solve this situation equitably.  Let us demonstrate justice by inviting racial equity practitioners, Black and Brown culturally and community-responsive education experts, and families from our communities to speak and lead in these matters.  Let them have the final say.