How our schools hurt White kids.

How Our Schools Hurt White Kids and What We Can Do to Change It White children are being harmed in our schools, and we need to act courageously and diligently to protect them. What do they need to be protected from? A system that tells them: • • •

You are worth more than other children. You deserve the best our schools have to offer while others receive less. It is okay to ignore fellow human beings when they tell you that you are hurting them. You can become a well-respected community or school leader even if you make decisions that repeatedly hurt others.

Two important ideas can help us understand how our White children learn these lessons. First, their school system reinforces White supremacy. White supremacy is the ownership of a majority of valued resources by White people and the continual use of those resources to benefit White people and to keep them in power. Second, in this system, our White children’s White privilege allows them to thrive without ever knowing anything is wrong. White privilege is the collection of benefits that White people receive just because they are part of White culture. The Alachua County School Board meeting of May 16 offered many examples to help us see White privilege and White supremacy in action. When watching this meeting, you know you have White privilege if: •

You have the same skin color as nearly all of the students who were recognized for participating in the district’s performing arts programs. White privilege allows White parents to presume that their children will have access to all desirable district programs if they want it. White supremacy is reinforced as White children’s involvement in successful school programs helps them gain access to competitive colleges, leading them to assume positions of power and continue these same practices.

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You can be fairly sure that when the board chair began his description of the superintendent selection process and stated, “We have an elected duty to represent the public,” you are a member of the “public” he claims to represent. White privilege allows White parents and children to know that their interests will be protected even if they do not show up to the meeting to voice their opinions. The subsequent selection of a superintendent who has belonged to this system of White supremacy for her entire career without raising issues of educational injustice indicates the board’s acceptance of White supremacy and assures that it could easily live on under this new administration.

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You can also be fairly sure that when a board member thanked members of the public for their comments to her about the superintendent search in “conversations at Publix and conversations at church,” the people having those conversations had the same skin color and interests as you. White supremacy puts White people together in informal spaces

©Brianna L. Kennedy, 2017 Cite this article as: Kennedy, B. L. (2017, May). How our schools hurt White kids. [Unpublished Op-Ed]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brianna_Kennedy/publications

where powerful decisions are made; White privilege allows them to deny that it occurs; and White supremacy protects them from being accountable. These examples teach our White children the opposite of what most White parents want their children to learn. As our White children learn that their Black and Brown schoolmates are less valuable, less deserving, less human than they are, White children also lose sensitivity, mutuality, compassion, imagination, and their ethical compass. But these are the traits that will allow future generations to create a world that is safe, healthy, and humane. How can White people fight to help our White children develop and keep these traits and to protect all of our children from White supremacy? 1. Talk to Black parents about what is really happening in schools. 2. Attend PTA meetings, school board meetings, and other gatherings where important decisions are made, ask the difficult questions, and voice your concerns about racial disparities. 3. Vote for board members who demonstrate actions that dismantle White supremacy. 4. Participate in a community organization or movement that addresses racial justice. 5. Demand good evidence of better results for all children and the decreasing of gaps between groups. This school district is beginning a new chapter, one that can tell the story of how White supremacy continued to rob our children of their full humanity, or one that can tell the story of how a community banded together and refused to continue allowing White supremacy to steal from its children. You decide. Brianna L. Kennedy is currently a faculty member in the Department of Education at Utrecht University. She was formerly an associate professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida.

©Brianna L. Kennedy, 2017 Cite this article as: Kennedy, B. L. (2017, May). How our schools hurt White kids. [Unpublished Op-Ed]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brianna_Kennedy/publications