Dear White Friends

Dear White Friends,

First and foremost, I need to thank my dad. His decision to make education a priority, against all odds, has significantly impacted the trajectory of the lives of my siblings and myself. His ability to overcome has afforded us the opportunity to endure a lot less struggle in this life. With the knowledge that one specific teacher had the ability to influence him in this decision, I became inspired to become an educator with the hopes of providing this same opportunity to many other minority students.

Some may say that every black/brown person can do this and dismiss the modern-day struggle that many of my brothers and sisters face while still living in impoverished communities, but honestly, it’s not that easy.

Because I have the lens of an educator who TRULY wants to see long-term change, here’s what I know:

First I’ll remind you that the prime of the Civil Rights era was not that long ago. “Not that long ago” segregation was LEGAL in America. “Separate but Equal” was the cry of many white-Americans as they sent their kids to well-funded schools with the best of everything and left black students with poorly-funded systems, leaving us the scraps that they no longer had use for. NO LONGER HAD USE FOR. This clearly set us back even further, when previously our ancestors were not allowed to learn how to read and write, since their masters wanted them to remain ignorant—duh, knowledge is power (ie. Frederick Douglas, Wallace Turnage, etc.). Unbeknownst to many of you, this still goes on today. School funding is largely based on property taxes from the community (property taxes are cheaper in urban communities that house many minorities). You might say, well, then don’t live in those communities! But nah, “white flight” came about AFTER blacks who were previously not allowed by LAW to live in “white” neighborhoods were now able to… White people gathered their belongings and got away as far as they could, leaving us behind with what they no longer wanted. 

School funding also has a lot to do with the dynamics of the students— schools get more funding for having more African American males in special ed and less funding if they have more than a certain percentage of Asian Americans in special ed (this is just ONE brief dynamic of black oppression in school systems… YEP, it’s crazy, but it’s true). 

So much in the education system is STILL designed to oppress the BLACK COMMUNITY. By giving poor academic opportunities, funding for just the basics, less opportunities for field-trips outside of the community, and often ill-equipped and ignorant (SOMETIMES RACIST) teachers, there is a slim chance for success beyond grade school and guess where blacks end up? Back in the poverty they were born in and back to the struggle.

The “school-to-prison pipeline” you may or may not have heard of is the theory that when a student fails a third grade reading or math test, they begin to get tracked. Their progress or lack-thereof determines how many more jail cells should be built to potentially house them. The disproportionate number of black and brown people in jail is directly related to the poor education and lack of opportunity they have as a child.

This is systematic oppression. This system was created by our nation’s white founding-fathers. Plain and simple. 

So before you go off and consider the issues that black people are constantly dealing with as merely a black problem that we can avoid, I encourage those of you with compassionate hearts to research American history as it pertains to black people. Not by way of the history books that now refer to slaves as “indentured servants” (yes, they are teaching school children that slavery was somehow voluntary these days in history books), but TRUE history of our country. 

We are the minority. We have been  the minority and at the killing-spree rate of our people, will always be. It takes the majority, the same skin-tone as the oppressor, to speak up about the injustice still going on and what YOU can do to help make this change. It takes each and every single person. We can’t fight this battle alone.

Remember, “SILENCE IS A FORM OF RACISM”!  #supportBLACK