As teacher educators who promote antiracism in schools, Brown v. Board of Education is a pivotal case in our teaching. We teach courses in educational leadership and multicultural education (Maren for aspiring school leaders and Debi for aspiring teachers) at a predominantly white university. We both aim to center issues of race, identity, and justice with our students. We find that an understanding of our country's history with school segregation and integration provides a space to consider modern-day issues of inequity in schools.
Educator Enid Lee writes, "When I talk about 'putting race on the table,' I mean that we must acknowledge the legacy of racism in education … how it is reflected in practices and policies." In each of our teaching contexts, we aim to ensure that our students "put race on the table" as they carve their paths as educators.
One of the main ways we do so is by using NPR's This American Life podcast episode, "The Problem We All Live With – Part One." In this episode, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones illuminates the racial disparities and tensions between a predominantly White school district and predominantly Black school district near Ferguson, Mo., after the state enacted a 2013 policy that unintentionally resulted in integration. Hannah-Jones initially became interested in this area as she watched coverage of the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, a recent graduate of Ferguson schools.
In her work with aspiring school leaders, Maren uses the podcast episode to support analytical thinking about political and organizational factors that contribute to policy decisions with racial consequences. Debi uses the episode to support beginning teachers' ability to empathize and understand the human experience associated with segregation. Despite these distinct approaches, we share a common vision: a generation of teachers and school leaders who can identify and disrupt racially inequitable policies.
Supporting Aspiring School Leaders: An Analytical Approach
"The Problem We All Live With" presents complexities facing the leaders, policy makers, parents, and students of two communities. Issues of accreditation, busing, access, and integration have deep roots in both the history and legacy of Brown v. Board. After the episode, students examine a case study, "Lessons From Ferguson: Leadership in Times of Civil Unrest," to consider the political, historical, and social factors that affected district superintendents' responses to the events following Brown's death. In the three districts that surround the site of the shooting, schools closed for two to six days, largely in response to unrest by protests and police response to demonstrators (Benavides, Benson, & DiAquoi, 2015). In class, students inhabit roles of community members in these districts to understand perspectives that contribute to district-level decision-making about school closings amidst such unrest. They consider who makes decisions, whose voices have more influence, and whose voices are unheard.
In a subsequent session, students return to the podcast to conduct a "problem analysis" of the unintentional integration process in Missouri (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, LeMahieu, 2016). They determine root causes of integration and analyze how the school systems are organized. The Ferguson example surfaces issues of racial inequality, unaccredited schools, and inequitable access to quality education.
In these activities, we engage students in considering race as a factor in decision-making and spend time discussing the racial make-up of our own classroom communities. Maren asks students to consider how their own identities are likely to affect their perspectives and the way they communicate their views. When a student uses a term like "racial inequality," we pause to articulate exactly what the inequality is rather than allowing our language to stay vague or euphemistic.
Supporting Aspiring Teachers: A Humanistic Approach
For aspiring teachers, Debi begins with the history of residential segregation in the United States during the Jim Crow era. For students who have had limited experience studying race, Debi finds it especially important to engage them in texts that center human experience. The film Race: The Power of an Illusion and the book American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton expose patterns of discrimination, segregation, and violence, such as discriminatory housing practices and the bombing of homes.
For example, in one scene a Black veteran shares his experience of being denied housing that was offered to veterans when he returned from war. A few minutes later, another Black man compares his family's Detroit, Mich., home worth $20,000 with a comparable home valued at $320,000 just down the road in the suburbs. These two juxtaposed portraits make evident that the historical denial of housing to Black families has resulted in the denial of intergenerational wealth to Black families. This example hits home for the students, given that many of them were raised in Southeast Michigan. Many admit that they had never recognized the privilege their families had with regard to housing and intergenerational wealth.
Similarly, students highlight connections across time periods. For example, Massey and Denton describe in searing detail the manipulation of Black strikebreakers during the early 1900s, while the podcast explains the term "Black Gold," the notion that Black children were seen for the monetary value they brought to the schools they integrated during the 1950s. The manipulation of Black children and adults across both time and space is undeniable.
Next Generation Educators
The pattern of manipulation and movement of Black people for the benefit of White people is one that students more fully uncover through these activities. Our aspiring teachers and school leaders learn to scrutinize modern-day schooling policies as they become familiar with these patterns of oppression. They begin to view more critically school choice policies that have resegregated communities by providing a new medium for White flight. As they enter the field, they are poised to analyze the mechanics and consequences of policies and practices that promote inequity.
Through these activities, we build the capacity of the next generation of teachers and school leaders to promote justice and fulfill the promise of Brown v. Board. We support their ability to transcend racial barriers by cuing them to the human experience of segregation and recognizing the patterns of racial discrimination and oppression that span time and space in U.S. history. Keeping race on the table allows them to be keen observers of inequitable dynamics and powerful agents of socially just educational practice.
