This past month, students across the country celebrated Black History Month. They read books by black authors, wrote research papers on civil rights activists, memorized Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and watched videos about the Underground Railroad. And, if students are taught honestly, as they learn about the struggle of the past, they’ll begin to recognize it in their own present: when a cashier squints suspiciously when they walk into a store, when they turn on the news and see another person who looks like them lose his life to senseless violence. These lessons are anything but history.
In the face of this reality, we have no time to waste in educating our youth. This school year marks the first time in nearly 50 years in which the majority of public school students — 51 percent — are minorities. Our generation has a responsibility to work to ensure that each and every one of them is moving through a system that affirms their identities, shows them they’re valued and allows them access to the opportunities they have been denied for far too long.
While the “whites only” signs of the ’60s have come down, the reality of separate and unequal endures. Alongside glaring gaps in educational, employment and economic opportunity, people of color in this nation face a variety of subtler, no less damaging assumptions. A successful black lawyer hears whispers of affirmative action. A young Latino boy on a corner is seen as “loitering” while his white peers “hang out.” An Asian student is asked to give “the Asian perspective” to a seminar full of white students who are never asked to speak on behalf of their entire race. A black student works diligently to gain admission to an elite school only to be asked what sport he plays by his classmates.
At just seven years old, my students began their lives grappling with the intersection of racial and economic injustice in this country. I often sent my students home with extra snacks because they came to school hungry. I picked up some of them from school in the morning from the homeless shelters where their families lived. I washed my students’ uniforms when their working families could not afford to pay for laundry that week.
I decided to become a teacher because, as an African-American male, I understand what it feels like to go to school and know that your teachers don’t expect much. Growing up, school seemed as much about learning from my teachers as about fending off their inclination to label me and other black students as deficient. Whether my teachers referred me to academic support without cause or questioned the authorship of my work when I outperformed my classmates, I graduated from high school with a strong sense that, from the outset of my educational experience, I had been labeled a failure.
As a teacher, I saw myself in my students. I saw a generation of students of color whom my teachers had labeled to fail and who, like me, could either choose to succumb to the indignities of a dismissive world or to transcend them with a commitment to excellence.
I chose excellence thanks to a group of strong advocates invested in my success. Many of my fiercest advocates teach at this university. Several professors — including James Morone, professor of political science, public policy and urban studies and director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions; Minh Luong, former adjunct lecturer in political science; Tracy Steffes, associate professor of education and history and Paget Henry, professor of Africana studies and sociology and interim chair of the Africana studies department — helped me to craft the contours of my worldview and define my sense of life purpose.
These professors expanded my knowledge and pushed me to think more deeply and critically about Rhode Island, America and our world. When we tackled the abstract economic, social and political consequences of educational inequity, we were also charged with understanding how these consequences affected lives. Brown helped me to fuse the academic with the practical.
But, more importantly, it helped me to realize how teaching gave me an opportunity to pay forward this educational experience. As a teacher at an urban school positioned between a liquor store and a church, I was determined to challenge my students and to empower their advocates.
We have a long way to go as a country before we truly achieve justice for all. To fix the systemic oppression that has created the gross inequality of the present will take the hard, dedicated work of countless leaders and changemakers who will commit to using their education to build a better America. We must be proactive in working toward these long-term changes as well as the immediate, urgent opportunities to change the way our students view themselves and their futures.
As teachers, we can play a central role in this. Every day, we can remind our kids that their thoughts, ideas, identities and opinions are important. We can share our own stories so that when our kids look to the front of the room, they see a little bit of themselves reflected back. A diverse teaching force is fundamental to this reality.
It is not enough to begin addressing educational inequity when it affects someone in your community. Educational inequity is an American problem that must be addressed by all Americans because its consequences affect all Americans. A diverse teaching force will not only enrich our students’ educational experiences, but also help to ensure that their educations are not earned at the expense of their identities. As teachers we can remind our students that they matter, that they always have and that they always will.
Stephen Ford ’10 is an alum of Teach For America-Rhode Island and will be attending law school this fall.
