Abstract
The civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd exerted a tremendous burden on educational institutions across the USA during the critical era of the global pandemic. Educational leaders including district leaders and principals were taxed with the responsibility of effectively communicating with their stakeholders and bringing a sense of peace and calm to the school environment. This study engaged in a critical discourse analysis of the methods these leaders used to communicate with their constituents in order to determine the extent to which they effectively utilized antiracist strategies to lead, support and build bridges during this turbulent time. Primary source documents created by these leaders were scrutinized in order to determine how they used language to challenge policies and practices within a school district to ensure a safe and supportive environment for all members of the school community. The authors suggest that additional training and resources are necessary for educational leaders to enhance effective crisis response from an anti-racist stance especially in response to issues of social justice. This chapter highlights the challenges for educational leaders in creating culturally responsive, appropriate, and timely communication with recommendations on how to connect across borders.
TopIntroduction
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by White police officers in Minneapolis, MN after being accused of using counterfeit currency to purchase cigarettes in a convenience store. Observer video went viral on social media, allowing the world to see the last breath of a Black man whose neck was pinned under the knee of Officer Derrick Chauvin for over nine minutes while fellow White officers failed to intervene. George Floyd’s murder sparked weeks of protests and civil unrest in more than 150 cities across America and reignited the call to end systemic racism with a fervor not seen since the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement (The New York Times, 2020).
Sadly, police brutality is nothing new in America. The instance of George Floyd’s murder is but one example of the many injustices faced by Black and Brown communities. Police brutality is experienced by all races and ethnicities but is disproportionately so for Black people who were 28% of those killed in 2020 at the hands of the police despite being only 13% of the United States population (MappingPoliceViolence.org, 2021). Additionally, hate crimes have been on the rise since the 2016 Presidential Election and the Presidency of Donald Trump. Sadly, this increase in hate is not limited to derogatory language, racist behaviors, and White Nationalist symbolism as prominent for adults, but they have also appeared more prominently in public schools (Costello, 2016). For example, incidences of racism have interrupted school board meetings across the United States. School board members have reported that local and national political issues have polarized their districts, making fact-based and civil communication around racial and educational issues particularly challenging (Reynolds, Silvernell, & Mercer, 2020). While the increase in these incidents has been tied to political ideology and White nationalism, educational leaders are obligated to support all students by fostering learning environments that promote social justice and that are culturally responsive for marginalized students including students of color, immigrants, and those students who identify as LGBTQTIA+ (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). This qualitative case study utilizes primary source documents from a range of educational organizations within one Northeast state to critically reflect, through content analysis, on communications written by educational leaders following a critical incident, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, and the public outcry that sprang from it.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Cultural Responsiveness: A perspective that capitalizes on the cultural characteristics (i.e., ethnicity, language, traditions, etc.) and identity of a school community, and uses them as tools of empowerment to improve academic achievement, cultural competence, and socio-political awareness
The National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA): A professional organization that focuses on the improvement of the preparation and practice of educational leaders at all levels. NPBEA sets professional standards that educational leaders should know, understand, and be able carry out to be effective and inclusive.
Critical Incident: A sudden event that is overwhelming and not part of a person’s normal experience. Critical incidents can include a perception of a life threat or physical or emotional loss.
Unconscious Bias: Social stereotypes or factually untrue beliefs that develop outside the realm of conscious awareness and are unfairly attributed to social or identity groups. Everyone has unconscious bias. Unconscious bias is also known as implicit bias.
Anti-Racism: A way of thinking that strives for racial equity and rejects the idea that one racial group is superior to another.
Qualitative Case Study: A research method that looks at how different factors interact with each other to better understand a complex real-world phenomenon.
Social Unrest: Opposition to events or policies that result in people expressing their anger and dissatisfaction through demonstration or rioting.
Hegemony: A system where the cultural dominance of one group over others results in the normalization of oppression and exploitation.
Racism: A social construct that defines individual worth and access to opportunity based on skin color alone.
Anti-Racist: A stance that requires white individuals to actively work to change unconscious bias by recognizing and understanding their own privilege and disrupting racism when it is encountered. Being anti-racist requires BIPOC to reflect on how they have been influenced by race and racism through unconscious assimilation, and to discern if racism is being directed at other people of color.
Dominant Culture: A system where one culture imposes its values, language, and behavior as the blueprint for establishing the norms of the society often as a result of an economic or political power differential.
Educational Leaders: Individuals such as superintendents or principals who are charged with creating and managing positive change in policy or processes in educational organizations including schools.
Standard 3: “Confront and alter institutional biases of student marginalization, deficit-based schooling, and low expectations associated with race, class, culture and language, gender and sexual orientation, and disability or special status.” National Policy Board for Educational Administration (2015 , p. 17)
Social Justice: Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society.
Systemic Racism: A form of racism that is built into laws, policies, and regulations of a society or organization that results in discriminatory practices.
Culturally Responsive Messaging: Communicating in a way that acknowledges and bridges the differences in cultural characteristics of the writer and recipients of the message through the removal of bias.