When They See Us: Implications for Anti-Racist School Leadership Through Examining the Experiences of Black Boys

Introduction

Race matters. In an educational system in which the academic achievement scores and graduation rates of Black males continue to lag behind that of their peers, yet Black males lead their peers in suspension and expulsion rates, there must be a call to action. Acknowledging that race matters and racism exists is central to tackling persistent achievement disparities and opportunity gaps and dismantling oppressive school systems that work together to relegate Black males to second-class citizenship. Current educational policy and practice send a strong message that Black males have no worth and do not matter based on the rate at which they are discarded. This research aims to provide an in-depth description of how Black males encounter anti-Black racism and trauma within their day-to-day school experiences.

Boutte and Bryan (2021) conceptualize the everyday anti-Black violence and trauma experienced by Black students in U.S. schools. Specifically, Boutte and Bryan (2021) describe symbolic or metaphorical anti-Black violence as rejecting the lived experiences of Black youth, silencing their voices, and misreading their culture. Additionally, systemic anti-Black violence is explained as structures, processes, discourses, customs, policies, and practices rooted in racist ideology or racial bias, which result in lack of access to highly qualified teachers, lack of funded resources, and disproportionality in special education representation, gifted and advanced placement, and exclusionary discipline (Boutte & Bryan, 2021). This chapter aims to elevate the voices of those most marginalized by the U.S. educational system. The young men interviewed in this study cite examples of how they have encountered symbolic and systemic anti-Black violence in every aspect of their education, resulting in race-based traumatic stress. Furthermore, this chapter aims to provide educational leaders, teacher, support staff, and anyone who serves Black males with practical research-based strategies to reduce racial bias and disrupt racist policies, structures, and practices that perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline. In this chapter, readers will be presented with background-concerning disparities in educational outcomes and the impact of race-based trauma on Black males, a description of the research methodology, findings derived from the research and research-based strategies to disrupt systemic racism in schools.

Background

The writings of Gillborn (2005) and Ladson-Billings (1998) suggest that the concept of systemic racism is demonstrated by the outcomes of policy and practice in education. Policy and practice become a function of systemic racism when there is a disproportionately adverse impact on members of a given social group (Ladson-Bilings, 1998). The school-to-prison pipeline (SPP) is a conceptual framework to understand how policy and practice in the educational system work together to manifest negative outcomes resulting in Black students, in particular, being disproportionately pushed out of school and into the criminal justice system (Rocque & Snellings, 2018). Kim et al. (2010) state that at its core, the SPP results from a failed K-12 public education system that does not meet the needs of many students it serves. Specifically, Rocque and Snellings (2018) note that failing schools with low graduation/high dropout rates, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, and student disengagement are an impetus for the connection between the education and criminal justice systems. These schools are more likely to be attended by Black students (Grace & Nelson, 2019).