Rules are made to be followed, especially in schools. These schools are insistent that, since desegregation, those rules are fair and “see no color.” While these policies might seem fair, the enforcers can be less so.
On Feb. 9 in the Student Center ballroom, Bradley’s United Student Advocates held the event “Despite Best Intentions: How Schools Contribute to Racial Inequality,” which discussed how the current school system works against students of color.
The panel started with University of Illinois-Chicago professor Amanda E. Lewis sharing her findings on the ways that Black students are being treated in the nation’s school system, including colorblindness, which proposes equal treatment but without regard to race or culture.
“There’s lots of ways people use colorblind language … that way of talking about race often keeps us from understanding how it continues to matter,” Lewis said. “We do see color, and it shapes how we see the world in a lot of different ways.”
Lewis’ presentation talked about race first being constructed to understand others, the generational wealth contributing to the wealth gap and the false assumption that brown and Black families don’t value education and segregation.
Lewis stated that Peoria is one of the most segregated counties in Illinois, and clarified that segregation in schools occurs when the student population doesn’t reflect the city or community that they live in rather than having an equal number of students from all backgrounds.
The conversation was led by Lewis, Bradley education professor Juan Ríos Vega, local activist Chama St. Louis and student representative and event organizer Rasheeda Na’Allah. Their experiences together ranged from the researchers and teachers seeing the discrimination, to the parent and student who feel those repercussions.
Na’Allah recalled her earliest experiences in school. Students made racist jokes about her, and when she went to tell a teacher about the incident, they responded, “That’s not my issue.”
Na’Allah said the incident felt isolating and the dismissive behavior made it difficult to trust her teacher.
“Education is important but feeling safe in that environment is really important as well,” Na’Allah said.
The presentation noted how Black students are targeted as teachers have a lower tolerance for them. This means that they’re disciplined more often than white students for the same behaviors, which disrupts Black students’ education. This disruption of education can result in students eventually dropping out of school.
“I understand that teachers don’t have bad intentions, but intentions can only get you so far, delivery is the thing that affects you the most,” Na’Allah said. “If you have good intentions, that may not do as much good when you put a student in the office for the 12th time.”
Gianna Agrelo, sophomore early childhood education major, attended the event. She said she wants to teach in the Chicago Public School system that she was taught in, and noticed similar behavior in her time there.
“I definitely relate, considering I came from Humboldt Park and then to the suburbs,” Agrelo said. “There definitely is a difference when it comes to teacher’s attitudes towards Black and brown kids.”
After years of homeschooling her son, St. Louis thought it was time to enroll her son in public school. However, it was the first time that her child was called a cheater for getting an answer that his teacher didn’t expect him to get right.
Along with that, St. Louis said that her son wasn’t used to the rules of a public school. He would talk in class, which resulted in a teacher saying that he had a big mouth and talked too much, with them almost sending her son outside at one point.
St. Louis had to talk with these teachers herself, but understands that isn’t the case for every student.
“They don’t get that representation from their parents, so their spirits get broken in the school system,” St. Louis said. “I think it’s really important as educators, parents and members of the community to really think about how we structure our classrooms and what we allow in our classrooms.”
Lewis said one solution to the treatment of Black and brown children in school is to take a look at the funding that affects school resources. Lewis said that Evidence Based Funding in Illinois isn’t as effective as it’s supposed to be.
“Even middle class Black kids are in underfunded schools compared to middle class white kids,” Lewis said.
Another idea is to have Black and brown staff and teachers in the district. The idea is to show students that they can find themselves in an educational environment for a career.
“These students are going to face inequity not just inside of the classroom but outside of the classroom,” Argelo said. “If you’re a teacher of color, you might even see that, so you’re going to relate to what your students are going through.”
St. Louis said that the recruitment needs to be intentional in filling in the spots that can benefit Black and brown students. She said that while there are plenty of students of color, that doesn’t match with the teachers hired.
“What happens in higher education is we aren’t seeing people who look like us in those field[s], and it’s not viewed as a viable effort for us,” St. Louis said.
Ríos agreed with St. Louis on how the lack of representation can be harmful for students.
“When those spaces do not exist, we need to create them,” Ríos said.
