How Can Schools Respond To Racist Incidents
Tishomingo schools in Oklahoma made the news earlier this month when six students decided to celebrate Homecoming with some racist misbehavior.
It was a simple enough Homecoming activity. "How do you spell victory?" said the signs. Students were to wear black t-shirts and receive random scrabble tiles they would use to make the highest-scoring word. Instead, six white students decided to use their tiles to make the N word, and took a picture of it, and posted it on line. The resulting uproar resulted in canceled Homecoming events.
I'm well familiar with the teen boy mindset that enjoys the thrill of deliberately transgressive actions (we all are, because a whole lot of boys carried it out of their teens and onto the internet). It comes from two realizations-- one is that words can shock people who take them seriously, as if words mean something, and two is that you can disown the meaning of your own words by declaring they're a goof. Put those two together and you get people who enjoy the power of poking people in the eye with your language even as you discover the liberation of amputating your own empathy. In short, there is a point in teen development (coming somewhere around reading your first Ayn Rand novel) when one gets a kick out of being a performative asshat.
So maybe that's what these six were coming from. But there's no excuse for someone in 2024 not understanding that 1) this act would be really wrong in a non-funny way and 2) the internet is not private.
I feel for some of the staff. There is a unique kind of gut punch that comes when students make you ashamed of your school.
But what is a school supposed to do?
Is it part of the school's job to teach students not to act like racist asshats? And how do you even do that? Is it the school's job to help students grow to be decent, civilized human beings, and are we really going to have to argue with people who want to argue that learning to be a decent, well-educated, civilized human being doesn't necessarily mean unlearning racism, or, at a bare minimum, learning to keep your racist asshattery unspoken and unshared?
At many schools, an incident like this might prompt some soul-searching and mission-tweaking in the school district, a determination to address the issue programatically.
But this is Oklahoma.
Oklahoma where HB 1775 was passed in 2021, the first of those anti-CRT "divisive concept" bills meant to forbid teachers from saying The Wrong Thing in class about race. This is where the Tulsa chapter of Moms for Liberty said, sure, teach about the Tulsa Race Massacre, but don't go blaming racist White folks for it.
Oklahoma is where, to make sure everyone knew they were serious, the state Board of Education under dudebro-in-chief Ryan Walters threatened the accreditation of two school districts over lessons about racial bias and cultural competency. And they did it without clear and specific charges, so that districts could wonder anxiously just where the fuzzy, vaguely drawn line actually lies.
Oklahoma is where Black teachers had to take it upon themselves to teach critical pieces of history on Saturdays, outside of school. Which means, of course, that students like those sic White boys from Tishomingo were not getting the lessons.
This is an issue we haven't successfully discussed or responded to as a country in ever. Do we use education to further certain values because society, particularly a society that includes folks from a whole lot of backgrounds, would be improved by them. Do we do it even some people don't share those values. We have no problem with the question when it comes to values like "work hard" or "be honest," but when it comes to "don't be a racist asshat," we stumble. In the Land of the Free, should racist parents have the right to raise racist children? And does the school have to step aside and let them be?
There's no reason to expect schools to navigate racial issues any better than the country as a whole. Schools exist downhill from the culture, and when the culture includes elected officials who traffic in racist rhetoric, that will inevitably trickle down to schools (and that's before we even get to the non-zero number of racist teachers and administrators).
But I know this--stunts like the one pulled by six White students at Tishomingo are not okay, and schools must find ways to help students do better, and that doesn't include passing laws to prevent children from hearing unpleasant truths about the nation's history.
"Is it part of the school's job to teach students not to act like racist asshats? And how do you even do that? Is it the school's job to help students grow to be decent, civilized human beings, and are we really going to have to argue with people who want to argue that learning to be a decent, well-educated, civilized human being doesn't necessarily mean unlearning racism, or, at a bare minimum, learning to keep your racist asshattery unspoken and unshared?"
This column resonates so strongly with my experiences in teaching kids to... get along, for lack of a better descriptor. If students are distracted by asshattery of any dimension, they can't work together, talk together or learn much of anything.
Your last sentence is what initiated this comment: Kids *did*, in fact, learn to hide their (or their families') unacceptable beliefs and language, in my experience. Schools do establish norms for communicating. Teachers do model respectful discourse. Teachers-- surprise, surprise-- can't just dispense knowledge. They have to create the social conditions where students can learn.
But something has changed. There is a new sense of permission to cross boundaries of racism, sexism, xenophobia.
In 1963 or so, I think my elementary school handled an incident of overt antisemitism correctly. And I don't know why bad behavior today is not treated the same.way - immediately, with reasonable and appropriate consequences. I am Jewish from a non-religious family, growing up in cities with almost invisible Jewish communities. One day in 6th grade, a school bully, in class, called me a k*ke. I'd never heard the word before, but assumed it was bad and she was being a bully. The teacher, writing on the chalkboard chose to not hear or react to this incident. Thus began the origin of my civil rights engagement (and theatre career). In the loudest non-yelling voice I could muster, I said something back, like "You take that back (school bully)!" Now the teacher HAD to respond. I had never misbehaved at school like this before, and was shocked when the teacher sent me and the bully out of the class, and to wait for him outside. When he came out, he asked what all this was about. I'd seen enough cartoons and B&W gangster movies to know I was not to "snitch", and the bully wasn't talking either, so our teacher sent us to (gulp) the Principal, who saw us immediately. When he couldn't get either of us to talk, he flipped a coin and whoever lost had to describe what happened. (The bully was forced to talk first.) After, I was sent back to class, but the school bully was immediately suspended for, I think, 3 days, had to read some book on Jewish history, write a book report on it, and return with her parents to give him the report before she was allowed back to school. What I liked - as both a kid and now an adult - is that a problem was immediately addressed by both the teacher and the principal, the parents were formally involved, and age appropriate punishment was administered. That did not stop the bully from making my life hell all through sixth grade and on into junior high school, but I think having immediate action, clear repercussions that were appropriate to the age and appropriate to the incident, made me feel like I was safe at school and fully supported.
When I had my own child, I saw a friend of his be terribly treated by other kids at school, and the principal doing nothing about it, even after many promises to the bullied kid's mom that action would be taken. But NO action was taken, and so the behavior continued until the parent of the bullied kid hired a lawyer, because the school was not providing a safe environment. (Why did the principal not do anything? My theory is that the bullies had wealthy parents who pulled a lot of weight in our town, but I really don't know why. Needless to say, the bullied child was supported in Court, and the school district was on the hook for $60,000. Which is sometimes the only way an institution will change its ways.) Why are schools so reluctant to deal with cruelty and bad behavior in a way that everyone can understand? I just don't get it.