Systems that Marginalize People
The world has watched in sorrow the video footage of the traffic stop and subsequent beating that resulted in the death of Trye Nichols, an African American man, in Memphis. The world has also observed that this heinous atrocity happened at the hands of African American police officers. How can this happen? Not only does it appear that we regularly loose black and brown men to the hands of misguided police, but it even happens when the police are also black and brown men. Why? How?
What we are observing is systemic or institutional racism. It is marginalization in action. There are many who deny that systemic racism continues to exit. We have laws on the books and court rulings that have taken aim at eliminating this type of discrimination. However, it is not the mere laws and court rulings that allow or banish this type of racism; it is institutional cultures and long-standing ways of doing things that subtly allow the continued marginalization of people by their race and/or ethnicity, their social class, the language they speak, or their perceived disability.
Police departments often use specialized units to target certain types of crime or certain areas where crime is increasing. These units that attempt to saturate an area or tap down rising crime, also often end up targeting our most marginalized persons. The specialized units are a function of the system that in turn strengthens a culture of distrust and suspicion of different groups of people such as police or brown and black people, or people speaking foreign languages. The distrust can be so strong that even black police officers distrust black citizens going about their daily business.
Institutional racism or marginalization of students happens in schools every day as well despite our best intentions. The cultures and long-standing ways of doing things in schools across our country continue the marginalization of an alarming numbers of our children. In our schools, we too often marginalize black or brown children, children who speak a language other than English, children living in poverty, and children struggling with disabilities. We lose the full potential of these children when we fail to ensure they graduate high school college and/or career ready.
When a brown child starts school not knowing the English alphabet they are often placed in a remedial, slow moving reading group by a brown or white teacher who is unthinkingly following the long-standing ways of the system. Students in these remedial groups will most likely be behind in reading for their entire school career. When a white child, living with poverty and coming to school each day in the same dirty clothes and without much sleep, struggles to stay awake in class, the white or brown teacher often unthinkingly follows the long-standing ways of the system and “reduces the stress” on the child by placing them in a basic math class instead higher level math. Without higher level math, the child will not be college or career ready upon graduating high school.
These systems of remedial and/or basic classes or reading groups were started (I choose to believe.) with good intentions of helping students “catch up” with their peers. In reality, they often become a barrier to achieving at high levels and graduating high school college and/or career ready. As educators we need to always be reflective on our practice and follow the evidence.
When the evidence repeatedly shows that students that only have basic math skills, rather than higher level math skills, do not graduate college and/or career ready – we must change our system. We must provide them acceleration and scaffold instruction so that they can read on grade level and master higher level math alongside their peers.
We must change the system and our long-standing ways of doing things. Practices that started with the best intentions must be done away with when they are proven not to work. As educators we must not be blind to the systemic marginalization of many of our students. Rather we must commit to constantly reflecting on the outcomes of our work and how to improve our results.
In the same way, when crime fighting tactics, implemented with good intentions, prove not to work, but rather harm the very people they were intended to protect, the police must do away with them. The police must change their practices and ways of tackling crime when they find their saturation units are causing them to marginalize the very people they are intended to serve.