Racial justice town hall panel talks racial justice and education

OLYMPIA –– Olympia city officials met Thursday afternoon to hold the fourth meeting in the racial justice series, focusing on how racial inequity ties into the education system. Like the other town hall sessions, this meeting brought together four esteemed panelists of color to bring their perspectives and experiences to the table.

The issue of racial inequality in the education system, speakers said, evokes questions surrounding the level of  access to a high-quality education that people receive across race lines.

“Education is truly the key, and education is inextricably intertwined in the other three topics that the town halls have dealt with,” said Thelma Jackson, president and owner of Foresight Consultants in Lacey.  

For many people of color, public schooling falls short of offering the educational resources that seem to be available to the majority, according to some panelists.

“I migrated to the United States 20 years ago, but I was born in the Benin Republic,” said Parfait Bassale, an educator, artist, and newly appointed Executive Diversity Officer at South Puget Sound Community College. “Growing up, education was always ingrained in our minds as being the key, the secret, to a better future.”

While the notion of education being an equalizer and transformer in Bassale’s case ended up being true, he said, sometimes that looks different to others in unlike situations. 

“It became appalling and heartbreaking to see that education is not promising the same outcomes to folks who look like me,” Bassale said. “In fact, one’s race is an indicator of one’s likelihood to be as successful, going from the K-12 system all the way to higher ed.”

One of the issues panelists brought to light was the challenges that Black students face as individuals in predominantly white schools. Fernell Miller, founder and CEO of The Root of Us, and a physical educator in the public school system, said many people of color aren’t allowed to voice grievances in the educational system. 

“Our oppressor doesn’t let us complain, and then when we complain, then we’ve got some attitude problem. Well hello! Let’s talk about that problem, and it’s rooted in anti-Blackness,” said Miller. “And we don’t ever address that in our country. If we hadn’t been taught and programmed to hate Blackness and not racism – that’s the problem, so, moving your ZIP codes, the redlining, the suburbing – it’s segregation under coated, nicer terminology and words.”

It can be difficult for kids to be of a minority group in a white-centric school, particularly when the cultural differences are left unaddressed. Oftentimes, attempts to be heard are interpreted as disobedience or characterized as delinquency by administration, despite good intentions to maintain a welcoming space. This feeling of separation from one’s own school has led many children of color to feel that they don’t want to go back, particularly in this time of virtual learning which has provided the break from such a struggle, according to Miller.

“The representation is very small but the white space is very heavy, and so the pandemic was a relief for kids needing to get out of the pressure, and the daily microaggressions, and the racism that they feel in such a heavy way,” said Miller. “The school systems are not broken, they’re doing exactly as they were designed to do. You can’t fix wrong, you have to make it right.”

Panelists also discussed the issue of the “school-to-prison pipeline,” which is a term that refers to the disproportionate tendency of students with disadvantaged backgrounds to become incarcerated (often considered to be due to school and municipal policies that are increasingly harsh).

“[If] you look at how discipline is handled in our schools, [which] differs from one community to the next, it directly reflects the adult penal system,” said Jackson. “The school-to-prison pipeline continues to be alive and well. We could do so much more to right this adult penal system that is so off-kilter and so disproportionate.”

Another challenge is the tendency to exclude the work and societal contributions of people of color from a school’s core curriculum. Miller offered experience from her own teaching in showing how students are generally responsive and excited about implementing content regarding people of diverse backgrounds in course curriculum.

“They know that everyone benefits,” said Miller. “[One white student] wrote a petition, [and] over 600 students of all ages, grades and education levels [signed it].”

The panelists agreed that the onset of and destruction related to the COVID virus has forced the nation to reevaluate how many of its core systems serve its people.

“If one thing about this virus is clear, it’s that it has really taken the curtains down and forced us to really look at the profound weaknesses that we have in our democracy,” said Thomas L. “Les” Purce, president of the Evergreen State College.

Purce draws from experience he acquired from his university education to illustrate the discrepancy.

“Even in that 17-year journey, I began to see the way that systemically, within our state and federal system, that the resources and the policies were directed and established in such a way that poor people and people of color stayed behind with a foot on their neck,” said Purce. “This virus is really bringing those things together, and apparent. In higher education, we face a real reckoning. How do we make sure in some way that poor people are not the most likely to end up in prison, particularly males – African-American males [and] Hispanics.”

Panelists offered the concern that Black children in schools often fall behind at an early age.

“And then the gaps just get further and further along,” said Bassale. He elaborated on how it’s not uncommon to be “behind by two grades by grade four.”

Questions of affirmative action often arise as governments work with possible ways to help level the playing field of educational opportunity.

“I think we’re all aware of this, in terms of the costs of what has happened in regard to slavery and where everyone started from,” said Purce. “Affirmative action, the desire to correct those failings, has been contentious from its beginning because it has profound political implications about how you make those kinds of adjustments.”

Besides political divisiveness regarding legislative solutions, the issues surrounding racial inequity in education will take time and a concerted collective effort by local communities and by individuals to resolve.

“We must deepen our commitment to creating a just and equitable world to confront bias, transform institutional policies, accelerate systemic change, and wave this value throughout everything we do, particularly in our education system, which is the key to everything,” said Jackson.

For more information you can watch any of the four meetings of the racial justice series on the City of Olympia’s website.