Racial Spaces Analysis and Reflection
- Dr. Cameron McCuaig
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
It was my third year teaching in a full day kindergarten class under Ontario, Canada’s relatively new play and inquiry based learning model. One of the students in my class, who we will refer to as Mike, presented me with the catalyst to dive into social change. Mike was of dark complexion and his father was raising him alone. His father had told me that Mike’s mother was addicted to drugs and alcohol during pregnancy and that Mike had a diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). This led me to reach out to a specialist in the field of FASD.
Although I do not remember the name of the FASD specialist I spoke to, a quick review of literature highlights the points I do remember. People with FASD struggle with memory, and rehearsal is a very helpful tool to combat this struggle (Hutton 2021). I remember the specialist telling me she worked with young adults. She would take them to the grocery store on a specific day, at a specific time, rehearsing what it would be like to buy groceries so that eventually they could do so successfully without her by their side. We discussed how Mike could get ahead of the curve, by beginning these tasks in kindergarten, rather than waiting until his late teens or early 20’s.
I took this suggestion to the school principal and was reminded that special education programs are not offered to kindergarten aged students. I was told to follow the outlined curriculum as I should with all students.
African Americans have a higher rate of FASD (Abel and Hannigan 1995) and in Mike’s case; a black student, with a unique story and a diagnosed learning impairment, struggle to access a curriculum that was equitable to him. Mike’s kindergarten experience is unfortunately, not unique and highlights how schools are racialized and a place of inequities.
Schools across North America have been built through a white lens. Policies that one may not even think impact the race inequities of public education certainly do. For instance, “public transportation policies that determine where highways will be built have further increased the access of white suburbs to better jobs and resources [education] and further limited access for non-white neighborhoods” (Blaisdell 2016). This author also writes “in public schools, where the effects of poverty and insufficient and inequitably allocated resources particularly hinder the academic success of students of color” (Blaisdell 2016). Our education system is built on the “tyranny of the majority” (Matias and Newlove 2017). As an educator who left a wealthy, private school for public education in order to better serve students, I am reminded that I am the majority, even if my social identity exists in intersectionalities (Breunig 2019).
In the situation with Mike, as a member of the majority I inadvertently perpetuated ableism; “the systematic discrimination and exclusion of individuals who have disabilities” (Bialka et al. 2019 ). My attempts of providing him with an equitable learning environment ended with the first ‘no’ I received from the system. Perhaps this was because I was a younger teacher and did not want to push back on authority. But more likely it was because “whiteness embeds itself in the epistemology, rhetoric, semiotics and emotionality of today’s sociopolitical climate” (Matias and Newlove 2017).
By not standing up to the policy and the authority and fighting for Mike’s right to an equitable education, I became an active participant in further increasing the race-based achievement gap, defined as “the disparity in educational outcomes existing between” racial minorities (Carey 2013). I had further become a perpetrator of structural racism (Blaisdell 2016).
Mike deserved better. He deserved an educator who not only understood but led with a transformative leadership framework. He deserved an advocate who held “notions of promise, liberation, hope, empowerment, activism, risk, social justice, courage, or revolution” (Sheilds 2010) at the forefront of his actions. He deserved an educator who understood that we live in a hierarchical society and that he and his father were significantly lower than me in that hierarchy (Yosso 2005). He should have had a teacher who asked him and his father what they wanted, and, with Paolo Freire’s work in mind, allowed them to fight for it. He should have had a school leader who asked, “how will this work redistribute resources or access to life pathways” (Miners 2011).
Mike and his father were stuck in a racialized system that was inequitable and un-serving of Mike’s educational journey. Without the work of Shields, Meiners, Carey, Matais and Newlove, the next Mike will face the same inequities.
Abel, E. L., & Hannigan, J. H. (1995). Maternal risk factors in fetal alcohol syndrome: Provocative and permissive influences. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 17(4), 445–462. https://doi.org/10.1016/0892-0362(95)98055-6
Bialka, C. S., Havlik, S., Mancini, G., & Marano, H. (2019). “I guess I’ll have to bring it”: Examining the construction and outcomes of a social justice–oriented service-learning partnership. Journal of Transformative Education, 154134461984351.
Blaisdell, Benjamin (2016) Schools as racial spaces: understanding and resisting structural racism. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29:2, 248-272, DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2015.1023228
Breunig, M. (2019). Beings who are becoming: Enhancing Social Justice Literacy. Journal of Experiential Education, 42(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825918820694
Carey, R. L. (2013). A cultural analysis of the Achievement Gap Discourse. Urban Education, 49(4), 440–468. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085913507459
Hutton, L. (2021). Improving the behavior of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Teaching Exceptional Children, 54(2), 97–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040059920977887
Matias, C. E., & Newlove, P. M. (2017). The Illusion of Freedom: Tyranny, whiteness, and the state of US society. Equity & Excellence in Education, 50(3), 316–330.
Meiners, E. R. (2011). Ending the school-to-prison pipeline/building abolition futures. The Urban Review, 43(4), 547–565. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9
Shields, C. M. (2010). Transformative leadership: Working for equity in diverse contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(4), 558–589.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of Community Cultural Wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.
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