You were recently invited to the White House for a roundtable with some of the nation’s top Black officials. What was that like?

It came as a complete surprise. I got to meet Karine Jean-Pierre, who’s the White House press secretary. I got to meet Kirsten Allen, who is VP Kamala Harris’s press secretary. Just dope people, one right after the next. I’m not easily wowed, but that experience was amazing. Just to sit at the feet of people who are making a significant impact on our country. Who are doing passionate work, academic work, deep work that they value and believe in, and they’re leading with a racial equity lens. 

Some of your work involves giving educators anti-racism training. What are some of the biggest issues of racism you’re seeing in classrooms today? 

For one, we’re hearing people want training on implicit biases. People are seeing how children, whether the educator knows it or not, are being treated differently based on their race, their identity, their sexuality. 

Another big issue we see is the disproportionate suspending of Black and brown children. Most of the studies show that Black and brown children are being suspended for offenses that are similar to their white counterparts, but they’re just getting a different outcome. So we help people … look at the racial demographics in their school, then compare it to who’s getting suspended. Then we help them debunk the myth that ‘Well, black and brown children just misbehave more.’

We try to help make it visible because we’re conditioned to not see it. We help educators understand how it’s not (always) about individual treatment … We’re part of a system, and that system, by and large, is contributing to this harm.

What strategies can educators use to address systemic racism in schools?

Part of it is disaggregating school data by race, gender, class, and oftentimes that hasn’t always happened. For example, access to advanced academics. By and large, in almost every school where white children are present, they’re overrepresented, and Black and brown kids are underrepresented. We have (educators) look at that data and then talk about, well, ‘Why? Why is that the case?’

Oftentimes, people will use the EOC score as a measure, and there are Black children who are under-identified. They have the (EOC score) to be in the course, but they’re not in the course. So now we have to talk about … ‘Why are they not in those classes? They met the benchmark, right?’

Those are things that we help school leaders see. Once you see that, now you bring a level of intentionality … like, ‘let’s look at Black and brown children and see, who can we move over who should be in that class?’ That’s something that’s within the power of a local school leader, to make that shift. 

At one point, you taught high school in Durham. How do you think the school district is doing on social equity? 

We have made so much progress, [just] the level of intentionality and focus on thinking about culturally relevant teaching … for our students. Thinking about representation in the classroom, the need to hire more Black and brown educators in our district. 

The need to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. [The district] has put in significant work to change their policies around who’s getting suspended … and there has been change. Like every other school district, Durham Public Schools isn’t where it needs to be, but it’s headed in the right direction. Other districts are going the opposite way, running away from racial equity, running away from conversations on white supremacy and anti-racism. DPS is moving towards it.

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