Nobody Had Ever Asked: The Future of Education from the Perspective of People of Color

Marc Dones, Nai Kalema, & Brittani Manzo

The transformation of higher education from its current state into an equitable system that can execute on its expressed intentions would require clarity around two things:

• The system is a pathway with multiple factors affecting outcomes; and

• Those factors are inextricably tied to race.

Without clarity around those two facts, any additional possibility is foreclosed. Forward motion here is relative to the capacity to see (and reflect on) the past accurately. Both national past and personal. What I mean to say is that America’s legacy of systemic racism is critical here, but that it cannot be considered in the abstract. Instead, we have to understand that a strictly theoretical approach to this history is itself an extension of that racism. Because the students and faculty living that racism everyday do not have theoretical experiences. Therefore, our primary focal point must be precisely that: the experiences of historically marginalized people within the pathway of education.

Frankly, this exceeds what we can do here and has perhaps never been done in its entirety. Clearly, the experiences of a Black child in their K-12 years are built on (confirmed, modified, or negated) by their experiences in other educational settings in their lives (either concurrently or longitudinally). As one respondent who focuses on Black men in higher education settings told us:

Something that I guess has been the most interesting to me over the course of this work is that they often tell me that I'm the first person in their entire educational experience who’s asked them about their experiences as black men in [higher ed]. Once I heard that once or twice, I thought that was interesting, but when I started hearing that from over 80-90% of my participants, I found that to be problematic. If the students aren't being asked about their experiences, how can our existing practices and policies being developed have them in mind as well?

This general trend of historically marginalized communities not having their experiences queried in the context of their educational pathway means that there’s very little that can be done. These experiences are also key to understanding what exactly the pathway is. Without an understanding of what pathways learners of all ages from historically marginalized communities traverse, we cannot create an accurate system map. What I mean to say is that the understanding of educational equity as an access problem has created a relatively linear understanding of what exactly the educational pathway looks like. To the point made in our earlier paper (Dones and Manzo, 2020), a system can only be truly understood once the complexity of its connections between its constituent elements is understood. An access-based approach to equity has resulted in a set of thoughts that have been largely oriented towards thinking through how to move people through a sequence of linear moments (pre-k à k-12 à higher education à post-graduate education, etc.). However, if we approach this question from a systems perspective, we need to recognize that outcomes (in this case access, but again as we discussed in (Dones, 2020), this definition needs to be broadened) are not necessarily the result of proximal causes but rather complicated cause and effect networks. As a result, this linearity should not necessarily be assumed, in fact, all evidence points to that it should, in fact, be deeply suspect.

This begins to feel quite big. Are we considering the economic backdrop of communities? Rurality versus urbanity? The simple answer here is yes. All of these elements are part of the experience of learners and so have to be actively considered. What I am not putting forward here is that the (higher) education system must necessarily take ownership of all these factors but that it cannot orient itself towards equity without meaningfully incorporating them into a working systems-level model. What I mean to say here is that if we’re building systems for people and (one of) our primary unit(s) of measurement isn’t the experience that people have when attempting to traverse the system, then it becomes reasonable to ask who are we even building for?

For us to advance our work in designing an equitable system, we have to shift the concept that the unit of transformation (what we are trying to change) is access to systems/attainment of key milestones (degrees), or even institutions themselves. Instead, we must focus on measuring (and changing) the experience of historically marginalized people as they navigate the systems we build and the world we make.

“It’s just a way to dilute their Whiteness…”

The results of this kind of analysis must go beyond the creation of new programs. As one of our respondents noted, there is much made about diversity but very little done around altering the structures (or experiences that result from those structures). In some ways, the focus of that work then continues to be normed around the comfort of folks from the dominant culture. As one respondent said,

The other night and I'm surrounded by some white progressives who are like, “yeah, let's desegregate the schools; we need more diversity.” I'm like, “are you bringing money with it?” What I mean by that is there's it, there's this kind liberal and paternalistic tone, they take like, “I want my kid to be in this really diverse school, it makes me feel good.” It's a way to dilute their Whiteness, for lack of better words. Social desegregation is only as strong as resource, wealth, and curricular desegregation as well—the movement for decolonizing curricula is really powerful. It isn't just that children need to see themselves in the curricula they must also learn about the radical politics behind the people the read about as well not just this post-racial framing—I think that’s done to appease White non-Latinx folks and when I think of the K through 12 issues, I think I often think of that.

This kind of investment (in desegregation/integration of space along purely social lines) is the kind of result of programmatic shifts that are not truly systems-level activity. As Derrick Bell highlighted, the fundamental difficulty with school desegregation to begin with: it was never designed to address the specific learning goals or educational interests of non-White communities; rather there was simply an assumption that White dominant schools were superior and that integration de facto meant that Black children would be attending White schools (Bell, 1980; Bell, Delgado, and Stefancic, 2005).

What I mean to suggest here, although it may be painful to consider, is that desegregation was a programmatic response. Diversity (as an organizational concept) is a program. Inclusion and empowerment (e.g., the experience of individuals in those settings) can only be shifted through systems-level work. If, as our respondent pointed out, the experience of people currently is that efforts at integration (some 70 years later) continue to feel like they’re oriented towards the comfort of White people in those settings, then our approach necessarily has to shift. What should be noted is that our current approach doesn’t seem to actually work for White people either. Meaning that the programmatic effort of diversification without altering the goals or structures of our (educational) systems has created strain for everyone involved. One of our respondents characterized that discomfort this way:

I think we're getting to a point where the White guilt is subsiding, and White resentment is taking over again. So, it'll be interesting to see the next 10 to 20 years of that very interesting period. I think [White people] are afraid of the demographic changes in the country. I think there is fear that I think we are already starting to do this already. With the election of Donald Trump, you tend to see a fear manifesting about this idea that black and brown people who don't look like us are taking our jobs, there’s more corruption and crime—even though there is no evidence for that. But I think there's a lot of that is just fear of the numbers changing.

This highlights two important aspects. First that, precisely because these efforts have not touched the underlying systems that hyper-invest power in White dominant and White supremacist systems, there is a deep and abiding fear in communities of color that White people will simply tire of pursuing justice and that there will be nothing we can do about it. Second, when there are significant programmatic efforts that do not correspond to a systems redesign effort, there will always be an emergent tension. What I mean to say here, following the earlier respondent, is that if there had been a simultaneous systems-level conversation about the purpose of the education system, then perhaps our curricula would have already been de-colonized. Perhaps we would not be hurdling into a future where successful programmatic efforts have continued to diversify student bodies, faculty, and leadership while our curriculums continued to subtly (or not so subtly) telegraph the superiority of White culture and White concerns.

Regardless of whether or not we align with our first or second respondent, what’s clear is that our current array of efforts produce experiences that disaffect people from historically marginalized communities and produce a potentially equally baffling set of experiential ranges for White people. What this means for us is that our next steps in creating an equitable (education) system need to be guided through a dual effort of both recognizing (and implicating) White-dominant systems in holding equity efforts at the level of diversification—and we need to understand that diversification without a system-level goal operates as a program with an array of alienating effects for all involved.

“Blackness has a market penalty.”

If you use a bit of intersectionality theory, it's those unique and intersecting experiences that come from gender, race, and class. You’ve got the gender penalty. You’ve got the race penalty. And then you've got the class penalty. And they're all interacting in these spheres that create this unique experience that exists for Afro Latinas. We find that their wages actually are very similar to that of African American women, which means that there's a more collective black experience than we think, regardless if a person says they're from the Caribbean or they are African American (descended from US slaves) in that blackness itself across the board comes with these labor market penalties.

The forces necessary to create these punishments are the natural outcomes of systems that are normed around one particular identity. Meaning that, because systems are designed to reproduce behavioral results, systems understand non-ideal behavior as something to be corrected. The punishment paradigm that exists here is not because White people acting within systems are actively seeking to reify White dominant modes but because the system, oriented towards Whiteness, cannot see an inherent value in other ways of being.

There’s a way of thinking, “the White man’s ice is colder,” that undermines equity work. There are people out there who believe that Harvard is better. And maybe in some instances, it is. But to make that blanket statement that institutions like HBCUs or HSIs don't have worthwhile contributions to make or models that some of the most elite and well-endowed institutions could learn from, I think that's where we started to fall short. … But for the students who attend those schools, those are often the best schools in the country. I think that there's an elitism that permeates not just with higher education in this country... America has a tendency to lean toward an elitist perspective.

In order to design for optionality and thus see that the many paths available and to be selected by learners should not necessarily be defaulted to the hierarchically organized system we have now. Based on the history of higher education, it would require that we fundamentally step away from the ideas we have around what is good, better, and best for students and learners. Instead, we must commit to an open inquiry around those topics that more directly centers the voices of historically marginalized communities.

In order to fully understand exactly why our systems cause so much harm, we have to be willing to accept that we simply don’t know what’s best for everyone—and we have to learn to ask what is.

“The Ferguson’s and the Baltimore’s”

Moving away from White-dominant systems requires work from the ground up. In order to create lasting change, the fundamentals of that change need to originate from power that resides and is built in communities. As one respondent highlighted,

I think that the only way it's going to change—and I've lived in other countries and seen student movements from Argentina, Spain, and in Cuba—things are going to need to be uprooted. What we learn from the Ferguson's and the Baltimore's is that it's got to be from the bottom up. It's got to be grassroots. It's got to be youth- or student-led, and faculty, like me, will then follow it. It's got to be coalition building and multiracial.

This means that strategies that are being developed by funders and others who are interested in seeing these kinds of transformations need to explicitly focus on moving resources and capacity to organizers, equity-based organizations, and creating the network infrastructure necessary in order to create and sustain lasting change. Bust most of all these funding strategies need to prioritize radical (and actual) transformation.

Transformation here has to be understood as two-fold:

1. Systems must be reimagined, including goals, outcomes, and structures.

2. Power has to be migrated into historically marginalized communities so that they make and construct the realities they would like to see.

The development of this kind of new infrastructure is long haul work. We will have to step outside of our usual funding cycles, timetables, and investment outcomes in order to see our results. This transformation also requires that we design fundamentally new metrics. How we know a system is transforming is very different than how we know that the people who staff a system are diversifying. These new metrics may be difficult to develop and harder still to sample accurately, but it will be important that we develop system-level metrics so that we’re able to determine whether or not the system itself is changing accurately. While this may seem like a wonkish undertaking that sidesteps the more meaningful work, it’s actually essential. Our current metrics are optimized to measure programs and, as a result, will only ever drive program-level change. If we don’t begin to shift our understanding of what we measure to align with what we’re trying to accomplish, we won’t actually see the shifts that we want.

It’s for this reason that we’ve made, repeatedly, the argument that the experience of individuals traversing the systems we’re attempting to change, in and of itself, is a meaningful measurement of whether or not the system is orienting towards meaningful inclusion. Other measurements might include the sustained migration of power to historically marginalized communities, the degree to which a system creates a high degree of optionality with multiple definitions of success, or the ability of a system to adaptively respond to emergent situations instead of being driven entirely through cycles of reactivity.

While these metrics sound relatively simple, each of them is actually deeply complex. For example, to measure power and its migration, we first would need to operationalize a clear definition of what power is and the various ways its functions can be exercised. Measurements of optionality and success would need to be rooted in community-level definitions and desires and then simultaneously scaled while leaving room for additional nuance as they inevitably came into contact with populations who wanted to add layers or create net new options.

Conclusion

The complexity of this work requires us to think differently about our investments, our partnerships, and our purpose. To think about community connectedness as a primary goal of our work and not just something that’s nice to have. We have to learn to be led by the communities we seek to serve in genuine ways if we hope to create the new systems we need.

But here we might simply lean on one thing (perhaps the only thing) that has been true about our society: there is always something more possible. That seems like a good place to find our final lesson: more is possible.

More is always possible.

1. Bell, D. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93(3), 518-533.

2. Bell, D., Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2005). The Derrick Bell Reader (Critical America). New York: New York University Press.

3. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY: Vintage Books.