The American Story of Blackness: Moving Beyond the Violence of Whiteness in Schools

The proliferation of educational violence fostered through school policy, curriculum trauma, knowledge manipulation, and punitive discipline outcomes for minoritized students is endemic in American schools. Since Black peoples are the antithesis, ire, and direct threat to whiteness, we focus on the impact of whiteness on Blackness in the American context and specifically in schooling. We understand racism to be grounded in White supremacy which is an insidious lie enforced by violence, manipulation, and power (Kivel et al., 2009). In school, violence, manipulation, and White power are evident in the criminalization of Black hair, punitive and disproportionate punishment, knowledge manipulation, limited resources, and lack of access to qualified teachers and advanced courses. First, we engage in a contemporary exploration of how Blackness is demonized, minimized, and invalidated in national anti-Black curriculum movements, school policies, and dress codes. Second, we explore the physical and psychological impact of whiteness on Black peoples post slavery as well as the legacy of whiteness on knowledge. Finally, we provide solutions for moving beyond whiteness in schools.

This country was founded on racism and capitalism. To use chattel slavery and exploitation to build wealth is the story of the United States. Profitmaking via dehumanizing an entire race of people tells us enough of about how White supremacy is present in the inception of the establishment of hierarchy about human beings. Carol Anderson (2017) tells us that White rage is the rage that exists in White people when Black people want advancement, and that advancement often shows up as equal rights. It is hard for White people to grasp equal rights when most do not see Black people in their full humanity. Those hierarchies and valuation did not end after enslavement, it continued in more sophisticated ways: separate but equal, segregation, Jim Crow Laws, over policing of Black bodies, underfunded neighborhoods and schools, and gerrymandering, to name a few. What has happened in the 1700s and 1800s still exists today in 2023. We now see the morphing of White rage show up in how and what schools can do to educate Black and Brown children. Observing parents organizing over book bans, terrorize school boards to ensure that education looks they want it to, and the lengths legislators go to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in schools and in higher education represents the zero sum ideology that White people have subscribed to historically, and even now contemporarily.

We contend that the legacy of White violence against Black bodies and minds is rooted in violence and fueled by power. From the foundation of the United States of America, Blackness has been devalued on the African continent and through the inhumane ecosystem of enslavement that was propagated on the violently stolen land of the new America. The implicit development of Black Codes and the explicit terrorism of lynching followed the violence of enslavement to traumatize the new Black American. Stevenson (2017) contended that as early as 1866 Black Codes were created to menace and criminalize Black people. Black Codes preceding Jim Crow laws and were the initial discriminatory laws that limited housing, employment, and wrongly convicted Black men and then sold them into forced labor through the act of convict leasing. In addition to Black Codes, terror lynching was an explicit act of White violence that was “rampant, waged to inspire terror and to satisfy a bloodthirst that at times seems unquenchable” (Watson, 2013, p. 108). Terror lynching is no longer practice but Davis (2017) suggests that the treatment of Black men by policing produces similar forms of racial stress and terror. While the legacy of White violence continues to plague minoritized communities, Anderson (2017) argues that the invisible nature of White rage will continue to produce negative psychological, economic, political, and educational outcomes as it works in the courts, legislature, government bureaucracies, including educational institutions. She further contends that the trigger for White rage is Black advancement, the demand for equitable treatment and resources, as well as the refusal to accept knowledge manipulation. As we simultaneously emerge from and grapple with the revisionist lies of the Lost Cause, we understand the true violence of whiteness is grounded in the hegemonic dominance of knowledge. Generations of Americans were taught a whitewashed curriculum that painted the evils of slavery, Indian removal, Black Codes, Asian internment camps, presidents who enslaved Africans, and outright racist presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Andrew Johnson as “not so bad.” Unfortunately, the insidious violence of knowledge manipulation and educational violence poisoned the ideals of Whites and non-Whites and caused trauma for Black Americans.

As a result of the excess of educational violence promoted through school policy, curriculum trauma, knowledge manipulation, punitive discipline, and White hegemonic dominance, negative outcomes for minoritized students are rampant in American schools. Since, Black people are the antithesis and a direct danger to whiteness, we contend that abolitionist pedagogy is one solution that will help alleviate racial and educational violence in the school ecosystem. The first solution is preserving authentic knowledge, where we center anti-racist knowledge, experience, and expertise as the anecdote to combat whiteness and White mediocrity in education. Current trends have not only whitewashed education but eliminated validated truths to rewrite historical facts to perpetuate a false narrative. We must combat this betrayal of human experiences, by reinstituting and preserving authentic knowledge that is inclusive of multiple perspectives and free from institutionalized White fear, violence, and bias. Second, we must provide mental health support to address racial stress. Data indicates that teachers experience racially specific stressors at work (Rauscher & Wilson, 2017) and students experience racial trauma at schools (“Trey” Marchbanks et al., 2018). The solution lies in creating a professional workplace that is marked by racial equity, where White privilege is dismantled and educators have a space where stressors are openly acknowledged, addressed, and eradicated. Because all stress is not equal (Vassar & Barnett III, 2020), it is imperative to better understand how whiteness influences Black educators, especially Black women’s professional journeys, and call for more work that centers their diverse voices and urging dialogue around policy and practice affecting and thwarting their well-being and success. Another solution is to address inhumane and the criminalization of Black people. Schools especially are hyperviolent spaces for Black children, especially Black girls. Black children continue to be adultified, criminalized, and spirit-murdered by educators who enact racially discriminatory school disciplinary policies (Hines & Wilmot, 2018). Solutions need to be centered around challenging traditional notions of peace, law, and justice for Black children. The last solution focuses on creating curricular freedom from whiteness. The curriculum in schools directly perpetuates whiteness in ways that undermine the authority of Black knowledge, thought, and perspectives. When the curriculum is a mirror, window, and door (Botelho & Rudman, 2009) into the future, Black students no longer are surviving in schools, they are thriving. We must dismantle the educational survival complex and eliminate curriculums that do not support educational freedom (Love, 2019).

Historically, Black people and other minoritized people have been traumatized and academically harmed by racist educational practices. Acknowledging the sociohistorical reality of education in America is the primary responsibility of anti-racist pedagogues. Unfortunately, the legacies of injustice and the multigenerational histories of trauma endured by Black communities and other minoritized communities continue to manifest materially, socially, and psychologically in American schools. Anti-racist curriculum requires educators to rethink knowledge and instruction toward a pedagogy of freedom. Challenging the “Neo-Lost Cause” curriculum that is evident in schools today, requires a transformation that addresses the historical and contemporary issues of racism and power in the classroom and curriculum. This special issue is a bold look at how anti-Blackness/whiteness can and must be countered by anti-racist pedagogy designed to stop educational violence against Black peoples.

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Notes on contributors

Stephanie Thomas-Woodard

Stephanie Thomas-Woodard has had an amazing journey in education as a teacher, teacher coach, and teacher educator. As a writer, scholar, and educator, Dr. Thomas-Woodard has over 20 years of experience in educating, coaching, and training teachers. Dr. Thomas-Woodard’s research has been featured in top journals such as the Journal of Negro Education, the Journal of Multicultural Education, and the Journal of African American Males in Education. She has also co-authored several book chapters and books and is excited to present her latest book entitled Political, Legislative, and Economic Solutions to Urban Education and the Implications on Teacher Preparation, released in the Spring of 2022. Dr. Thomas-Woodard combines her years of classroom experience, with years of research and collaboration with practitioners around ways to support new teachers and teacher educators. She happily serves as an Assistant Professor and MAT Coordinator in the Graduate School of Education at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

Stephen D. Hancock

Stephen D. Hancock is the Shirley T. Frye Distinguished Professor of Urban Teacher Education and Director of the Center of Excellence for Educational Equity Research in the College of Education at North Carolina A&T State University. In addition, he is the Director of the International Conference on Urban Education. He has served as an international visiting lecturer in Ireland, England, Germany, and Poland. He has recently joined the Pan African Leadership Institute Instructor Core. Dr. Hancock has served on community boards, advisor committees, and organizations, is a member of several professional organizations, and serves on the Social Justice Action Committee at AERA. His research interest includes topics on race, identity, and well-being as it relates to access, equity, and social justice. He specializes in autoethnographic and ethnographic methodologies, has published in top journals, and co-edited three books.

Tehia Starker Glass

Tehia Starker Glass, PhD (she/her) is the Cato College of Education Assistant Dean of Diversity and Inclusion, award-winning Professor of Educational Psychology and Elementary Education, and Executive Fellow for Faculty Development in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Glass is a TED speaker, and co-author of Teaching for Justice and Belonging: A Journey for Educators and Parents. Her research and publications include preparing preservice and in-service teachers’ culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy, culturally responsive teaching in teacher education, anti-racism curriculum development, and exploring how caregivers and teachers discuss race with children. Dr. Glass’s research has been featured in top journals such as the Journal of Urban Education, Journal of Negro Education, Journal of Multicultural Education, and Teachers College Press. She co-founded and is the co-Director of the Anti-Racism Graduate Certificate Program at UNC Charlotte.