For the Symposium: Deconstructing Ferguson One Year Later
Of the many images that come to mind on the anniversary of
Michael Brown’s death, the one I recall most clearly is his high school
graduation portrait. The context was important. Just a year earlier a Florida jury
had acquitted a white vigilante for the murder Trayvon Martin, and much of the
public debate on Martin’s killing centered on the news media’s choices of
images: a hooded
menace or a sweet kid.
After his death on August 9, 2014, the quick media release
of Michael Brown’s graduation photo offered a counter narrative to the racist
media portrayal of him as a “monster.” Medial outlets obligingly introduced the
image to the court of public opinion. Look, the photograph says to us: Brown
was a team player, a citizen; he had plans for more education, too, at a local
technical college. Graduating from high school credentialed him in the public
debate on his right to fair treatment by the police.
I do not know how
Michael Brown felt about this credential, although graduating from notorious
Normandy High School (where half of students did not graduate) was no small
feat, and relatives reported that he had dreams
for his future. His expression in the photo is inscrutable. I read it as
pride, just the whisper of a smile.
I do know what that graduation robe and diploma were supposed to mean. Since their inception
in the early 19th century, public schools have been billed as sites
of civic identity formation, where students are supposed to learn the habits of
success in the workplace, the habits of good behavior in the community, the
lore of common culture, and the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.
The
State of Missouri required that Michael Brown’s schools teach him American
history, civics, geography, and economics in some form, since kindergarten.
Among its many standards in history and civics, the state highlights key concepts
in bold letters: limited government, democracy, laissez faire and majority
rule (which is followed notably by the not bolded) minority rights.
We also know from research on school textbook content and
classroom teaching that the education Michael Brown likely received in his thirteen
years of public education in Missouri offered him a formal curriculum that
emphasized the fairness and justice of American government and the
pervasiveness of economic opportunity. His US history classes offered a
narrative of continual progress, the glorious and inevitable settlement of the
West, and the exceptionalism of America’s place in human history. Past race
problems (Slavery, Jim Crow) appear episodically and achieve resolution, like
weeds on a suburban lawn. Contemporary problems are small in the curriculum, if
they exist at all. Students at Normandy High School, and thousands of
dysfunctional, economically and racially segregated schools like them, are
highly unlikely to encounter an education that helps them make sense of the world
in which they learn and live. No wonder so few make it through.
For many white Americans, however, the story largely matches
their family history and daily existence both in their very infrequent experiences
with law enforcement and, more generally, with economic and social life. Even
those increasing numbers of whites whose fortunes have not progressed in
generations still tend to cling to exceptionalist narratives of American history.
For many people of color, including the people of Ferguson,
the narrative you learn in school is false. The facts of its falsehood are
plain and well established, whether one looks at exposure to violence, at
family wealth, at education, at health, at employment, and particularly at
experiences with the criminal justice system. The root and branch
anti-democratic behavior the Ferguson police force was not exceptional in Saint
Louis County; and many similar types of behavior may be seen across the
country.
When Michael Brown appeared with his diploma and robes, he
signaled mastery (or at the very least, survival) of a life-long exposure to a
narrative of civic existence that bore very little resemblance to his life (or
his death) but which resonates with a white majority that knows almost nothing
of his experience.
Speaking of that experience, or at least from a similar
perspective, is Clifton Kinnie, a black student activist in Ferguson featured recently
at the 2015 Aspen
Arts and Ideas Festival. When asked, “What can be done to build trust in
your community?” Kinnie chose to focus
on the narrativity of civic life rather than any particular social policy. Facing
his mostly white audience he said, “I want to boggle your minds a little bit.”
“Understand that America has always existed under some form
of a racial caste system,” he said,
…understand that you don’t know what we go
through. No matter how many degrees that you have, no matter the PhDs, no
matter what research you go through, understand that these young people have
been on this front line and that they’ve actually experienced this state violence.
By extending the reach of his critique as high up the formal
educational ladder as he can imagine, Kinnie leveled a devastating
epistemological critique. In such circumstances, as Yale philosopher Jason
Stanley observes, formal education must be understood as propaganda. Being Black in school provides no immunity
from this corrupted knowledge, either, Kinnie observed. “Growing up I was
taught that Martin Luther King marched, they passed bills, and everything was
okay. We elected president Obama and then everything was okay.”
Not until Michael Brown’s death and the events that followed
did Kinnie receive a real education in what it means to be a citizen. His
knowledge is experiential and embodied. He stops and points to his shoulder,
where he still bears a scar from a cop’s rubber bullet. “If we really want to
get real about doing something, we gotta get real with each other.” He said. “You
understand what I’m saying? Honestly.”
There is very little of such honesty in contemporary school
public school reform. It should come as no surprise that conservatives have no
concern for such talk, and efforts to deregulate public education (and privatize
it) will only make matters worse: white consumers will choose the history and
civic education that makes them feel good and reinforces their privilege.
Liberals who call for improving public education, on the other hand, focus on
more of the same: more and longer school days, better teacher training, free
pre-k and more widely accessible colleges. The Obama administration’s obsession
with test scores and charter schools has left little room for (and spilled
little ink in defense of) a racially honest public education.
Indeed, in the year since Michael Brown’s death—a macabre,
unending reel of Black Americans of all ages being killed during the most
routine moments of their lives; a year that has polarized major metropolitan
areas across the country and led to a national dialogue on race relations and
policing—the educational establishment has retrenched. Just this week the
College Board caved to political pressure from conservatives to revise its
2014 US History standards that had been ten years in the making. The new 2015
standards take a more conciliatory tone on America’s racial history, downplaying
white privilege, racial caste, and the role of government in protecting minority rights from majority rule.
When we see photographs of young men and women in graduation
robes, we as a society should be confident that they have learned something
real about race in America. Graduation should not be capitulation. A diploma
should not be a white flag. Only then can we be also be confident that all people, high school graduates or
not, white or not, wealthy or not, will be regarded with the same dignity and
respect by agents of the state including, but not limited to, the police. In
order to achieve justice, in order for black lives to matter, we cannot stop at
piecemeal reforms in individual municipalities, or in particular areas of
social policy, such as policing. A just society depends fundamentally on a
shared sense of reality. We need to shut down the racist doublespeak of
American civic life that lends legitimacy to injustice and strangles our shared
civic dialogue. To do so, we must boggle our minds.
Benjamin Justice is Associate Professor of Education at Rutgers University. You can reach him by e-mail at bjust at rci.rutgers.edu
Benjamin Justice is Associate Professor of Education at Rutgers University. You can reach him by e-mail at bjust at rci.rutgers.edu