Related Data

• Michael Brown, 18, was shot several times by a police officer in Ferguson, MO after he and a friend, Dorian Johnson, were walking in the middle of the street. They were unarmed. There was a verbal and possibly a physical interaction between the police and the young men that ended with the officer fatally shooting Michael Brown.
• There was a video released on Friday of Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson shoplifting cigars. The officer who shot Michael Brown did not know about the shoplifting incident at the time of the shooting.
• The town of Ferguson, MO is 67% African American. Three of the 53 police officers in Ferguson are African American. The mayor and police chief in Ferguson are both white males. Five of the six city council members are white and six of the seven school board members are white. (Mother Jones, 8-13-14)
• After several days and nights of protests (some of which involved looting), tear-gassing by the police, and a militarized police presence, the governor of Missouri delegated the management of the situation in Ferguson to a member of the Missouri State Highway Patrol who is an African American man who grew up in the area of Ferguson.
• 2% of the US population identifies as African American while African American men comprise 38% of those imprisoned in the US. (US Census, 2010 and NYT, 2-27-13)
• In SFUSD, 53.1% of suspensions from school last year were African-American students while African American students make up 9% of SFUSD students. (www.sfusd.edu)

Sample Frame

I’m feeling so good about our week together last week. We did amazing work learning together and preparing ourselves and our school for students this week. I was particularly happy about that given the difficult summer that unfolded while we were on vacation… from the conflict between Gaza and Israel to the struggle in the Ukraine to the crisis of child migrants from Central America.

The shadow over last week was the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the aftermath of which worsened each day last week. I’m certain that you all know about the circumstances of his death at this point, but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect this tragic situation with our sacred role as educators this year. I want to talk for a moment not about Mike Brown and his death, but about how some young people have responded on Twitter.

You may have seen the #IF I WERE GUNNED DOWN tweets. These are young people of color posting two photos of themselves, side by side, one that depicts them in an upstanding light and the other that depicts them in a pose that dominant culture may construe as negative. They pose the question, ‘Which photo would the media publish if I were gunned down?’ This is happening in response to several media outlets posting pictures of Mike Brown with his fingers pointing sideways, possibly in a peace sign, possibly displaying a gang sign. Given what we know about his life, his fingers were most likely in a peace sign. These young people are pointing out that media outlets often show images of Black men that are intimidating, aggressive, thuggish, shady rather than showing images of the very same people in graduation caps, in military uniforms, at picnics with their families, etc.

After years and years of seeing negative images of Black males in the media, many Americans, educators included, are carrying a fear of Black males (sometimes conscious, often subconscious). This internalized fear, in my opinion, is what led a White police officer to gun down a young Black man in Ferguson, MO after he was walking on the street rather than walking on the sidewalk.

We are not immune to this fear even though we live in the Bay Area. Oscar Grant was gunned down a few years ago in Oakland. Our African American males are still the student group most often suspended and expelled from our schools. Here at our school… (insert reference to relevant school-based data)

Why is this important for us as educators beginning a school year in 2014? I believe that every person at this school chose to be an educator because you want the world to be a better place. We want to create opportunities for all young people. I want to give us a sacred charge this year as part of our roles as revolutionary educators: I want us to check ourselves every time we struggle with our African American male students in classrooms, on the yard, in the hallways, and ask ourselves, Is there fear in me? If this were a White boy, would I be reacting the same way? To what extent is this situation a serious issue or am I conflating fear and control with a young person demonstrating a need? The answers to these questions will sometimes be unpleasant and I want us to have the courage to face those answers, support each other in evolving our awareness, and consistently choose something different when we interact with our African American males. What should we be choosing? Love, open heart, curiosity, more love, calm, healing, and nonviolent boundaries—what we would want for our own children. This is also why we are choosing (or moving toward) restorative practices, culturally-relevant curricula, policies that aren’t zero-tolerance, seeing our African American students as the young humans they are and saying, “Hello, I see you, I care about you—how are you today?”

Last year at this same time, we were talking about Trayvonn Martin. The year before that we were talking about Oscar Grant. We will have more young dead men to talk about until every educator in America, every cop, everyone in authority over young people makes a decision to check themselves, reflect, and face difficult realities about what we have been taught to think about Black males. Let’s do this together so that we’re part of the solution and not inadvertently part of the problem.

(For more research on the matter of how images of race affect perceptions of innocence, see http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older.aspx)