Hello Colleagues. I want to open today by talking about the video and related news about the death of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. I want to talk about this for a variety of reasons. I imagine that many of you have heard about this fatal incident or watched the video yourselves. I also imagine that some of our students have watched the video.

So, here are the basic facts: In 2014, an African-American, 17-year-old boy, Laquan McDonald, was fatally shot 16 times by a white police officer after being followed by police cars for allegedly breaking into cars. When a judge determined this month that the video of the shooting must be released to the public, the state’s attorney general indicted the officer with first-degree murder. The video was released to the public last Tuesday. There were many protests in Chicago throughout the Thanksgiving break.

First, while many people enjoyed a restful and joyful holiday with family and friends, many others experienced joy torn from their hearts upon watching the very brutal video—and that loss of joy may have permeated their breaks. As the journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, regularly points out—there is not an uptick of violence going on by police toward young people of color—there is an uptick in our ability to record and publish these incidents using video. For some, and possibly more predominantly for our colleagues of color and our African American colleagues, the fear, sadness, outrage, and desperation can be unshakable. The peril to the physical safety of black people exposed in these videos that continue to come at us from around the country is undeniable. For those among us who are black, who are related to young black people, who know and deeply love black people, that peril is terrifying to the core and that terror can subsume the joy and peace that we hope for during holidays.

Today at our staff meeting, we are going to hold space for the range of experiences, reactions, and emotions to the scenes from Chicago. Our school is a place where we seek to recognize and celebrate the wholeness and complexity of each human—this goes for adults as well as for students. The dialogue across our differences about incidents like the one that happened in Chicago is essential, both to create space for the myriad emotions and reactions and to more deeply understand each other’s experiences and perspectives.

Given that most people socialize, worship, and get their hair done with their racial groups, most people aren’t engaged in dialogue about issues of race with people of different races. But this is what we need to be doing here at ______________ (name of school)! If we hope someday to be the change agents that support and facilitate young people to talk about issues of race without charge in order to build a culture of empathy and understanding to mitigate the potential for xenophobia and subsequent violence, we need to be able to do it ourselves.

My own sadness during the Thanksgiving break about the experiences of black Americans, and especially those who are young and live in cities, much like some of our own students, made me feel weary about writing this equity frame. It feels like these incidents of terror that black people suffer are commonplace—to return to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ point that I mentioned earlier. What more is there to say? My inspiration amidst a growing desperation lies in my belief that we can be the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi instructed us. We can be a place where we have enough space and love to hold the reactions and experiences, however big or small, of our adults, families, and students to horrifying events that involve race. We can be a place where we as adults are regularly engaged in conversations about our different or similar experiences of the world given our racial identities. We can be a place where someday, we don’t wait for race to come up in our classrooms—we bring it up regularly so that our students experience dialogue about race as commonplace and without charge.

I say this both to be transparent about my own vision for who we can be as a school and to charge us with leading the work of having courageous conversations about race. This charge is for the ILT to think about how we can do this, but also to every individual person. When you take a moment to think and reflect, what was your reaction to the murder of Laquan McDonald, whether you thought about it during the break or you just learned about it now? What would it take for you to be able to engage in dialogue about your reaction with others on staff, especially across the difference of race? What fear do you hold about such conversations? I want our school to be a place where the adults have the courage, confidence, and curiosity to lean into these conversations.

If we don’t create this space, and we politely ask each other, “How was your Thanksgiving?” to which we respond superficially, we are reproducing the oppressive dominant culture of institutions like ours as dehumanizing. We are a school that prizes the humanity of our adults, parents, and students—it takes our ongoing attention to make sure our school is a place that truly lives that commitment.

Relevant Data

– In 2014, an African-American, 17-year-old boy, Laquan McDonald, was fatally shot 16 times by a white police officer after being followed by police cars for allegedly breaking into cars. When a judge determined this month that the video of the shooting must be released to the public, the state’s attorney general indicted the officer with first-degree murder. The video was released to the public last Tuesday. (Sweeney, Annie, and Jason Meisner. “A Moment-by-moment Account of What the Laquan McDonald Video Shows.” Chicago Tribune 25 Nov. 2015, News sec. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.)

– Perspectives from Ta-Nahisi Coates (Goodman, Amy. “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Police Brutality: “The Violence Is Not New, It’s the Cameras That Are New”” Truthout | Fearless, Independent News and Opinion. 27 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.)