A thing I can’t stop thinking about is how so much force is enacted to try to make Black people behave.

From what I witnessed in schools I can confidently say that every white institution is wedded to this ideology.

Let me give you an example: one year, a lot of the black boys at my school where I was an assistant principal were wearing sweatbands. You know, like LeBron James.

No, I didn’t think anything about this. I followed basketball enough to know that these teenagers held King James up as a hero.

One day, I got an email from a white teacher. Please know that every teacher I’m about to mention is also white.

The email was furious in tone.

“WHAT are we going to do with these students wearing sweatbands?”

I failed to see the problem.

Did it distract anyone in class? Are they constantly adjusting them? Are they snatching them off one another’s heads?

They responded that it was none of those things.

Since I didn’t see a problem and didn’t hurriedly mete out consequences, they decided to write another email. This time, she added a Cc.

By the way, adding a Cc is a power move to say “I’m tattling in you and have included your boss”

I had already shared with the principal.

She, problematic white woman that she was, actually said it was fine. They could wear them. It wasn’t a big deal.

That still wouldn’t do for this teacher so she sent ANOTHER email and included her entire 8th grade team of teachers. She needed backup.

She held full court.

They had spent the entirety of their last team instructional planning time on sweatbands.

INSTRUCTIONAL. TIME.

No planning for supporting students or writing lesson plans or getting feedback. Just on how to control the Black boys.

A whole planning time.

That next email addressed to me came with the royal We.

We talked about this.
We decided they needed to be punished.
We demand you give them detention and call their parents.

They went so far as to scan a copy of the student handbook to say “WE ARE JUST FOLLOWING RULES”.

This kind of thing is so normalized in school systems. When I didn’t do what they asked they said, “Kelly doesn’t support teachers”.

That mantra, as admin, is a death sentence. As in ‘my career is dead here’. And it was.

The white principal flipped on me. She sided with them.

Them = teachers

Not them = students

Because making Black children behave is of the utmost importance. No matter that the number 1 complaint I heard from parents about teachers was “you only call for discipline, never for academics”. And they were right.

Let’s address this need to control and what it says about those grasping onto power to understand why other institutions act the way they do to ensure that Black people “behave”.

We might actually get somewhere.

Finale: the boys had to stop wearing them and it upset them that their teachers, the ones charged with caring for and teaching them, went that far to put them in their place. They weren’t mad. They were crushed.

They were hurt and traumatized. But yeah, we did SEL (bullshit)

That kind of over-managing of students leads to this kind of over-criminalization by police. It’s a long connected line of deeply embedded ideological beliefs. https://reason.com/2021/04/12/overcriminalization-killed-daunte-wright-police-shooting-brooklyn-center-minnesota-air-freshener/