“Black Women’s Equality Day,” was July 31; Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead wants America to pay up.
Baltimore City Schools, Throwback to the Jim Crow Era
September 16, 2018
Alone
I have been a Baltimore City resident for close to fifteen years. My husband and I are raising our sons here and teaching them how to navigate city life. I have worked as a middle school teacher, at one of the most persistently dangerous schools in Baltimore, and I am now a tenured professor at Loyola University Maryland. I am also the host of “Today With Dr. Kaye” at WEAA at Morgan State University and like most people in this city, I live and shop and work somewhere between the intersections of the white L and the black butterfly.
With everything that has happened in this city—from Freddie Grey to the Gun Trace Task Force and the ongoing impact of redlining to the rows of abandoned houses—I believed that I have seen and heard it all when it came to Baltimore City politics but I was wrong. Every day on my radio show we talk about some of the stories that matter and demand our attention. And last week, for four days straight, all we could talk about was what was happening within the city schools. We could not understand how a city that spends almost $15,000 per pupil could justify having its students sit in hot depilated buildings for even a half of a day. It felt racist and unfair. We said it was criminal and that someone should be held responsible. I talked with Dr. Sonja Santelisis, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, and my listeners were unsatisfied with her responses. I shared Governor Larry Hogan’s statements and they were offended by his excuse because while we talked and politicians passed the blamed, our children were attending schools and suffering in silence.
I spoke to a mom whose daughter attends Mt Royal Elementary School and she said that the students in her daughter’s class spent four days crying and coughing because they could not breathe. They were told not to complain and to lay their heads down on the desk. On the third day of school, a teacher called my show and told me that her and her students felt like they were in hell—in a hot building without water (they ran out of Deer Park after the first day), or air conditioning, or toilet paper (they ran out on the second day). She said that it was so hot that the mice were coming out of the walls, running around, leaving mouse droppings everywhere, and scaring their children. My listeners and I were stunned. Many of us were outraged because we could not understand how a city that is 63% black with a black mayor, a black CEO of city schools, and, where a majority of our elected officials are black, could allow this to happen to our children.
What is most ironic is that historically Baltimore City was one of the few school districts that quickly moved forward to desegregate schools. In September 1954, four months after the Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down by the United States Supreme Court, the Baltimore City School Board made the decision to begin desegregating pupils and faculty. This is important to note because the rest of the state wanted to wait for the Supreme Court’s second decree (due to be handed down in 1955). This was the case that legally ended Jim Crow and it was supposed to create equality in the schools.
During the era of Jim Crow it was not unheard of to have black children sitting in hot classrooms with no regard for their health. It was not unheard of for a system to intentionally work to miseducate black children and force them to endure the type of conditions that were designed to break their spirit. It was not unheard of to expect black parents to quietly complain but publicly comply with the law. It was not unheard of to have overcrowded classrooms, dark and dingy hallways, dust and asbestos, and very few resources and innovative designs.
Desegregation was supposed to fix that. It was supposed to create classrooms environments where our children would be safe, where their genius could be sparked, and where they can be comfortable. It has been 63 years but if you look closely at a bulk of our Baltimore City public schools, it looks as if time has stood still. I know this because I have visited these schools and as a former teacher, I have endured these conditions.
Our children deserve better. They do not deserve ice cold classrooms in the winter and stifling hot classrooms in the fall. They do not deserve lunches that are not nutritious; dust and mouse droppings; unusable water fountains; and, bars on their classroom’s windows. They do not deserve to be chastised and humiliated and made to feel like their lives do not matter. Unfortunately, after four days of talking about what was happening in the classrooms, complaining about it, and demanding answers for it, it was painfully obvious that nothing was going to change for our children any time soon.
In 1954, a decision was made to desegregate Baltimore City schools and 63 years later, we are back where we started. This system is failing our children. They do not love them and they do not value them. They do not see their genius and even when they tell us they do (as they do all of the time), the conditions that our children are dealing with tell a different but familiar tale.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead (todaywithdrkaye@gmail.com; Twitter: @kayewhitehead) is the #blackmommyactivist and an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of “Today With Dr. Kaye” on WEAA 88.9 FM and the author of the forthcoming “Letters to My Black Sons II: The Birth of the Black Mommy Activist.” She lives in Baltimore City with her husband and their two sons.
Sent from my iPhone
Boys:
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As the world continues to rally around #NeverAgain and Parkland, Florida, let us not forget to #SayTheirNames – Stephon Clark and Philando Castile and Alton Sterling; Terence Crutcher and Korryn Gaines; John Crawford III and Eric Garner; Rekia Boyd and Aiyana Jones; Tamir Rice and Freddie Gray and so many more
2. As those young activists are being lifted up as touted as the future leaders of our nation, let us not forget that when you stood up for #BlackLivesMatter, you were called a terrorist, a hater of America, the worst thing that could happen to this country
3. As colleges rush to send out letters of support to these young college-bound activists, let us not forget the number of black activists whose college offers were rescinded because they dared to raise their voice
4. As the world supports their First Amendment right to protest and peaceably assemble, let us not forget that this white and black world conveniently forgot that you had/have the same rights to march and to assemble and to kneel before that flag
5. As the world sends money and prayers and bodies to support the NeverAgain March, let us not forget the work we did to help raise funds, a dollar at a time, for #BLM work to continue
6. As professional posters are being made and artistic t-shirts are getting printed, let us not forget the day you simply wrote your name and your phone number on your white t-shirt in case you were killed that day
7. As some schools across the country continue to support walking out and protesting, let us not forget that you were threatened with suspension for trying to organize a peaceful sit-down on the front lawn of your school
8. As we mourn and stand with the families and survivors of mass shootings, let us not forget to mourn and stand with the sister of Tyrone West on West Wednesdays and with Daphne Alston of Mothers Against Murdered Sons and Daughters and with the families of the 900+ people that were murdered in Baltimore City over the last three years
9. As the world continues to move on from #BlackLivesMatter, let us not forget that earlier this week, a black man was shot 20 times in his OWN backyard
10. As the world tries to talk about equality and justice, let us not forget the unspoken rules that govern blackness and that could easily result in our death: you cannot Wear a hoodie, Play in the park alone, Sleep on the couch in our living room, Walk or Run in the street, Ride or Sit in a car, Stand on a corner, Stand up or kneel down before this system, Have your hands in your pocket, Hold a cellphone or a wallet, and now you cannot even Walk in OUR backyard
I offer you these words in love and I beg you #DontGetKilledToday
MOM (Your #blackmommyactivist)
Fifty Years Later: America is Still Two Nations –one white, one black; separate and unequal
March 23, 2018
by Karsonya Wise Whitehead, published in The Baltimore Sun
Fifty years ago this week, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders that was organized by Lyndon B. Johnson released the Kerner Commission Report, named for its chairman, Otto Kerner Jr. It attempted to answer three questions in the wake of intense racial riots and unrest that had swept through the country: What happened? Why did it happen? And:What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?
The report noted that our nation was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” Commission members concluded that this division was the result of failed government housing, the lack of decent education and social-service policies and the narrative that had been created by mainstream media who reported the news while looking out from a “white man’s eyes and a white perspective.”
They suggested that the main cause for urban violence was white racism and that white America needed to fully and completely shoulder most of the responsibility for the rioting and rebellion that was happening across the country. In 1967 alone, more than 1,800 (mostly black) people had been injured, and 83 people had been killed. The property damages were valued at upwards of $100 million in over 120 cities.
The Kerner Report outlined some broad solutions to promoting racial integration — on top of the laws that took effect a few years earlier: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination and prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment and public accommodation; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.
Specifically, the commission called for the creation of more jobs and job training programs, the establishment of decent housing and increased financial aid to black communities.
Johnson rejected the report because it did not praise his anti-poverty program, but conversations started taking place across the country as some black and white communities tried to work together to find solutions to bridge the divide. And, 30 years later, in 1998, the Eisenhower Foundation commissioned a follow-up report. The news was not good.
It found that there was more poverty in America; that it was “deeper, blacker and browner than before”; and that it was more concentrated in cities, which had become “America’s poorhouses.” Even with all of the conversations and policies, the laws and the direct intervention, America was still a racially and economically divided nation.
Since then, America elected the nation’s first black president (twice). We’ve seen the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the impact of the work many of us have done to help create a more diverse, open, accountable and inclusive society.
We’ve also seen the election of a president who actively works against us. Despite the protests and marches and ongoing pushback against him, with every decision, tweet or comment that he makes, Donald Trump encourages a world that is more white, more racist, more classist, more exclusive, more misogynistic and more frightening.
America is still clearly a divided nation. This is not a startling revelation. It is a simply a fact. So it’s no wonder that a new report released this week, “Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years After the Kerner Report,” says “there are far more people who are poor now than was true 50 years ago. Inequality of income is worse.”
This latest report — which included input from black people, Latinos, Native Americans and women — concludes that since 1968 the country has not only had a widening gap in poverty but there has been a noted and concentrated lack of, or reversal of, progress. In other words, the lines of division are getting worse.
Its authors also offered suggestions, similar in scope to the ones that were offered in 1968:
- Spending more money on early childhood education;
- Increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2024,
- Adding more regulatory oversight over mortgages to prevent predatory lending;
- Establishing community policing that works in concert with nonprofits in inner-city communities;
- And adding more job training programs in an era of automation and emerging technologies.
They also called on the mainstream media to hire more people of color to cover and report the news, particularly in the communities of color.
So, 50 years after the Kerner Report, the country is worse off, but the solutions, the way to turn the tide, have not changed.
My hope is that this time, we will not let those in power forget. We will not let them dismiss the report. And we will not let them continue to move us farther away from where we want to be: one nation, one society, inclusive, diverse and equal.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead (todaywithdrkaye@gmail.com; Twitter: @kayewhitehead) is the #blackmommyactivist and an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of “Today With Dr. Kaye” on WEAA 88.9 FM and the author of “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America.”
“At My Baltimore School, they played ‘Let’s get the black boy.’ I was the black boy.” –my son’s Wash Post OpEd
November 19, 2017
Image Courtesy: Huffington Post
by Kofi Elijah Whitehead, OpEd published in the 11/19/2017 Washington Post
When I was little, my dad used to take our family to the track and let us race against each other. The winner always got to choose dessert. I used to try to figure out which lane I needed to be in so I could outrun my father and my brother. My mom used to laugh as she told me that the only person I was ever running against was the person I was yesterday. She said that the hard lessons are learned over and over again and that the real challenge is to come face to face with the person we used to be and outrun him. I knew she was not talking about track, but I could not understand how I could outrun myself.
I have been in private schools in Baltimore City all my life. When I was in elementary school, I was the only African American boy in my grade. Every day, I was reminded in subtle ways that I did not belong and that I was different. There were two communities: The first was built within the school, where teachers did what they could to include me. The second was harder to understand because it was built over the weekend and during after-school, parent-arranged play dates. My family and I were rarely invited or included.
When I was 6, a boy in my class made up a game called “Let’s get the black boy.” I do not remember the details, but I do remember that I spent the entire recess running. I do not know if it was because I was scared or if I was just playing the game.
I still attend school with the boy who made up the game and most of the boys who played it. They probably do not remember, but I do and my mother does. It was one of the moments that marked our family and defined who we were going to be in this world. My mother changed her career at that moment and devoted herself to doing diversity training to confront these issues within the schools.
I am almost 17, and I am still running against that 6-year-old boy who spent the entire recess running away. I tell myself often that if a moment like that happens again — when I am faced with racism, white supremacy and racial insensitivity, even cloaked in childhood games — I want to be able to stand instead of run, and I want to be able to clearly articulate what my white classmates are doing with those games.
I thought about this a few weeks ago when racially charged Halloween photographs showing white students dressed in prison garb went viral. The photos included racist captions as they were passed around social media. My white classmates seemingly could not understand what our classmate in one of the photos had done wrong.
There was very little empathy and few attempts to seek understanding; some students counterprotested to stand with our classmate. It was hard for me because I believe that there is a direct correlation between that childhood game that was never challenged or discussed and growing up to believe that racial insensitivity and intolerance are things that should be taken lightly.
My classmates and I talked about this recent incident almost every day. I tried to explain what was wrong with these photographs and what they say about race relations at my school and in this community. I talked with my parents, trying to figure out how to make my white classmates understand what it means to be black and male in America. There are days when I do not completely understand it myself.
There are days when I feel like every other 11th-grader, consumed with thoughts of the upcoming exams or college or girls. Some days, I do not think about being black, or that I attend schools that would have denied admission to my grandfather, or the gnawing feeling that I am, as Maya Angelou wrote, the hope and dream of the slave. Those are the days when I feel normal and when I can breathe. It is during those other moments, when I am trying to articulate what it feels like to be black in America, when I am painfully aware that the color of my skin is steeped in a legacy of enslavement, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, Black Lives Matter and white kids chasing a lone black boy around the playground while white teachers looked on but never interceded.
I know that for some people, the Halloween incident was just a set of photographs, but for me and for people who look like me, it was yet another reminder that no matter how fast we run, how successful we become or how hard we try, we will never outrun the image of the black man that the white world sees.
Kofi Elijah Whitehead is an 11th-grader in Baltimore.
Charlottesville and the Worship of Whiteness (an Afro OpEd)
August 28, 2017
by Karsonya Wise Whitehead, published in the Afro
There is a chasm that exists between the created notion of Whiteness and the reality of Black and Brownness in America. It is neatly stitched into the social fabric that defines who we are as a country. At our core, we are a divided nation. It is as true today as it was in 1967, when in the midst of national civil unrest and rioting, Lyndon B. Johnson organized the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder (the “Kerner Commission”) to study what happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.
The Kerner Report, released in March 1968 (one month before Dr. King was assassinated) noted that our nation was moving toward becoming two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal. They blamed failed government housing, education, and social-service policies; along with the mainstream media for reporting the news while looking out from a White world with a “White man’s eyes and a White perspective.”
It is now 2017, and even with all of the strides that we have made to become more diverse, open, accountable, and inclusive, at this moment, it feels like nothing has changed. We are less than seven months into the America that Donald Trump is creating—the one where he has emboldened White nationalists, empowered White supremacists, and legitimized the rise of the alt-right neo-Nazi movement—and it is more divided, more White, more racist, more misogynistic, and more frightening than ever.
This past weekend as I watched the horrible events unfold in Charlottesville built on a foundation of horrible events that have been happening since the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement, I realized that though it has taken almost 50 years, the Kerner Report has finally been realized. We have truly become two nations: one diverse and inclusive, one White and exclusive.
We are at the moment when the level of tolerance for racial discourse has been reached. The worship of Whiteness is dangerous for everyone, including White people. It ignores the realities of history, namely that the policies that have dominated this country for years were put in place to support and encourage White advancement, and it looks for a common enemy (an other) to terrorize, to blame, to oppress, and ultimately to destroy. This new America, or Donald Trump’s bastardized version of it, is not the America that good and decent people should want to live in.
The Kerner Report noted that the only way for America to change is for everyone to adopt “new attitudes, new understanding, and, above all, new will.” I would add that it will also take every White American to bend their privilege and speak up against this new reign of terror. The time for contemplative silence and social media activism has ended. We are now in a place where we must look into the mirror and decide what type of country we want to live in and how do we want to be remembered by future generations. We can not be the generation that allowed the voices of the few who cried out for exclusion, racism, hatred, bigotry and Whiteness to drown out the voices of many who are shouting out, with every fabric of their being, for liberty and justice for all.
I believe in the idea of democracy and in wresting with our foundational documents as we seek to become a more just and verdant nation. I just do not believe that a demagogue, someone who has built their career and reputation on exclusion and who supports racist ideologies and policies, can continue to represent the interests of a diverse nation.
There is so much about this Trump’s America that is unclear—from whose voices and lives will matter in the end to who will speak for those who will be unable to speak for themselves—but there are some things that are crystal: this man cannot continue to be our President; the worship of Whiteness and the silent support of White supremacy must be stopped; and, what happened in Charlottesville supposedly over the removal of a Confederate statute cannot be forgotten.
The battle lines are being drawn and history will record the side you choose, either deliberately or through your silent complicity, to stand with—choose wisely this day the America that you want to live in.
Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead is an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the author of “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America” and “Notes from a Colored Girl.”
Reclaiming My Time & My Money (Afro OpEd)
August 3, 2017
Two days before my birthday, and I was reminded all over again that I am a Black girl in America and that means something. I was seven years old the first time I was told this reality. I had spent the afternoon fighting my boy cousins and beating them in foot races through the woods. They were wearing shorts and I was wearing a skirt that I had tied between my legs like makeshift bloomers. My grandmother called me over and told me that I needed to start acting like a lady which meant that I had to stop fighting and racing. I had to clean the dirt off my face and start getting my hair pressed. I had to learn how to set the table and wash the dishes; how to sew, and hem, and iron sheets. While my boy cousins fished and built sand castles, I learned how to wash clothes and make the bed. I used to look at them out of the window, wishing that I could be a boy so that I could be free. This is the first time when I felt like I could not breathe. There was a feeling of anomia where I knew what was happening to me but I could not name it and none of the women in my life seemed to have the capacity (or words) to say it out loud. This feeling of gender inadequacy was reinforced in my church where I learned over and over again that the sin that plagued and infected our world came from a woman who dared to make her own decision. It took me years to become a Black feminist, to be able to recognize my gender and racial oppression and fight against it; to stop thinking that I had to be twice as smart as White people or work twice as hard as a man, to stop measuring myself against them as if they were the standard. This is what true internal oppression looks like when it is formed and shaped over a lifetime by a coagulation of feelings, emotions, subtext, inequality, intentional erasure, and perceptions of inferiority.
Most days I am able to balance my anger at the system with incredible moments of joy but there are some days that are more difficult than others. Black Women’s Equality Day is one of those days. It is the one day where I am brutally reminded that no matter how hard I work or how many degrees I have or how many pay raises I receive, I still have to work an extra six months to catch up to my White male peers. It is a race that I will never win or tie as it is designed for Black women to lose. It is a very blatant reminder that Black women, as Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, have always been and continue to be the mules of this world. We stand tall and yet, this 37 cents difference only shows us that society continues to benefit from riding the backs of Black women and exploiting our labor.
There are approximately three million American families that depend on the income that Black mothers earn and with this pay discrepancy, households are suffering. The tentacles of economic oppression find their way into every aspect of a Black woman’s life, from mortgage payments to childcare; college savings to purchasing healthy food. At this rate, it would take a Black woman about 108 years to catch up and achieve wage equality (this is assuming that the pay rate for White males remains constant) This is unacceptable. We must work together to reclaim this 37 cents and reclaim the time we spend into the system without being adequately compensated. It really does matter, and until it is done and the ledger is clean, both systemic oppression and racial inequality will continue.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead (kewhitehead@loyola.edu; Twitter: @kayewhitehead) is the #blackmommyactivist and an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the author of “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America” and “Notes from a Colored Girl.”
Blood On The Roots
July 8, 2017
Author and university professor Karsonya Wise Whitehead contemplated the concept of, “freedom,” as millions celebrated the Fourth of July.
I had a moment during Sunday service, when my pastor asked us to stand, turn toward the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I cringed as everyone quickly stood, placed their hands over their hearts, and proceeded to recite the Pledge, without question and without hesitation. I sat there fighting against my desire to stand and be obedient because I knew that as a black person in America, I could not pledge my allegiance to this racist nation or to our bigoted president.
In psychology, they call this moment cognitive dissonance, which happens when a person is struggling with at least two contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. I am a descendant of enslaved people who fought to survive in America and war veterans who died while fighting to protect America. I am a walking contradiction where my American racist values and my black consciousness and pride are constantly warring against one another. W.E.B. Du Bois called it double consciousness, an oppressive way of viewing and judging yourself, as a black person, through the eyes of a racist white society.
I thought about all of this as the Pledge gave way to the singing of, “My Country Tis of Thee,” because I believe that this America, this bastion of white supremacy, is not my ideal home. It is not where I feel safe or where I feel like I belong. I am the Sankofa bird who flies forward across this red, white, and blue landscape with rivers that run deep with the blood of innocent black and brown people, while hopelessly keeping my head turned in search of something else, of somewhere else. This feeling of black restlessness, despair, frustration, and anger are not new. It always feels like it is our blood that is on the leaves and at the roots, fertilizing the soil that feeds the American dream of white exceptionalism. We have long felt like we did not belong here.
Langston Hughes in his poem, Let America Be America Again, wrote “There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this homeland of the free.”
But still, in church I wanted to stand, as this is what I have been taught to do by my father and obviously expected to do by my pastor. I wanted to be obedient and follow the rules.
I really want to be proud of my country and to celebrate her independence. I want to answer Frederick Douglass’ question, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” and tell him that although it has taken us 165 years, we have finally arrived. I want to say that the Fourth of July is now our holiday for we have been embraced and counted as part of the American dream; that we have been allowed to fully participate in the democratic process and have seen the day when a person is judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. I want to say that we have gotten past the racist notion that skin color is more important than skills and talent; that we no longer have to shout that, “Black Lives Matter,” for we have gotten to a point where those types of questions (about who matters and who does not) have been settled and that we have realized that we are stronger together as one nation than we are apart.
I want to say that but I cannot. I think of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling; Terence Crutcher and Korryn Gaines; John Crawford III and Eric Garner; Rekia Boyd and Aiyana Jones; Tamir Rice and Freddie Gray, and countless others. I think of their lives and of what we lost on the day that they were murdered. These are the moments when America — a beacon and shining light of white hope and pride — brutally reminds us that the Fourth of July is theirs and not ours, and as they celebrate, we must mourn. It is hard to pledge allegiance to a country that does not recognize your humanity. In 1852, Douglass noted that slavery was the great sin and shame in America; today it is oppression, and it is white supremacy, and it is injustice.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead (kewhitehead@loyola.edu; Twitter: @kayewhitehead) is the #blackmommyactivist and an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the author of “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America” and “Notes from a Colored Girl.”
Should God Bless America?
July 3, 2017
(Justin Sellers / AP)
by Karsonya Wise Whitehead (originally published in The Baltimore Sun, 7/2/17)
My entire life has been centered around the belief that God wants to bless America and that he is only waiting for us to ask.
Growing up as the daughter of a Southern black Baptist minister, my life was filled with church services, communion and prayer. I learned early how to get down on my knees at the end of every day and ask for forgiveness and ask God to bless my family and America. My dad is a veteran, having served during the Vietnam War, and he believed that we needed to remember that America was always primed to be attacked and that it was our prayers for her that kept her safe.
He was also raised in Jim Crow South Carolina and had been actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and he taught me that the America that we were asking God to bless was not the one that we saw in front of us, but it was the potential for what she could some day become. He said that when he would get arrested or spit upon or he was called the N-word, he would silently ask God to bless America despite the hatred and the inequality. When the Rev. Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy were assassinated, he told me that the only thing that got him through those days was prayer and asking God over and over again to overlook the sins of this country and bless us anyway.
We lived in a small black community in Washington, D.C., where most of my teachers were members of my church and when they spoke, in my mind, they had the authority of God behind them. Every morning, from 1st to 8th grade, we had to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. We were “under God,” we were “indivisible,” and we did provide “liberty and justice for all.” As a young child, it made sense to me. America was the center of the world, morally balanced and uniquely charged with the task of saving and protecting the planet.
In history class, my teachers buried us in stories of dead white men, the vaunted Christian forefathers, who worked hard to craft a more perfect union, without teaching us that they were racist, sexist, classist slave holders. We never talked about what or who was missing from these great American tales of courage and valor, never questioned the validity and reliability of these stories. We simply accepted them as the truth, praying for and pledging ourselves to a nation that denied our humanity, that fought a war to keep us enslaved, that set up laws to keep us separate and was comfortable lynching, beating and oppressing us.
I was 5 years old the first time a president ended a speech by calling on God to bless America. It was 1973, President Richard Nixon in the midst of dealing with the Watergate scandal and trying to cover up his lies, ended a speech by saying, “Tonight, I ask for your prayers to help me in everything I do throughout the days of my presidency. God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.”
This was a watershed moment, when God entered the realm of politics and became both a shield and a weapon. As an American citizen, how do we begin to question the actions of our leaders when they invoke the name of God and call upon him to bless us? This phrase was not used again until Ronald Reagan, and since then every president, despite his actions, has called on God publicly to bless this country.
I know that God can, but I am wondering if he should. Should God bless America, a place where economic and social freedom only exist in the lives of a privileged few; a place where women and girls are routinely sexually assaulted; a place where black and brown people have to proclaim that their lives matter? A place where the current president is, by his own words and deeds, a bigot and a demagogue who tweets out hatred on a daily basis and whose election (America’s whitelash moment) ushered in a new age of divisiveness, racism, xenophobia and hatred — a man who ends every speech by calling on God to bless America?
By God’s own words, recorded in his holy Bible — where he calls on us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, to practice radical hospitality, to be the good Samaritan, to shoulder one another’s burdens, to welcome the prodigal children home, to be kind and gentle and long suffering and peaceful, and to be slow to anger and quick to listen — America is not a country that deserves his blessing.
But then I think of my father and remember that we pray not for the ossified, divided America that this country is at this moment, but for the possibility of what she can become. And so, I will continue to ask God to bless America, while also advocating every day to change her.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead (kewhitehead@loyola.edu; Twitter: @kayewhitehead) is an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. A version of this editorial was aired as a public commentary on WYPR 88.1, Baltimore’s NPR station.
Changing the World, One Student at a Time (OpEd)
June 13, 2017
Karsonya Wise Whitehead; June 1, 2017 —Baltimore Sun Op-Ed
Achievement gap is our fault, not the kids’: Teaching is hard work, and teaching in the public school systemin Baltimore City sometimes feels like it is impossible. You spend time juggling classroom management, budget deficits and high teacher turnover while working in environments that are often dark and hot and crowded. It is not for the faint of heart.
I am a former Baltimore City middle school teacher who taught at a persistently dangerous school, and every day I walked into the classroom determined to teach my students that where they started in their lives did not have to be where they finished. I foolishly believed that their lack of educational achievement and success was simply a state of mind that they could change if they worked hard enough. I learned the hard way that I was wrong — that it’s everyone else’s state of mind holding them back.
On the first day of school I used to share a story with my students about my childhood dream of wanting to fly. I told them how I made myself a cape out of my sheet, jumped off of the fifth step and experienced pure joy for just a moment before I came crashing down. I kept it doing over and over again, until I realized that if I kept doing the same thing, the same way, then I would get the same result. So I had my father stand at the bottom of the step, and the next time I jumped, I flew into his arms. It was simple: I changed my thinking and then I changed my ending. I told that story, year after year, thinking that I was encouraging my students to push themselves to think about new solutions to age-old problems. The very last time I told it, I asked my students to tell me how they could apply this story to their life. Only one student spoke up: “Look around this classroom, around this school — it looks like a prison. We are not supposed to fly here. Ya’ll keep telling us to jump down the stairs, with the same dirty capes and the same stupid plans, but you are not trying to catch us.”
That was 10 years ago, and every year, after reading about the state of Baltimore City schools, I think about my former students and about what it must feel like to be a part of a larger failed educational experiment that has been starting and stopping in this country for over 250 years. We are in the midst of a crisis in black education that is tied to poverty and a legacy in discrimination, which has been in effect since 1740 when South Carolina implemented the first Slave Code, prohibiting enslaved persons from learning to read and write. By the end of the Civil War, among the nearly 4 million black people in America, less than 10 percent could read or write.
The biggest impediment to black literacy was the recalcitrant attitude of some white people who firmly believed that free or enslaved, black people were not citizens and therefore had no rights — a harsh and cruel reality. Whenever I shared these facts with my students, they complained and said that these were old boring stories that had nothing to do with them. But today’s injustices are rooted in yesterday’s systemic inequalities, which persist, along with the firm belief by some that black and brown people are still not entitled to have either rights or a voice.
Even though the cultural landscape of the country has changed, negative attitudes toward black children remain and their literacy rates have still not risen to the level of their white and Asian peers. According to the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 18 percent of black fourth-graders are proficient in reading and 19 percent in math. Here in Baltimore City, which maintains one of the country’s highest per-pupil spending levels, there are six schools that do not have any students who are testing proficient in either reading or math.
Black students continue to be disproportionately impacted by the shortcomings in our public education system. It starts as early as pre-K, where black students make up only 17 percent of the student population but account for more than 70 percent of the yearly suspensions. We are at a moment where we spend more time teaching black kids to survive this world rather than teaching them how to thrive in it.
If we want to survive as a city and nation, then we must be willing to admit that this current crisis in black education is our responsibility. We must be willing to admit that the current solutions are not working and that the educational industrial complex must be dismantled so that real change can happen. We must be willing to work together to find new and innovative ways to educate our children. And, if we really want them to learn how to fly — to experience moments of pure joy — than we have to be willing to commit ourselves to doing everything we can to catch them, all of them, before they fall.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead is an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the author of “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post Racial America.” A version of this editorial was aired as a public commentary on WYPR 88.1, Baltimore’s NPR station. She can be reached at kewhitehead@loyola.edu or @kayewhitehead.
On Watching My Son Discover His Blackness… (OpEd)
April 26, 2017
Karsonya Wise Whitehead
Originally published in The Baltimore Sun: “The uprising may be over; but the work is not,” April 27, 2017
My son was six years old the first time that he realized that he was black. He was in the first grade, attending a Baltimore City independent school, and one day, during recess, the boys in his class decided to make-up a game called, “Let’s Get the Black Boy.” Given that he was the only black boy in his grade and thus on the playground, he spent the hour running for fear of what they would do if they caught him. The entire ride home he peppered me with questions about what it meant to be black: Was it something that we chose to become, why did he choose to run, and what did I think they would do if they caught him?
It was a long night for me as I spent the evening writing down everything I wanted to say to the principal. I practiced in front of the mirror, and I worked hard to build up my courage so that I would have the words to say and the heart to say them. My father once said that the hardest parent of being a black parent is the moment you realize that in the face of injustice and racism, your silence will be seen as an act of betrayal, a sign of complicity, and you would forever wear it as a badge that marked your moment of weakness.
The truth of my father’s words has stayed with me, and the responsibility that it calls me to have gets more difficult as the world continues to turn. In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois stated that the problem of the 20th century was the color line, which referred to the role of race and racism in history and society. Today, the problem of the 21st century seems to be a false sense of racial, social and economic equality that fosters a culture of complacency — and intolerance for those who attempt to expose the myth.
It has been two years since the Baltimore uprising that followed Freddie Gray’s death in the back of a police van, a pivotal moment in our city that shifted our focus and called us to action on long-standing problems plaguing our city. It was a time of real honesty where we collectively shared our ideas, frustrations, hopes and dreams for a better, more united Baltimore. Since then, life has settled back in to the familiar. The pockets of the city that have historically been economically stable are once again doing very well; the number of tourists coming in to the city has steadily increased, and museums, hotels, restaurants and real estate are all showing signs of growth. And the neighborhoods that suffered before the death of Gray continue to do so.
Crime is still a persistent and deadly problem: 2015 and 2016 were recorded as, per capita, the deadliest and the second deadliest years respectively in the city’s history, and 2017 has already logged 101 homicides as of Tuesday. High unemployment and poverty rates continue. The public school system is not improving, and with an ongoing budget deficit and looming teacher crises, this is not expected to change. The communities that were largely ignored and underserved have remained at the edges of both the city and our minds. We are still at a crisis moment, though it seems the public urgency to act has evaporated.
We must take immediate concrete steps to finally end this long and difficult battle to save our city. Among them:
• Reallocate city budgets so that we are spending more money on our students that we do on our police force;
•Offer more incentives and financial guidance to first-time small business owners to encourage them to open up grocery and convenience stores in their own neighborhoods;
•Redesign the police department’s Civilian Review Board so that it has a higher visibility, a larger working budget and can act as a more effective checks and balance system for internal affairs;
•Establish more job training programs for unemployed and underemployed residents and returning citizens;
•Accept that we must be the ones to police our own neighborhoods, to reach out to our neighbors and to hold them (and ourselves) accountable for what is happening in our communities.
It has been two very long years, and we must finally and completely choose the type of city that we want to live in and take the necessary action for change. We cannot be silent, lest it be seen by future Baltimoreans as our collective act of betrayal, a sign of our complicity that we would forever wear as a badge that marked our moment of weakness.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead is an associate professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland and the author of “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America.” A version of this editorial was aired as a public commentary on WYPR 88.1, Baltimore’s NPR station. She can reached at kewhitehead@loyola.edu or on Twitter @kayewhitehead.
Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead #blackmommyactivist 
