Who Is We? Integration Desire and Black Silencing

• In Event: Words We Never Said

Abstract

“And I think I'm so obsessed with this because we have this thing [racial integration of schools] that we know works, that the data shows works, that we know is best for kids. And we will not talk about it. And it's not even on the table.” During the summer of 2015, I heard these words from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones on “The Problem We Live With” episode of This American Life podcast. Jones, and many other advocates of integration, frame the desire for integration in terms of a collective “we”. Jones’ we can be read as national, that is American, but can it be equally applied to African-Americans? This paper examines how discourses that advocate for racial integration as well as those that resist integration have silenced the desires of Black families across the class spectrum and centered White frames of analysis (Feagin, 2013).

Politically liberal arguments for integration advocate for Black and White families to share social and economic spaces in neighborhoods, schools and beyond. This liberal frame acknowledges that economic and educational resources are unjustly stratified by race and in response, racial integration is offered as a solution to these disparities (Frankenburg, Lee, & Orfield, 2003). As a result, the discussion of Black children in White schools, tensions over desegregation, and the political will to challenge racism become the dominant discussions. These dominating narratives ultimately center White students, White resistance, and Whiteness as property, while leaving out the voices of Black families and the goal of high quality education for Black children.

Alternatively, publically questioning the need for integration can be taken up as racial segregationist project or aligned with politically conservative agendas. Black nationalist rejections of integration begin from a similar point on acknowledgement of segregation but deny the necessity of collaborating with Whites. A number of more nationalist leaning Black education advocates have aligned themselves with more politically conservative Whites and Blacks who desire not to “socially engineer” integration (DeBray-Pelot, Lubienski, & Scott, 2007). Still, due to emphases of ideology over listening, this camp too reproduces silences.

This paper explores the bifurcated discussion of school segregation and Black education to offer a third path. The third path centers the active listening and response to the needs of the Black families (children and adults) to locate the logic, power, and perspective of those silenced in contemporary education debates. In the tradition of critical race theory, I argue the voices of Black children and adults are most instructive on the value and vices of integration. To date, their voices and prescriptions for change have be silenced by liberal and conservative White frames of educational progress which center White(ness and) presence as a prerequisite for educational excellence.

Author

• R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy, New York University