Moral Imperatives in Education Research: Racial Justice and Critical Whiteness

• In Event: The Grammar of School Discipline in Alabama

Abstract

Purpose. 2020 should have taught us that we cannot take humanity for granted. Yet, we arrogantly proclaim to care, love, and be empathetic to others, even amidst their obvious destruction. It is grossly embarrassing that we had to face a global pandemic and bear witness to even more murders of Black Americans to finally cop to the fact that not all lives matter. This is of grave importance because as we, humanity, attempt to assert our morality, we cannot and will never reconcile our morality, or lack thereof, when we remain complicit in immorality. Plainly, never will morality embrace while we refuse to embrace others.

Perspectives. We present ourselves as good even while we engage, reify, and maintain practices that hurt others. This is how whiteness works. For the Miss Anne caricature, she presumes herself to be moral whilst reading bible verses to enslaved Black children. For the Becky caricature, she feels morally astute in teaching Black and Brown students whilst never living in close proximity to or having meaningful relationships with them. Many teachers or school administrators believe themselves to be equitable, unbiased, and even antiracist educators but still draw from racist tropes to justify their maltreatment of Black and Brown students. Those children are deemed disobedient, disruptive, or defiant because they refuse to bow down to white supremacist authority. As if the only good role for Black students to play in an anti-Black racist school is to shut up, sit down, and nod politely; a unidirectional respectability politic.

Modes of inquiry and data sources. This is the moral dilemma. How is it one proclaims themselves to be a moral human being when they engage in immoral behaviors? The Grammar of School Discipline answers this exact question because as the authors canvased school discipline across Alabama via state and national numeric data alongside ethnographica data, they also unearthed the disgusting reality of whiteness that then plagues schools in ways that hurt students of Color, particularly Black students.

Conclusions. Too many educators and administrators in the field of education refuse to bear witness to the racial reality of anti-Black racism in schools. This egregious blindness perpetuates whiteness in education just as it perpetuates immorality in teaching. Therefore, silencing the disciplinary actions that take place in schools is a testament to how schools maintain white supremacy and brush their racist behaviors under the rug. Notwithstanding this culture of silence, the papers that follow clearly demonstrate how schools engage in anti-Black punitive measures that not only disrespect Black students but seek to literally “whip” them into shape.

Significance. We are not learning from our past, nor are we facing the realities of white supremacy presenting anew. If education is to be emancipatory in any sense of the term, it must honestly attend to its past as ways to better inform our actions today. As the authors contend, the removal of students of Color is just an evolved way to continue controlling the movement, place, and bodies of people of Color.

Author

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of San Diego