It Didn’t Have to Be the Children: A Historical Analysis of School-Based Trauma

• In Event: Insisting on Critical Hope: Interrogating School-Based Trauma and Reimagining Liberatory Possibilities

Abstract

Background
Schools have historically been sites of trauma for Black youth (Dumas, 2014). The foundation of U.S. public schools is steeped in race-based exclusion, with racial trauma persisting to this day. As McKinney de Royston et al. (2021) argue, “the white supremacist foundations of American society (Baptiste, 2015; King, 2011) have always rendered Black children socially vulnerable to physical and psychological violence” (McKinney de Royston et al., 2021). While this school-based trauma (SBT) is borne by Black children and their families, it has simultaneously played out in the public eye. The narratives of school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s, exemplified by children like Ruby Bridges and the Little Rock Nine are lauded as testaments of American progress. However, these stories are often recounted– and taught – from the dominant white perspective. When reexamined in ways that center Black children’s voices, their families’ assets, and the realities of SBT, these historical accounts can serve as counterstories (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) to offer a critical reevaluation of historical record– and inform teacher practice.

Methods
We construct counterstories of school desegregation by qualitatively analyzing historical records. We draw from the theoretical frame, Systemically Trauma-Informed Practice (SysTIP) (Authors, Year), which combines Critical Race Theory with an ecological frame to investigate how SBT permeated early school desegregation. We ask:
Where are assets present, in the experiences of Black children who desegregated US schools in the 1950-60s?
How does white supremacy construct the narration of Black children’s SBT?
We utilize an interpretive approach (Wetherell et al., 2001) to study SBT and white supremacy, while attending to the historical context. We examine autobiographies (Bridges, 2017; Beals, 1995, Malloy, 1986), media, and secondary texts that illuminate children’s experiences. We also include texts detailing Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) present in segregated schools (Siddle Walker, 1996) preceding and overlapping the period. While some of these texts have been extensively analyzed, they have not been brought together to analyze their implications for SysTIP.

Findings
Our findings illuminate the pervasiveness of SBT for these Black children– and the strength of their families. The children forced to enter previously segregated white school buildings experienced racial trauma as they walked past violent crowds daily, into buildings, to study alone and be aggressed. Secondly, we find that these students experienced institutional betrayal (i.e. harm constructed by institutions that individuals depend on; Smith & Freyd, 2014). Last, we find that as SBT was playing out, these stories were re-told in ways that perverted and erased the daily dangers, thus constructing an incomplete history of a national experience.

Significance
By analyzing historical occurrences of trauma in U.S. schools, we invite scholars and practitioners to use history as a guide for educator practice. This analysis generates tools so that counterstories can be more readily acknowledged, constructed, and valued in everyday moments of racial harm. These tools can help dissipate the smog of racism (Tatum, 1997), to reexamine our histories, and dismantle the racial injustice of SBT in the work towards liberation.

Authors

• Simona Goldin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Addison Duane, Sacramento State University

• Debi Khasnabis, University of Michigan

• Kimberly C. Ransom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign