What Do You Do When Silence Is No Longer Golden?

• In Event: Creating Equitable Spaces: Improving Schools Through the Lens of Diverse Voices

Abstract

For decades the voice of Black Americans has been systematically silenced. From the beginning, when our African ancestors were ripped away from their home shores of Senegambia and west-central Africa, through the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s, to current civil unrest after America witnessed the murder of George Floyd. The Black Lives Matter movement's rise is a direct result of black people who are sick and tired of being silenced. The purpose of this chapter is to describe four personalities; mediator, advocator, agitator, and activator, the situations in which each would be appropriate, and the lessons learned through these experiences. This chapter will cover a brief personal narrative of the author growing up and taught to be seen and not heard and how the sheer notion of silence is golden is no longer appropriate in times of social unrest and when lives are at risk. The author highlights the cognitive dissonance felt as a school board member amid the new social justice movement of the late 2000s.

In considering the conference theme of Cultivating Equitable Education Systems for the 21st Century the chapter provides four distinct roles in which leaders can use their voices to dismantle systems that have disproportionately targeted our most vulnerable population of students. This chapter supports the notion of reimagining the possibilities of education through equity and giving rise to voices once silenced but now necessary for change to occur.

Author

• Darlene E. Breaux, Harris County Department of Education