American Schools and the Conversation of Black Identity

Let’s imagine: You are a black student navigating high school. Your history classes consist of coverage of slavery and the occasional civil rights activist. Your English classes consist of the “classics,” works majorly written by white men, and if the black experience is integrated, it is typically a white man who seizes the opportunity to “accurately” depict this experience. Expectations of your future are low, considering that black kids are expected to either have rap dreams, sports dreams, or get trapped in the incarceration system. However, you’ve found your school’s Black Student Union, an organization whose mission is to express the story that is the oppression yourself and your ancestors have suffered, and you’re given the opportunity once a year to demonstrate this message to your entire school. As there are not plans to hold an in-person assembly for black history month, the principal asks your organization in the middle of the month to create a video to be shown to the school, but when asked of any specific expectations under this short timeframe, the principal expresses none. Excited but frustrated at the opportunity to create a video demonstrating the narratives of your community under this short time frame, you help your organization create a 15-minute student-made video. Despite the hard work put into 10-15 student interviews, hours of editing and composing, your principal rejects the video, claiming that it did not fit the time frame which he had envisioned, but not expressed. This is the silencing suffered by the Black Student Union at Van Horn High School in Independence, Missouri, their video, “An Unfiltered Reality of Black America through the Eyes of Us,” scrapped after hours of dedication with little respect to the students’ time.

According to U.S. News and World Report (2021), the black population at Van Horn High School makes up 12% of its overall diversity, a statistic which translates to a limited opportunity to express a black perspective in the classroom (U.S. News and World Report, 2021). This in turn creates an emphasized importance in events such as the black history month assembly for many schools, as it demonstrates the perfect opportunity to express frustrations of suppressed and limited perspectives on the institutions in place under an accepted lens.  In a blog article by the National Center for Education Statistics (2019), “New Report Shows Increased Diversity in U.S. Schools, Disparities in Outcomes” it is reported that the gap between white and black students enrolled in U.S. institutions was narrowed between 1992 and 2017; however, the conversation that is reflection of the education system from these students’ eyes is not seeming to improve. In a separate example from my own school, this year during our Black History Month Assembly held by our Black Student Union, myself and a group of students initially were supposed to perform a poem highlighting the limitations of representation in the history of black people taught in our high school; however, this poem was ultimately not approved by our administration. This was due to the claim that teachers may become offended at our representation of their teaching; however, offense from these matters should be absorbed and reflected as an opportunity to incorporate change into our curriculum, rather than ignoring the problems at hand. While the school system is often excited to claim its statistics on students from different backgrounds, it fails to recognize that this diversity does not reflect its representation of these students in the classrooms, a problem which creates ignorance of these perspectives for generations.

With these examples presented, a blurred line between the perceived celebration of diversity and the true recognition in problems of curriculum and school culture are presented. If schools are willing to grant opportunities for minority communities to be represented, then these cannot be truly utilized with suppression given to the expression of identity the students create.

NCES Blog | New Report Shows Increased Diversity in U.S. Schools, Disparities in Outcomes. (2019, June 20). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/new-report-shows-increased-diversity-in-u-s-schools-disparities-in-outcomes

Nelson, M. (2021, March 16). Van Horn High School Black Student Union members feel censored by administration. KSHB. https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/van-horn-high-school-black-student-union-members-feel-censored-by-administration

U.S. News and World Report. (2021). Best High Schools Ranking - Van Horn High. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/missouri/districts/independence-30/van-horn-high-11681