Yesterday, I wrote about the idea that you could address injustice (in this case, the wide disparity in education outcomes) by treating a community poorly. To some, that sounds like an exaggeration, so I want to continue the theme today by focusing on improvements to cultural competence, something that is much needed, but fails to address deeper cultural competency issues such as firing experienced minority teachers and replacing them with an inexperienced, largely white, teaching force. 

Cultural competency is both a trendy topic these days, and a misunderstood one. So I wanted to provide some resources for folks trying to understand it. Gene Batiste, Steven Jones, Rosetta Lee, Alison Park and Chris Thinnes put together a slide show for the NAIS conference. In it Steven Jones defines cultural competence as: 

the application of knowledge, awareness, and skills that leads to effective interactions at individual, group, and institutional level differences. The outcomes of these interactions consistently result in respectful, inclusive, and equitable relationships, treatments and systems. 

Alison Park describes it more simply: 

Cultural competency is the ability to do your best work with people who aren’t you. 

It’s a hot topic in urban communities because, as we saw so vividly in Ferguson, power structures often look significantly different than a city’s population. That creates significant problems, particularly on issues of race. Dr. Robin Bernstein has done wonderful research on racial innocence, which is, not coincidently, the title of her award-winning book. Her writing points out how critical cultural competence is, because without it, subconscious bias often plays a key role in interactions. For example, this is an excerpt from a blog post about the New York Times referring to Mike Brown, who had been killed by police, as “not an angel:”

Sullivan’s and Eligon’s wishy-washy half-apologies are not just inadequate: by treating the use of the phrase as an isolated incident, Sullivan and Eligon ignore the long history of white assertions that black children cannot be angels. The history that the Vanity Fairarticle exposed is just the tip of the iceberg.

Shortly before the Civil War, many white writers–especially abolitionists–began anxiously debating whether black children who died could become angels, and if so, whether they needed to become white first. As I write in my book, Racial Innocence, the 1862 abolitionist story “Poor Little Violet,” by Lynde Palmer, included a very disturbing scene in which Violet, an enslaved girl, discusses death and angelhood with a white slaveholding girl named Carrie. Violet asks,

“[W]hen we goes to Canaan, that old Sambo sings about, may I be your little slave then, Miss Carrie, ’cause you’s allus so kind?”

“I don’t think there will be any slaves there,” said Carrie, slowly, pondering over the matter.

“Why, what will the black people do, then?” cried Violet, with curious round eyes.

“Maybe,” replied Carrie hesitatingly, “maybe there won’t be any black people—you know, Violet, our bodies are covered up in the ground,”—Violet shivered,—“but our souls go to heaven, and they must all be white.”

“All of ’em?” asked Violet, eagerly.

“Yes, mamma told me that no soul can go till it is washed white in Jesus’ blood.”

“And can my soul be white?” whispered Violet.

“Yes,” said Carrie, “if you ask God.” (Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, p. 59)

The Times‘s reference to Michael Brown as “no angel” is so deeply hurtful because it extends a historical libel that African Americans, and African American children in particular, cannot be innocent. As the slaveholder Carrie tells Violet, to be an angel is to be white. And in this white-authored text–which was intended to critique slavery–a black girl joyously receives this information with hope that she can shed her blackness, become white, and become an angel.

What is at stake in the phrase “no angel” is the racial distribution of innocence. By calling Michael Brown “no angel,” the Times excluded an African American teenager from the realm of innocence. And by doing so, the newspaper of record reserved that assumption of innocence for the white policeman who killed him.

This types of stories have led to calls for cultural competency to be taught in the classroom and to be an explicit part of teacher training:

"We propose required teacher training to build cultural competence and disrupt systemic oppression" #WHYouthLead pic.twitter.com/vCvZ0pcrE4

— White House Af-Am Ed (@AfAmEducation) July 31, 2015

The good news is that, with regards to cultural competency, this trend is reaching Camden. But this progress does not erase the injustices being done to local community, injustices that could have been avoided if organizations had the cultural competency to understand how detrimental firing local, minority teachers was to a community. As charter supporter Howard Fuller says of New Orleans: 

“In too many places in this country, the strategy for ed. reform is shutting down black schools, firing black teachers, and I just don’t see that as the strategy for going forward”

Jennifer Berkshire calls the firing of teachers in New Orleans, “a wound that will never heal.” There is deep damage done to the fabric of these communities, something that is being criticized sharply in mainstream publications like the New York Times. 

But let’s start with the good. Mastery has focused a high-level administrator on cultural competency. The position title is Director of Cultural Context. As folks like those at #educolor continue to put cultural competency on the map, especially for teachers in urban environments, this is a critical step forward. But it does not change the overall strategy of gutting experienced, minority teachers, and replacing them largely with younger, whiter teachers. In other words, it’s great that Mastery has a cultural competency staff member, but part of the reason it’s needed is that local, minority, leadership has been gutted. And part of the reason it’s been gutted is because charter management organization leadership lacks the cultural competency to realize the value of such local, minority leadership. If Mastery (or others which depend on the same hiring model) was truly putting its money where its mouth was, it would have to change its hiring practices. And since the school model is dependent upon younger (read: cheaper), non-unionized staff, it’s not willing to do so. The same is true for the decision to bring Renaissance Schools to Camden. If cultural competency was a high priority, these schools would never have been invited to the city. 

These issues matter. It’s extremely difficult, and I say this from experience, for a young, white, newcomer from a community to overcome bias and engage in a positive way. A vivid example of this went viral last week, when local activist Vida Neil went to Bonsall to investigate allegations that the Uncommon School on the 3rd floor had air conditioning, while the public school on the first two floors did not (which were true). A lot of folks have been highlighting the segregation angle, but I want to focus on the cultural incompetence displayed by the Uncommon School director. What was her reaction to Vida’s understandable frustration? To call security and tell her “you cannot yell in our main office.” The exchange is at 7:00 of Vida’s video: 

Stop yelling at me is a red flag for cultural incompetency. Calling security on a black parent because you feel uncomfortable is another one (and my, does this poor school director look uncomfortable). Others have done a great job documenting how descriptions such as “shrieks” and “shrill” are used in racial ways to undermine minorities. That a young, white school director would do so, even subconsciously, is evidence that this is not her community, and she is not familiar with it, things of critical importance to running a school in Camden. Too often, Camden administrators dismiss community because they are uncomfortable with historical forms of black protest. Stop yelling is as dangerous for its ability to make its speaker believe she is a victim (remember: Vida’s kid goes to a school without air-conditioning) as it is as an attempt to control a parent with understandable frustration. 

That’s not to blame the school director. Again, these things are hard. And she should not have been put into this position by the people who hired her (note: while the young woman’s name is included in the video, it is not included in this post. This is not an attack but an example, and I don’t want it popping up in her google searches). Rather, we should be embracing schools that have local, experienced, minority teachers and administrators, and rejecting those with hiring models that put people in charge of schools who do not have the cultural competency to run them effectively. 

On issues of cultural competency, we’re seeing progress in Camden. There is a realization that cultural competency is going to be critical to educational success here. But that realization is skin deep. There is a deeper challenge than changing the title of a administrator. That deeper challenge is to realize the deep injustices caused by firing minority educators, and the disservice to Camden done by creating power structures which put people in power who have little in common with the surrounding city. As Chris Thinnes and others write, cultural competency isn’t something that’s extra, it can’t just be added on to an ideology that opposes it. It requires deep changes. Until these schools are willing to make cultural competency a central component of their decision-making strategy, they will continue to inflict wounds larger than those they heal.