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By Joanie Harmon
The title of “Anti-Blackness at School: Creating Affirming Educational Spaces for African American Students,” leaves nothing to the imagination, and indeed, co-authors Joi Spencer (’06, Ph.D.) and Kerri Ullucci (’05, Ph.D.) intended it that way. The interracial perspectives of the book—by Spencer, who is Black and from Los Angeles, and Ullucci, who is White and hails from Rhode Island—are girded by the co-authors’ experiences as classroom teachers, and by Spencer’s own personal history as a Black student in L.A. schools. The co-authors were moved to write the book after nearly 20 years of on-going conversations, as well as their experience in the UCLA division of Urban Schooling and its impact on their research and practice.
UCLA Ed&IS Urban Schooling alumnae Joi Spencer and Kerri Ullucci open difficult conversations with their classroom teacher expertise and Spencer’s lived experiences as a Black student.
Ed&IS: How has your experience in the classroom informed the writing of “Anti-Blackness at School”?
JOI SPENCER: It is both: my experience being a student in the classroom [and] my experience being a teacher in the K–12 classroom. There are a lot of personal examples in the book where I’m able to reflect on my own experience. A lot of the ideas I talk about in the book are experiences that I had in schools that seemed like they were egalitarian, seemed like they were equitable. But when you scratch the surface, you could see clearly who was getting honors classes, who was not; who was getting tested for gifted and who was not; how they spoke to students.
Most of the kids I grew up with didn’t speak a lot of standard English. Their parents were from the South. My mother is from the Midwest, so I didn’t have a Southern accent. I think a lot of teachers saw me as maybe a little bit more intelligent than the kids who may have been African American and Southern, who were seen as maybe not as intelligent. So, there were these little subtle things that if you paid attention … they kind of bubbled up to the top.
AKERRI ULLUCCI: Both Joi and I were classroom teachers before we became professors. I used to teach fourth grade in an urban location. And now, we both prepare teachers to teach, and the issues around race are always critical.
We both went to UCLA because of the focus on Urban Schooling, and that’s a rarity—a program that’s so anchored in the importance of equity lenses and of paying attention to who is in front of you. My interest in this work unquestionably started from my experience with UCLA.
Ed&IS: How do you seek to make educators—both non-Black and Black—more aware of anti-Blackness?
SPENCER: Most Black children are going to be taught by non-Black teachers. Sometimes we’ll have White teachers say, “You know, I’m just not able to do that.” They’re uncomfortable. And we tell them that we rely on non-Black teachers to help students of color be successful. I don’t get a chance to say, “Well, I’m not White, so when I have a White student in my class, I can’t help them.”
In the book, we raise awareness by helping people acquire the language for the idea that race and racism are real things. We say that a student can get special services if they have a special need or if they speak in a language other than English. But there are no special services for a kid if they are Black, because race is not something that is called out.
ULLUCCI: About 85 percent of my students are White. Being able to have these conversations with them is more important, or at least as important as talking to any other group, because it’s the behavior that needs to change.
A lot of my personal mentors as teachers—like the person that I worked under as a student teacher, and then my doctoral advisor—are Black people. And so, a lot of my understanding about how you teach was through a Black lens. I know that that’s rare, and that has helped me to this day.
I remember sitting in Tyrone’s (Howard, UCLA professor of education) classes. I was his TA, working with the master’s students and I can remember things that he said, and the way that he would approach different topics that I knew were different from the way that I would. Part of that is gender, and part of that is race. I can say things that he can’t say, and he says things that I can’t say. Being able to see that when I was developing as an instructor was really important.
Ed&IS: How did your experiences at UCLA in Urban Schooling shape your research and your practice as teachers, and now, as teacher educators?
SPENCER: UCLA was an incredible training ground for Kerri and I. Dr. Mike Rose, who since passed away, was an incredible mentor of ours and helped teach us how to write in a way that is accessible to teachers and accessible to the public. We actually dedicate the book to him because of his impact on our writing and helping us to see that when you write as a scholar, it’s not about the big words but relaying ideas in a way that makes people comfortable and is accessible.
Dr. Megan Franke (UCLA professor of education) had a very big influence on my work. She has taught thousands and thousands of teachers how to teach mathematics better and she believes in the day-to-day, on-the-ground work of improving teaching. As my advisor and mentor, she has helped me to weave together my ideas about educational equity/racial justice with my commitments to designing and delivering mathematics instruction of impact. I see these as inseparable.
ULLUCCI: Joi and I have literally been writing for 20 years. She and I became colleagues, and then very good friends from our being in the cohort together. I always look back with such gratitude that I’ve been able to maintain these relationships so long after.
It’s the same thing with Tyrone. I was his very first doctoral student when he came to UCLA and it’s such a blessing that literally, 21 years from when I started, he is still such a central figure and mentor in my life, and has meant so much to the trajectory that I’m on. I would not be in this field if it wasn’t for his mentorship when I was his student.
Ed&IS: What is the most important thing you hope people will take away from the book?
ULLUCCI: It’s like a walk-through of the professional lives of people who are trying to think hard about these things. We’ve been collecting experiences for a long time and trying to put it together in a way that we thought would serve teachers. We were very much thinking about practitioners, and about the way that we translate what we’re seeing for mass audiences, versus talking to very niche populations. The tone of it, and the suggestions in it are written to address that audience, so hopefully, that will make it usable by most people.
A lot of the ideas I talk about in the book are experiences that I had in schools that seemed like they were egalitarian, seemed like they were equitable. But when you scratch the surface, you could see clearly who was getting honors classes, who was not; who was getting tested for gifted and who was not; how they spoke to students.
SPENCER: I hope they read the personal stories that are in there—those matter a lot. But I also hope that teachers don’t shy away from some of the tougher work. A lot of the book’s goal is to raise comfort with talking about race as a factor that shapes what goes on in the classroom and the schoolyard, getting rid of the fear of it.
I think teachers are sort of trained to be race-less and to be color blind—“We judge people ‘not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’” This is used to sort of erase [race], and not speak about race at all, as if it doesn’t actually have impact. But, that was not what Martin Luther King intended by his words. You can’t ignore something—that does not honor it. That is not a solution.
Excerpts From The Book
As we write this chapter, examples of the dishonesty of whitewashing and omission abound. In a case of actual omission, a public school in Utah allowed students not to participate in a Black History Month curriculum. Parents were allowed to sign an opt-out form to remove their students from these lessons (Asmelash, 2021). The school ended up reversing the decision after public protest, but the message that Black history is marginal remains. In what other context would students be allowed to opt out of history lessons?
In a new twist, Black books are under particular fire, as they increasingly find themselves on banned book lists. In the context of the conservative social movement to ban critical race theory from schools, Black stories are believed to be inherently critical race theory stories (Bellamy Walker, 2022) and are getting swept up in that storm. The American Library Association cites rising challenges against books written by Black authors (Will, 2021). The Katy, Texas, school department removed two of Jerry Craft’s (award-winning) books from their libraries, seemingly because they show Black boys experiencing racism. All Black stories, and stories mentioning the Black experiences, begin to look (to some people) like a criticism of White people and their histories, and opponents target Black books as promoting critical race theory despite the fact that the books never actually discuss critical race theory at all.
In a related mess, Texas State Representative Matt Krause (see Lopez, B., 2021) sent a letter in October 2021 to superintendents asking if their schools possessed books from a list of 850 titles believed to make students feel “discomfort” or “guilt.” Superintendents were asked to reply with (a) which books they had, (b) how many copies they had, (c) where they were located, and (d) how much they spent on them. Titles included: Amnesty International’s We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, and This is Your Time by Ruby Bridges.
Just who are these books making uncomfortable or guilty? Who is being protected here and who has gone missing from the equation? Do Black boys who live in Texas not know that racism exists, and the Katy school department is trying to protect them by removing these titles? Or do they not want to let White children read about racism? Our professor used to tell us if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, you know which one you hit because it is barking. North Carolina has just passed rules that threaten discipline or dismissal of educators who “teach that American historical figures were not heroes, undermine the U.S. constitution in lessons or say that racism is a permanent part of American life” (Associated Press, 2021, para. 2). Rather, it states in this new policy that “all people who contributed to American society will be recognized and presented as reformists, innovators and heroes to our culture” (emphasis added) (para. 4).
Let’s think this through. Teachers are being told that people who contributed to society must be painted in a positive light. So any contribution has to be seen as heroic? How do we teach Jefferson? Andrew Jackson? We will tell Black children (and all children) that Jefferson was a model Founding Father? Of course, he contributed to the country in indelible and important ways. But how do we overlook his participation with slavery? His plantation? His relationship with Sally Hemings and their enslaved children? When we omit these facts, the goal is not the truth, but a whitewashing of it.
Here we see yet another example of how storytelling has led us astray. Schools have been telling stories about the past, fictionalized stories about the greatness of White leaders who walk through history unblemished and pristine. But they—like the stories we tell about race—are inaccurate. They miss the full picture. They leave out key information. Students would have so much richer an experience if we told them the truth. If we told them that Washington was a pivotal leader and a plantation owner. That Jefferson penned much of the Declaration of Independence and held more than 600 slaves. That most people are not 100% good or 100% evil but instead a mind-numbing array of in-between and that people can do great things and horrific things and history, like life, is filled with this contradiction. We can teach them that the United States is a beautiful, messy, imperfect country that aspires to something we have not yet reached but we still keep trying. We can tell the truth.
When you were in grade school, you remember reading stories by African American authors such as Faith Ringgold or Walter Dean Myers, right? In history, you learned of the immense diversity in Africa, studying various people groups and some of the 2,000 African languages, and can point out South Africa or Kenya on a map. Throughout social studies, you consistently learned about Black people who were creating, resisting, and moving society forward, beyond Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. You have taken field trips to local Black history museums.
In middle school you learned about the complex global trading systems and architectural feats that were present in ancient Africa. You learned that Africa is a continent, not a country, home to arguably the richest man in world history (Mansa Musa), and some of the earliest universities (University of al-Qarawiyyin, Morocco) and libraries (in Egypt and Timbuktu).
You are knowledgeable about Black intellectuals, those authors, artists, poets, and scientists who helped build the United States. You learned about the kingdoms of Nubia and Egypt. In high school, you learned about race and racism, and how racist policies (redlining, gerrymandering) create economic and social obstacles for African Americans. You studied the Harlem Renaissance. You learned about Black women leaders, from Mary McLeod Bethune to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
You know about people and places in Africa.
You can point out African influences in American culture, from the banjo to jeans/denim to the cultivation of rice.
Your high school had Black students in AP courses, and in calculus and physics.
You know about Black scholars and thinkers, those born in the United States and those born abroad.
You have read Walker and Baldwin and Du Bois and Angelou. You have seen Jacob Lawrence’s work.
You know more than a partial view of slavery told largely from a White perspective both without context and without any connection to the present, filled with well-meaning White people who fought to free enslaved Africans.
You know more than ancient Egypt, or bits and pieces of colonialism that you were taught over and over and still don’t have a firm grasp of.
Or you don’t. Or you didn’t.
We imagine that for many readers, you did not have an opportunity to learn the above. The standards did not “allow for it” or the curriculum did not “cover it.” If these omissions are more in line with your experience, you would be a typical student in the United States.
Just who are these books making uncomfortable or guilty? Who is being protected here and who has gone missing from the equation? Do Black boys who live in Texas not know that racism exists, and the Katy school department is trying to protect them by removing these titles? Or do they not want to let White children read about racism? Our professor used to tell us if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, you know which one you hit because it is barking.
For many years, we have asked our college students what they remember learning about Black and African-descent people in schools. The responses are always the same: about slavery, the Civil War, perhaps the civil rights period, and they are done. Literature is just as sparse. It is a story of omission (not being included; being invisible) and whitewashing (the telling of half-truths about history in order to be less culpable). Both omission and whitewashing have similar consequences. They enable incomplete stories to dominate our understanding, skewing our collective memory. They suppress the contributions of Black people while exalting the contributions of White people. They allow students to remain ignorant of the astounding precolonial African civilizations that were pioneering in so many ways. They sanitize history in a way that makes it more about nostalgia and patriotism and less about what actually happened in the past. In all these effects, omission and whitewashing help support the structures of White supremacy.
Reprinted by permission of the Publisher. Joi A. Spencer and Kerri Ullucci, Anti-Blackness at School: Creating Affirming Educational Spaces for African American Students, New York: Teachers College Press. Copyright © 2023 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.
