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My Teacher Said ‘I Love My Mammy’ and My Principal Thought I Was the One With...
Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to defend free speech on campuses and criticized the idea of creating safe spaces on campus, protected from hate speech. He argued that classrooms...
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We All Have Blind Spots About Race. Here Are More Racial Crossfit Exercises...
I recently wrote about my White teacher who badmouthed civil rights in 1995. She willfully did not want to let go of White supremacy. There are other White people who want to see a better country, but...
View ArticleHey, Rick Hess, Know Your History on White Supremacy
Last week, Rick Hess lambasted not only the Harvard protesters who greeted Betsy DeVos with a banner reading “White Supremacist,” but all the progressive education reformers who stayed silent about it....
View ArticleHey Kanye, I’m an English Teacher But I’ve Got a History Lesson for You
Welcome to my class, Kanye. Before you arrived, I read this quote from you telling me that learning is important to you and that you are good at absorbing information. “I was never really good at...
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Hope and Outrage: Put Kanye’s Stupidity to Good Use
OUTRAGE: Having Black Skin Will Get You the Win So if y’all haven’t heard, we’re witnessing the rebirth of “Hidden Figures” in a Black Girl Magic trio from Banneker High School in D.C. India Skinner,...
View ArticleIndependence Has Always Been a Day Late and a Dollar Short for Black People,...
On June 19, 1865, two years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing (only) some of the enslaved, Union Major General Gordon Granger, rode into Galveston, Texas and announced: The...
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Kanye Is Wrong About a Lot of Things But He Might Be Right About This
Outrage: The Constitution Doesn’t Care About Black People I think Kanye is suffering from that middle child syndrome where he feels like he’s not getting enough attention from his parents so he does...
View ArticleMy Ancestor Was in the Confederate Army. That Matters When I’m in Front of...
In my current role as an assistant professor of practice at a graduate school of education, one of the things I try to impart to new teachers is the importance of understanding our own identities as...
View ArticleEvery New Year Black Families Await the Promise of Better Schools
Almost every December 31, at 7:00 p.m., my family joins the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) to honor our ancestors who awaited in breathtaking suspense for Lincoln’s promise of an Emancipation...
View ArticleWhat ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ Means for My Black Daughters and the Schools They...
As the Black mother of two Black girls, I am always acutely aware of how Black girls are harmed in this society. However, there are some moments in America, when it is amplified that me and my girls,...
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Stop Whitewashing Black History Month
Calling teachers Klansmen is a strong statement. But, it’s not far off. With all of the teaching certifications and professional development, diversity and inclusion trainings, and Black history month...
View ArticleHaving a Mock Slave Auction Isn’t Teaching Students About Slavery, It’s Just...
As an educator, I am sometimes left with more questions than answers. One question that I have is how come conducting a mock slave auction is a popular way to teach slavery to elementary students?...
View ArticleJust Like Emancipation, Quality Schools Are Being Delayed and Denied to Black...
“Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” While many Americans are waiting with baited breath for July 4, today Black people around the country...
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Toni Morrison Was the Brave and Honest Storyteller of Our Vexed History
As a high school English teacher, I had the privilege of teaching Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” a novel I’ve read and taught time and again, and one that never fails to overwhelm with awe, silence and...
View ArticleTeaching About Race Does Not Make You Un-American
“The Holocaust was an atrocity.” This was the example I gave my eighth graders as we were learning our words of the week. And with one word, I learned that my eighth grade students had no idea what...
View ArticleThe Suffragettes Were Not Allies to Black Women, They Were Racist
This week America celebrated the 99th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s passage, which granted women the right to vote. However, like much of American history, the words in our Constitution don’t...
View ArticleOur Children Need Us Not to Grow Weary in the Work of Anti-Racism
I am finding it difficult to get through most days without crying, without feeling like water is rising above my head, without feeling a great sense of despair. I feel a heaviness in my chest....
View ArticleLet’s Make This Juneteenth Our Collective Independence Day
As I look at the world right now, I see a lot of belief statements and acknowledgment of past hurts—a reckoning to finally accept that we have much work to do as a nation where it pertains to racism...
View ArticleThis Juneteenth I’m Challenging Educators to Emancipate Themselves From a...
When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, this marked the end of slavery in the United States … that is what a lot of people learned in school. Honestly, it is more nuanced than that....
View ArticleWhat If Your Entire School System Was the Racist Monument That Should Come Down?
The angry protestors are coming for public statues of historic Americans as diverse as Confederate traitors like Robert E. Lee and slave-owning American founders like George Washington. But what do...
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