4 Books About Racism in U.S. Education

Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children

The school integration attempts that followed in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education did more to hurt Black children than to help them, according to this illuminating study from Rooks (A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit), the chair of Africana Studies at Brown University. Drawing on a range of sociological and archival data, Rooks describes “the trauma Black students suffered” due to integration—not just the havoc caused by many school districts’ attempts to resist desegregation (one Virginia county famously closed all its schools rather than comply), but the disruption Black students experienced when their own schools shuttered (many districts that complied did so by closing Black schools and reassigning the students to white schools) and they were thrust into environments where they were exposed to racism from white classmates and teachers. She also draws an astute through line between school integration and the emergence of the school-to-prison pipeline, arguing that white students’ and teachers’ racist fear of Black students is what jump-started it. Rooks concludes by spotlighting the “community school” model pioneered by the Black Panthers—which has recently had a successful relaunch in Oakland, Calif.—that emphasizes the democratic engagement of the local community, and which, Rooks argues, has the power to promote integration organically via “collective buy-in”: “If communities allow it, integration works,” she writes, but only when all community members feel engaged. The result is a paradigm-shifting reassessment of a milestone of the civil rights movement. (Mar.)

Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism

The American education system for centuries developed on two parallel tracks, according to this brilliant history from sociologist and poet Ewing (Ghosts in the Schoolyard). One track, Ewing writes, was for white and European immigrant children, and on it great strides in education theory were made that emphasized how cooperation through play made for engaged citizens. These developments, as Ewing cannily notes, also functioned to erase cultural boundaries between white children from disparate backgrounds, solidifying a sense of cross-cultural whiteness. Meanwhile, the other track, for Indigenous and Black children, aimed to “annihilate” their cultural identity and train them as “subservient laborers,” according to Ewing. She brings to light plenty of harrowing evidence to this effect, not just as a broad strokes theory but in the minutiae of teacher-training manuals and educators’ writings. Her citations span from Reconstruction era textbooks written by Northern white educators who stated that their aim was to stop Black people’s “relapse into barbarism” and turn them into “useful citizens,” to her own recollections of her Chicago middle school class being taken to the Cook County Jail in an effort to have the students “scared straight.” This ideological undertaking was often framed as a common sense, dollars-and-cents solution, Ewing notes; for instance, she reports that the idea that “the country could save money by schooling Indians rather than endeavoring to kill them” was a recurring theme in her research. It’s a troubling and eye-opening examination of the foundational role educators played in developing America’s racial hierarchy. (Feb.)

Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice

Suspension rates in American schools skyrocketed after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, according to this troubling study. Sociologist Kupchik (Homeroom Security) draws on extensive archival and statistical analysis to rule out any reason for the explosive rise in suspensions other than white resistance to desegregation. Before Brown v. Board, “suspension was simply not a common school practice,” Kupchik points out, contending that from a “pedagogical or behavior-management perspective” there is no justification for it, so suspension “only make[s] sense if we see these students as unwanted.” Delving into historical case studies of school desegregation in Massachusetts and Delaware, he provides ample evidence of the use of suspension as a weapon against Black students, some of whom were brutally attacked by white students and then suspended for “fighting.” While Black suspension rates remain disproportionately high today, Kupchik makes a convincing case that the lessening of the gap between Black and white suspension rates shows that while explicit racism is less likely to be the impetus behind suspension, unconscious bias is still motivating the practice (he cites infuriating anecdotes of Black male students being suspended because their innocuous actions—like standing up from their desk—were considered “threatening”). It’s an essential read for educators. (Mar.)

You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea

A harmful pedagogical theory has reigned supreme for decades despite a lack of evidence in its favor, according to this unsettling history. Education scholar Fallace (In the Shadow of Authoritarianism) argues that the “learning style” hypothesis (e.g., “that everyone has a style of learning through which they learn best”) is grounded in racism. Tracing the history of the idea from its nebulous early-20th-century origins in the field of cognitive psychology, through its midcentury crossover into education and business schools, to its late-20th- and early-21st-century ascendance as common sense pedagogical practice, Fallace shows that the idea has never been proven or even seriously tested for educational environments. He further demonstrates that what was, at best, a humanist theory expressing a need to embrace individual difference, was from the outset warped into a means for reinforcing racial hierarchies (a core tenet became that Black and Latino students excelled with a more “physical approach to learning”). Fallace writes that, in chasing down the notion’s origins, he found the opposite of what he expected—not researchers pushing a hackneyed idea, but researchers cautioning against their theory being adopted for practical application even as educators latched onto it. He posits that educators were looking for an excuse to alleviate growing expectations placed on them regarding Black and Latino educational outcomes. Rigorous and persuasive, this is a must-read for educators. (May)