White Privilege and Systemic Prejudice in the Little Red Schoolhouse: (Narratives and Hard Truths by a Former African American Principal)

By Scarlet Harvey Black MEd.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many cracks, fissures, and fractures in the fabric of America’s foundations, American life, and the very pillars of our democracy. As the oldest and most enduring democracy in the world, the pandemic that took the lives of six hundred thousand-plus souls in the U.S. alone, followed by racial disparities, a tumultuous presidential election, and the aftermath that led to the most restrictive and fierce state laws to suppress the votes of the country’s minority populations and conceal their history and racial experiences.

In fact, before these events, prepandemic schooling in the United States was always tenuous for many minorities and the poor in the educational process. Education in America was designed for the privileged, the wealthy, and the white male. When it became available to other economic levels, women, racial, and ethnic groups, minorities were already behind, and it seems that the more these groups have strived to gain access economically, educationally, politically, and socially, they are still striving for equal access to the American dream and the opportunity of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Education is the key to attaining this access and generational success. Through the lens of her life and a forty-two-year career as a public school educator, first-time author Scarlet Harvey Black looks backward and forward to how we got here and adds her thoughts to the discourse on how we move on. She addresses “white privilege” and systemic prejudice that characterizes the barriers and obstacles faced by minority and poor students in America’s schools and the impact that decades of these sustained barriers have on the trajectory of a student’s life or potential. With the anecdotal narratives she lived and the hard truths she learned along the way, Scarlet Harvey Black is candid and heartfelt in the writing of her accounts. She challenges us to have tough and honest conversations on where we go from here to ensure that every child in this country has access to a quality learning environment and a quality teacher to deliver the instruction needed for them to achieve their highest aspirations in the country they call home!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662465413

Book preview

Chapter 1

You Ain’t Nothing

You ain’t nothing but a n——er, bitch, and my child does not have to listen to you were the piercing words this parent spoke, as she stood in the main office, shouting racial epithets and profanity against me. I could only look at her and think, I am your child’s principal, and she is looking at this scene with embarrassment and tears in her eyes. Not only were the words awful but also she looked awful while saying them. Dressed in frayed pajama bottoms and wearing a confederate flag T-shirt, she had lost most of her teeth from smoking, and her hair was shaggy, dirty, and colored bright pink.

This incident was one of the hundreds over a forty-two-year career as someone being highly educated and trained in counseling/supervision and administration/supervision. Nevertheless, the hurt always landed in the same place within my heart, mind, and soul. How could folks act this way? However, it was ironic that each profanity and racially demeaning incident came from a place that folks that looked like me could not reach, regardless of how much education I had worked hard to obtain. In their minds, I was always reduced to being just another black face where being called the N-word was just as routine as drinking a glass of water!

There was something empowering for the white angry parent(s), teacher(s), district office staff, immediate supervisor, sometimes the district office secretary, or superintendent that felt they had the power based on their whiteness and upbringing that an uppity N is not going to have authority, prove me wrong, contradict me, question, speak, or achieve. You learn early in your career that the good old boy and good old girl network is alive and well in our educational institutions from the schoolroom to the boardroom. This belief and attitude are often generational and well entrenched in the doctrine of educational policies and procedures at the national, state, and local levels.

What made this parent’s anger so terrible was the fact that her daughter frequently accused black boys in her class of inappropriate sexual touching. This had gone on every year and at every grade level that this girl had been in our school. Eventually, the last black boy she accused came forward and said she was always making sure she was around them, and he wanted no part of it. An astute teacher witnessed her taking his hand and placing it on her butt. When the teacher called her out on it, she turned it on the boy and said he had touched her inappropriately. The parent was called in for a conference, and the scene ensued. She stated in her outrage that she was going to take her daughter out of the school and report me to the school board. She did and a visit from my immediate supervisor followed. Not only did the parent call the school board, the superintendent, a certain teacher on my staff, and the crossing guard across the street who held court with the parents every day but also she called the state superintendent.

While this parent may not have been able to use correct grammar or had a tooth in her mouth, she reached her targets. Of course, she failed to mention her daughter’s past weekly inappropriate and sexually suggestive behavior toward the black boys in her class could not be addressed or valid. The reports that went home were always opposite from the truth reported by the teacher and other students in the class. The boys had also reported that they were constantly being approached by her daughter and wanted their desks moved closer to the teacher to avoid trouble. Even though the accusations had been proven repeatedly to be inaccurate, her daughter would not lie, and nothing would convince her otherwise. And she would go higher.

An investigation was required by my immediate supervisor that went on for three days and impacted any other meetings and events on my schedule. I had to give an oral and written statement of what had transpired. It was often like this in these hundreds of situations involving black and white that I had to navigate. Just to be able to go into the school and classrooms to observe and monitor effective teaching practices and procedures was always a welcomed and needed change. Just to be able to sit and talk with the children was also a welcome and needed change. To speak with a child because that child just wanted to come and sit with their school principal always thrilled my heart and reinforced my reason for choosing the profession I loved…because it was always about the children.

I learned early to always keep a locked right-hand drawer. The drawer contained extensive notes, letters, and investigations for the just-in-case moments when the information would be needed to ensure my defense or survival for situations like this one. In this incident, the parent failed to realize that while she was making a scene in the main office, the office staff were witnessed to it, and the newly installed video camera was operational. The picture of her middle finger giving me the salute was beautifully captured on the school’s security camera. The investigation upheld what we already knew from our many conferences and meetings with the parent about her daughter’s behavior. Ironically, my immediate supervisor never addressed the parent’s inappropriate language or behavior toward me and made it clear that the parent could contact her whenever she needed.

While I lived for another day, I also soon learned that these lengthy investigations, where an African American principal’s decision-making was being challenged, seemed to occur more often than not among those of us of color. White counterparts did not seem to have these encounters or situations. It could be the fact that many of the principals who were African American were also often assigned to low-performing, low-achieving, low-economic status, low-education, low-income, and low-expectation schools. In addition, teachers and former administrators who were also low-performing and with poor attendance records, high documented worker’s compensation incidents, and low achievement also found themselves transferred and relegated to low-performing schools headed mostly by African American principals.

I was determined to change this paradigm in the school and community I was assigned and was certain to go against the grain or status quo! Paraphrasing the word flow from the iconic 2011 film The Help, I was smart, I was intelligent, and I was a