“The writer James Baldwin defined a liberal as ‘someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do” — and white liberals who think they know best may pose the greatest barrier to “anti-racist, culturally responsive, and equitable approaches to education” in America, writes Teachers College’s Sonya Douglass Horsford, founding director of the Black Education Research Collective (BERC), in an opinion piece in Education Week.
“Under the guise of school improvement and education reform, the 21st-century white architects of urban education have effectively defunded traditional public schools to finance their own top-down vision of how and for what purposes low-income students of color should be educated,” argues Horsford, Associate Professor of Education Leadership. Meanwhile, “the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people of color on the education of their very own children, no less, have historically been absent from the research, practice, and policy conversations that have and continue to determine their fate.”
Under the guise of school improvement and education reform, the 21st-century white architects of urban education have effectively defunded traditional public schools to finance their own top-down vision of how and for what purposes low-income students of color should be educated.
—Sonya Douglass Horsford, Associate Professor of Education Leadership
Yet, ultimately, Horsford asserts, “if Black lives matter, so should Black thought, especially when it comes to any agenda for educational equity or social justice in schools.
“Black people have the answers,” she concludes. The question is: “Who will listen?”