While learning about social justice and inclusion, I started visualizing the idea of white space. I am referring both to physical and conceptual spaces that appear to be designed for white people to exist and thrive in them. An extreme example of what I call “white space” is any suburban neighborhood where a young teen can be killed just for being black and wearing a hoodie. It is not labeled as “whites-only space”  but some non-written rules widely proclaim it and make it so. Even a bird-watching area in Central Park, New York can become white space once a white person enters it and decides so. These are extreme cases that make national headlines but, how about our spaces? What are the rules of engagement in our places of work, study, worship, where we shop for groceries, workout, etc? What kind of spaces are our classrooms and our school? Implicit and unconscious bias are forms of bias nonetheless. Are we sending unintentional messages to our students that white behaviors and culture will determine success and adaptation in our spaces? Are we willing to entertain the idea that we provide spaces where white students are more comfortable and at ease than their black or brown counterparts?  I often hear from BPOC activists that outside of their home, they have to change aspects of their identity, personality, way of speaking, in order to fit in their workplace, school, or other spaces where certain rules of engagement are seen as the norm.

Brenda Leaks*,head of School of Seattle Girls School talks about unspoken codes that black women in particular have to abide by in order to seem competent at their school and workplace.  She says: “What we end up asking of the black people in our communities is: …we need you to adjust and to adapt yourself so that you fit in with our culture and our community, so that we don’t feel threatened by your presence;  and I feel people get used to doing that, you figure out how to cope and then eventually ends up being an exhausting burden that you can no longer carry. As a black head of school, I will say that the burden that I carry, with every step I take, I (also) take the step of a person that looks like me, that has not reached this far before. The burden of carrying that, of fitting in, only gets heavier. We have to change that.”

If this is the case for some of our students, our spaces may not be as inclusive as we like to think. Proclaiming ourselves as inclusive might be not enough and even misleading and confusing for students that don’t feel ownership in our spaces. Furthermore, if the behaviors are unintentional and implicit, it is possible that even our BPOC students accept them and consider them the norm. This would make it hard to identify them and justify a need for change.  Ultimately, finding out if we are engaging in these types of behaviors requires effort, self reflection and listening to BPOC voices with curiosity, wanting to learn what is really like for them and willing to find neutral ground. 

Tema Okun**, a well known author and facilitator in the field of social justice has put together a list of attitudes and behaviors that show up in white supremacist culture at work places. They are the following:

• Perfectionism

• Sense of urgency

• Defensiveness

• Quantity over quality

• Worship of the written word

• Only one right way

• Paternalism

• Either/or thinking

• Power hoarding

• Fear of open conflict

• Individualism 

• I’m the only one

• Progress is bigger and more

• Objectivity

• Right to comfort

This is a link with Okun’s whole document. It is well worth the read. It is a good exercise to self reflect and see if we can identify some of these attitudes on the list in the way we carry ourselves and in how we set up expectations from our students. It is also worth it considering the “antidotes”  suggested in the article, as helpful avenues for reimagining our classrooms as places truly inclusive.

*Brenda Leaks was one of my favorite speakers at the NCGS Symposium that some of us teachers and administrators at the school attended recently. Brenda struck me as very personal and honest in her words. She is the head of the Seattle Girls School which is very similar to CHS also in that the majority of the student body is white. She recently wrote an Op-ed piece at the Seattle’s times discussing how to talk to your children about racism.

**Tema Okun is an author and facilitator who has spent many years working in the social justice field has written the book The emperor Has no Clothes:Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know.”