NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram

Dear friends and fam,

Today, our GWM (Generic White Man) is back, but this time he's getting at least a bit of the rebuke he deserves. But first, the most important question I think we should *all* be asking ourselves is:

am I guilty of being a white savior?

Those of us eager to engage in a form of anti-racism or restorative justice should see the draconian discipline policies of charter schools as perhaps one of the biggest threats to equality. Why?

Because without a solid secondary education, one where critical thinking is prioritized over memorization and standardized tests, is the key to seeing more BIPOC youth graduate with a degree and enter the work force with skills and an important perspective too often denied in middle class to upper class spaces.

Charter schools were thought to be the cure for ailing public schools, especially in minority low-income communities. I'm certainly not saying urban public schools were working, nor do I think they are "working" to adequately educate their students for college and life beyond high school.

For reasons associated with ensuring their graduation rates and college acceptance rates stay at 100%, charter schools have resorted to an extreme form of discipline, usually called “No Excuses” where a student can be suspended for something as small as a dress code infraction. In order to get around the state’s monitoring of how many suspensions a school doles out, most charter schools vastly under-document. So, on the surface, these charter schools’ data is amazing. Especially for urban schools. But, that’s only because they’re faking it.

The result of these insane discipline policies is a lot of students being expelled, or dropping out, leaving only the “good” performers, you know, the ones that make the school's *numbers* look good. On the downside, this exacerbates the school to prison pipeline, and effectively ruins even the slightest hope for a better future for far too many BIPOC students. Here is a report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA on how charter schools feed the school-to-prison pipeline.

The real statistics show a significant drop in BIPOC students completing college in the past 10 years, just as the charter school founders began to rapidly scale their long-con in the form of many charter schools opening in urban areas. But the only data that charter schools report is acceptances, which is not the hard thing. The hard thing is ensuring the first-generation college student graduates from college. The odds are not great.

In 2016, 62% of college graduates were white. Up from 2011’s 57%. Black students dropped a percentage point between 2011 and 2016 from 15% to 14%. The college graduate rate of Hispanic students also dropped– from 19% to 13%. [Source: https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-diversity/state-racial-diversity-workforce.pdf]

Concurrent with this is the rise of charter schools who are founded by white people with a savior complex.

A white savior seeks emotional reward about their individual contributions to the cause with the belief that he or she has made a difference in the lives of poor unfortunate individuals with disregard.

A white savior hold romanticized notions of “good whites” in urban classrooms and will become “heroic liberal warriors who will save students of Color from failing.”

Not only does this belief hinge upon the belief that black and brown people are fundamentally interior to the white race, and thus in need of being “saved” from themselves, but it also misplaces the burden of responsibility on the individual, where we should all instead be investigating, critiquing, and discussing the ways in which school policy, a callous disregard for black and brown human dignity, and the financial fleecing of tax dollars intended for black and brown students because, after all, they are less than white people. They don’t even want to learn anyway. They are lazy. The racist rationalizations are nearly endless, expanding infinitely towards a horizon determined by our nations true roots: white supremacy.

(For more on this conception of "white saviors" I highly recommend Teju Cole's "White Savior Industrial Complex Atlantic article)

So, now that we have white saviors properly contextualized, now it's time for...

Generic White Man Take Down:

Last summer, I got to know a student and alumni led activist group called Black and Brown at Democracy Prep. They began with a series of testimonials posted on their instagram account that all detailed the systemic racism and draconian discipline practices of a once highly regarded charter school in the city.

Here is a Medium article written by one of the strong Black women who run BlackNBrownatDP, for more into this insane tale of white saviors and greed, titled "Still I Rise.

Like most charters, Democracy Prep only serves BIPOC student populations, most likely because of the insane tax credit they get by starting a business in a low-income minority majority community. The charter school world is expanding most rapidly in urban areas, for obvious reasons. And none of them have to do with restorative justice.

However, I had not heard anything bad about Democracy Prep, and thought of them as one of the “good” charters. Until, of course, I found Black n Brown at DP

Democracy Prep was called out for its insane discipline policies, gas-lighting, and general shitty treatment of both teachers and students. And when the founder of Democracy Prep, this white savior of a GWM named Seth Andrews began expanding his charter school network into the realm of for-profit higher ed, this group got active with local groups where he sought to open his new scam in higher ed. Here's a lovely article about this issue by Ariel Poster, who has been dedicated to helping amplify BlackNBrownatDP in the most admirable and tireless of ways, as well as Lissa Harris who bore the brunt of the town's majority white community who refused to believe or engage with BlacknBrownatDP.

I joined in, and offered my help. Eventually, the group got out this statement, but in general, the community members around the small Vermont college Seth Andrews targeted all sided with this white man, saying that since he said he wasn’t racist, he clearly wasn’t. DUH. So, Seth Andrews was allowed to expand. Wamp wamp.

But last week, our main GWM Seth Andrews was charged with stealing $218,005 from the charter school he founded. For some context, over 95% of charter schools financially misappropriate from the school’s budgets. For some additional context, there is so little accountability and oversight applied to charter schools, that often times, the state is well-aware of this, but can do absolutely nothing about it until laws and regulations are changed. Here's the article Former White House Advisor Arrested for Stealing $218,000 from Charter Schools He Founded.

I guarantee you Seth Andrews stole way more than that, but I’m at least glad he’s been exposed as the scammer that he is.

So, fuck that guy.

White Saviors & White People Who Want To Do Good:

This is tricky terrain for us white folk engaged in restorative justice in education to navigate. I’m literally writing a whole book around my own relationship to white saviorism, and the ways in which I’m 100% complicit in it.

It's made me question my original motivations to enter the urban high school classroom: I was adamant I did not want to teach at a private school (plus I'm sure some Republican parent would have be fired let's be real) and that I wanted to use my 8 years of teaching experience and my whole dissertation on Black Excellence in art to inspire some Black and brown kids by teaching them what I knew about their culture. *Obviously,* I was not an expert, nor did I approach it that way. Instead, I taught them what I knew, and together as a class we learned more.

But still... am I a white savior?

I certainly fall under the rubric of much of it.

Perhaps the best thing we white folk can do, especially when we are in minority spaces, is to humble ourselves and assume that we might inadvertently be doing damage, like our white savior GWM Seth Andrews-- you *know* that guy sleeps at night with the comfort that he's "saving" Black kids.

So, if people like Seth Andrews genuinely believe they're helping BIPOC kids when he is in fact exploiting them, what does that say about the rest of us white folk trying to do good?

This question doesn't have an easy answer, but that doesn't mean it's not worth asking.

The most ethical way I’ve come to the table with this awareness is by de-centering myself and my feelings. Those do not matter, the only thing that matters is that with any luck, we each can do our part to begin to rectify BIPOC communities.

I genuinely believe that if white people were truly aware of all of the harsh realities BIPOC face and why, we would be able to gain real progress towards equity. But I know that's giving my people the benefit of the doubt when, historically, they do not really deserve it.

Reparation Opportunity for the Melanin-Challenged: Follow BlacknBrownatDP on Insta, amplify their voices, share their story, and most of all, BELIEVE Black and brown youth!!

Until next week,

Your recovering white savior, Allison Harbin

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