3 generations of Black Philadelphia students report persistent anti-Black attitudes in schools

John Washington, now in his 50s, attended a public elementary and middle school in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia and then went to a large magnet high school, a type of public school that has a selective admission process. As he has gotten older, he has understood that in the education system in Philadelphia, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

John was bused during the integration movement of the 1970s and graduated from high school in 1990. Back then, he recognized that his school was not as segregated as the schools his parents and grandparents had attended in Philadelphia. As a parent of three current students, however, he has noticed how racially segregated most of the schools in Philadelphia remain.

As research demonstrates, U.S. public schools in general are not more integrated than they were just after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

I am a sociologist whose research focuses on education, race and social inequality. For my dissertation research, I interviewed over 45 former and current Black students to learn about their intergenerational experiences in Philly public schools. “John” and the other names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the research participants.

Intergenerational research is underexplored within educational research. I wanted to understand how different generations of Black public school students in Philadelphia understood and experienced racial inequality, as well as how families’ memories and perspectives around schooling shape students’ educational journeys.

The people I interviewed ranged in age from 14 to 95, and all attended a Philadelphia public elementary or high school, or both. Across the generations, I heard both clear awareness of anti-Blackness and its presence in schools alongside an unyielding hope and vision for a better future.

As Naya, a 30-year-old former student from Germantown, put it, there is a “magic” in being Black. “You have to see what’s possible when nobody else can see it,” she said.

Anti-Blackness and American education

Historian Carter G. Woodson warned of the danger in allowing Black students to be treated as inferior within the educational system.

“There would be no lynching if it did not start in the classroom,” he wrote in his seminal book “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” published in 1933. “Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?”

Anti-Blackness is made visible in schools today through, to name just a few examples, the sanitization of the United States’ violent racial history, the school-to-prison pipeline, wrongful placements of Black students into special education or remedial classes, racial violence in schools and the ongoing disinvestment in and closures of majority-Black schools.

‘We weren’t troublemakers, we were just kids’

Several current and former students I interviewed said their parents taught them “they had to work twice as hard” as white students.

A former student who is now in her 30s shared how she understood the idea that “you have to continue to prove yourself in ways that white kids aren’t expected to … and that’s how supremacy shows up.”

I repeatedly heard from former and current students of all ages how they believed their white teachers held low expectations of Black students and did not challenge them academically.

“I honestly feel like there was a divide, there was less patience for us,” said Jazmine, who graduated from a Philadelphia public high school in 2003. “It was just so obvious, the difference in how the adults treated us, which in turn led to a lot of animosity with the children.”

Hank, who graduated from high school in 1981, said the low expectations his white teachers held limited students’ motivation. “We were just going through the motions,” he said. “You could definitely see a difference with the expectations of the Black teachers than many of the white teachers. And then if the white teachers had expectations, it was sterile. It wasn’t with the love that you felt from some of the Black teachers.”

Current high school students shared incidents of white teachers using racial epithets, including the n-word, and one saying, “You’re acting like a park ape.” Another teacher, a student shared, said slavery was in the past “and not connected to today.”

A recent graduate who attended a magnet middle school recalled being treated by her white teachers as “disposable.”

“I feel like the school actively tried to strip away a lot of my confidence, but not just for me, but also other Black kids,” she said. “It was the first place where I didn’t feel like my teachers thought that I was smart and capable.”

I repeatedly heard both current and former students describe white teachers treating them as if they were “criminals” and receiving harsher discipline and punishments than their non-Black peers, which research has long demonstrated. Students I spoke to described feeling degraded and “singled out” by white teachers – and even blamed for things they did not do.

For example, Naima, a current high school student, shared a painful memory from fourth grade when she had an older white teacher who kept a candy jar on her classroom desk. One afternoon, someone took many pieces of candy from the jar.

“And, of course, it was the white girl, but me and my other Black friend were the last people in her room that she saw walk out, so she assumed it was us,” Naima said. “She said, ‘You stole my candy jar. Y’all were the last people in there. I know y’all did it.’”

Naima could not believe they were accused because, as she explained, she and her friend “weren’t troublemakers, we were just kids.” Despite their innocence – and that they were only in the fourth grade – they were suspended.

Experiences of affirmation too

Speaking to multiple generations of students provides unique insight into the ways in which Black students continue to experience racial harm and trauma in Philly public schools.

On the other hand, at some point in their schooling, many of the former students I spoke to were fortunate to also experience classrooms or schools that affirmed their Blackness and did instill in them a sense of pride.

However, this tended to happen only in majority Black schools where Black teachers were also in the majority.

Delise, who graduated in 2004, shared that at her elementary and high schools, “Blackness was a norm. It was the standard. … Black cultural norms and my identity was affirmed in that school.”

Black communities in Philadelphia have always resisted and mobilized for educational justice. Such efforts include the Black People’s Unity Movement, Philadelphia’s first Black Power political organization, in the 1960s and the many movements that have come since, as well as the creation of alternative educational spaces such as the freedom library, freedom schools, faith-based groups and other Black-led community and art spaces focused on Afrocentric history and curricula.

Former and current students are proud of this legacy.

“We have yet to grasp the significance of our experience as far as I’m concerned,” said James, a former student from North Philly who is now in his 80s, reflecting on Black communities’ resilience and resistance. “And when I look at how we have navigated, I mean, it’s just constant, man … and still we rise.”

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Leana Cabral receives funding from Teachers College, Columbia University.