USA TODAY International Edition
Black students say racism endures in suburban schools
Elijah Goldberg thought he could handle precalculus in 11th grade. His guidance counselor, he said, did not. ❚ “It seemed like they were scared I would fail a class and it would make the district look bad,” he said. “It was a big argument – I had to get my mom involved.”
Frustrated, he took the class in the evening at a community college near his home outside Rochester, New York, and earned an A minus. He took the transcript back to his high school in the wealthy suburb of Brighton to prove he had been correct about his own ability.
“I felt like the administrators didn’t believe in me – I was definitely discouraged from taking AP (advanced placement) classes and getting ahead,” said Goldberg, who graduated in 2016. “In my AP classes, there weren’t a lot of us, and we definitely weren’t encouraged. It was more just ‘Get through, and don’t fail.’ ”
For black students across the USA – the “us” he referenced – Goldberg’s experience is a common one.
Even in generally high-performing suburban school districts, students of color, particularly those who are black, say they face prejudice when it comes to advanced coursework, academic achievement and discipline. Figures from the most recent federal Civil Rights Data Collection show disparities in every part of the U.S.
❚ In the wealthy Phoenix-area
school district of Paradise Valley, white students are about twice as likely as black and Hispanic students to be enrolled in at least one AP class.
❚ In Franklin, Tennessee, black students are 21⁄2 grade levels behind white students, on average.
Suburban history
Black families were excluded from the midcentury suburban housing boom. “Racism is often perpetuated by the very nice, very kind people who decided to move out to (the suburbs) and didn’t think to ask why there’s no black people out there,” said L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, a professor at New York University who studies racial inequality in suburban schools.
Students of color are still in the minority, even as suburban schools diversify. “The reason we haven’t been paying attention to it is that, in general, these schools have been performing well, so people don’t perceive it as a problem,” Lewis-McCoy said.
Rochester and Monroe County are archetypes of a hollowed-out urban core surrounded by wealthy suburbs.
Bethany Beru, a student at RushHenrietta Senior High School, said she was shocked to hear the slur used by a white teacher last year. She went to her counselor’s office and documented the incident, in which the teacher used the word while explaining to students that they should not say it.
No one followed up with her, she said. She confronted the teacher weeks later, saying his use of the word was uncalled for. “He was just like, ‘Oh, um, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you know where I’m coming from, right?’ ” Beru said. “At the end of the day, he still didn’t understand, and I can’t argue with somebody who didn’t understand. That was the worst situation I’ve ever had with a teacher.”
The district has since looked into the incident and takes Beru’s experience seriously, spokesman Travis Anderson said.
‘The five smart black girls’
Students of color reported feeling alienated and underestimated.
Leah Stewart, a 12th-grader at Greece Olympia High School outside Rochester, is part of an uncomfortable sort of club. She calls it “the five smart black girls.”
It began in eighth grade, when Stewart had to push back against a counselor who wouldn’t enroll her in an advanced course. She has had the same experience in high school.
“I tried to take AP physics, and my counselor pretty much laughed at me,” Stewart said. “... He wouldn’t sign off on it for, like, a really long time.”
She’s one of five black students taking AP classes at the school, she said. Teachers refer to “the five black girls” and seem to mean well.
“Some people say, ‘Oh, I don’t see color,’ ” Stewart said, but sometimes it’s OK for students and teachers to acknowledge race. “It’s just how you do it.”
Many districts respond by having faculty attend professional development classes meant to counter institutional racism and implicit bias. Their efforts are complicated by a shortage of teachers of color.
It is the urban districts that often lead the nation in combating racial disparities for students. Those districts have long grappled with the dichotomy of a mostly white teaching staff and a mostly minority student body.
“To our suburban colleagues, I would say: It requires focused attention and a decision to figure out what may be going on and how to effectively address it,” said Cecilia Golden, deputy superintendent of Rochester City Schools.
Other interventions are student-led. Hundreds of Rochester-area students attend summits three times a year to discuss racism and prejudice with their peers at dozens of other districts.
“Just seeing a lot of black excellence and a willingness to speak out about topics – it makes me want to do more in Fairport,” said 11-grader Will Barrett.
A minority of black students test themselves with the most challenging courses their schools offer.
The year after Goldberg took precalculus at Monroe Community College, he was placed into AP calculus at his high school. It was hard – as he knew it would be. “It was so much more interesting and fun when I was challenged,” he said. “But I could handle it.”
He passed. Now, he is enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts – one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges.