Cite as Magwood, A. (2021). Unspoken rules, white communication styles, and white blinders: Why 'elite' independent schools can't retain Black and Brown faculty. In K. Swalwell & D.Spikes (Eds.) Anti-Oppressive Education in "Elite" Schools: Promising Practices & Cautionary Tales from the Field. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Retrieved at
The retention—even more so than recruitment--of Black and Brown faculty continues to be a pervasive and enduring problem at independent schools (Kane & Orsini, 2003). Faculty of color currently make up 19% of total faculty members in independent schools; limited research has found that experiences with exclusion, bias, and heightened anxiety lead faculty to leave (Edwards, 2020). For example, a 2003 Association of Independent Schools in New England (AISNE) survey of educators of color in New England independent schools noted that teachers of color “tend to leave schools more quickly than Whites, often because the culture and climate do not feel as supportive as they should” (Brosnan, 2003b. p.6). The report found that about one third of educators of color expressed frustration with their jobs and schools, planning on or considering leaving their school in the coming year. Most of the frustration related specifically to their identity in relation to their context.
In this chapter, I elaborate on some of the most commonly named factors that lead Black and Brown faculty to leave—or get pushed out of—independent schools and explore the racial, psychological, and sociological dynamics underlying these challenges. Weaving together findings from research with insights from Black and Brown educators from independent schools, I focus on four challenges likely to be denied and resisted by independent schools as they operate on subconscious or structural levels: “talking the talk without walking the walk,” vulnerability to privileged parents, double standards, and White blinders.
Talking the Talk Without Walking the Walk
Over the last two decades, many independent schools have made concerted efforts to increase their numbers of Black and Brown faculty and students; hire diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) directors; increase racial awareness training; and increase multicultural and DEI programming (Brosnan, 2001). Yet these efforts do not seem to be having their intended effect. Over the last year, three reputable independent schools received negative national press when White students perpetrated racist acts (Shapiro, 2019; Downey, 2019; Smylie, 2020). This summer’s Black@ posts gave voice to a tidal wave of Black alumni, student, and faculty who shared an overwhelming number of anecdotal personal experiences that publicly gave lie to the insistent claims of independent schools that they are characterized by equitable racial climates.
One reason why these efforts at DEI training and programming are not having a notable effect on actual racial attitudes and behavior at independent schools may be that independent schools are “talking the talk” without “walking the walk.” This is out of necessity. While independent schools often profess values of diversity and social justice, they are careful to not pursue racial equity goals aggressively enough to ruffle the feathers of wealthy alumni donors or their paying parent customers, or impede their efforts to make sure their privileged students benefit from every possible advantage that money can buy. The way that these wealthy White parents and the schools they attend resolve what Hagerman (2018) calls the “conundrum of privilege” (Hagerman, 2018) (i.e., the phenomenon of many progressive wealthy White families maximizing their children’s advantages more than their commitment racial and social justice) is through “performative wokeness,” a form of politically correct virtue-signaling—“talking the talk” without any substantive “walking the walk.”
Thus, the racial equity and social justice programming in many independent schools takes the form of learning about diversity-related concepts and issues through “feel-good” awareness-raising assemblies and workshops (Grinage, 2020), or of learning about social injustice in faraway places. Students never need to question their complicity in systems of privilege or how their lives reproduce inequity. In fact, all too often, the racial equity and social justice programming of independent schools paradoxically becomes reduced to a way of allowing wealthy White students to develop cultural competency skills, signal virtue, and “divert attention away from the power of dominant groups by convincing subordinates that they are compassionate, kind, and giving” (Gaztambide-Fernández & Howard, 2013, p.3). This superficial racial justice programming and “performative wokeness” becomes a way for independent schools to increase their marketability and improve their brand, without having to fundamentally interrogate how their systems, policies and procedures reproduce a hostile racial environment and double standards for Black and Brown faculty and students, or how the school itself reproduces economic and racial inequity.
As one sign of how independent schools “talk the talk without walking the walk,” many DEI directors at independent schools note that they often do not receive the support, power or funds necessary to carry out the initiatives they are charged with, and that as one observed, “I am supported as long as I make faculty and staff feel good about the many “isms” prevalent on our campus. But when I ask the tough questions, I’m viewed as that angry black person” (Brosnan, 2003b, p.8). Many independent schools also resist meting out serious consequences to White students who perpetrate racist acts. For example, the three schools that received negative national press received it not so much for the racist students acts, but rather for their resistance to meting out serious consequences (Shapiro, 2019; Downey, 2019; Smylie, 2020). Perhaps most persuasively, the Black@ Instagram posts demonstrated that even in schools that tout themselves as racially progressive, Black students, alumni, and teachers over decades share a perception that Black faculty and students face a hostile racial climate.
Even when independent schools and parents talk to White students about the importance of equity, these students are “hearing” and learning from much louder actions about their position in social hierarchies and whether rules apply to them (Hagerman, 2018). They notice that they live in predominantly White wealthy communities and attend predominantly White wealthy schools where they observe the double standards faced by faculty and students of different races and classes, the lack of respect afforded Black and Brown faculty and staff by some White parents, the ways in which the school allows or enables higher-SES White parents to “rig the markets” and unfairly hoard opportunities for their children at the expense of less privileged children (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Calarco, 2020; Reeves, 2017), and more. This “hidden curriculum” is largely responsible for the hostile racial climate reported in the Black@ posts and takes a toll on the professional growth and retention of teachers of color (Kohli, 2018).
An additional layer of psychological stress is added to the stress of navigating a hostile racial climate if Black and Brown teachers also have to deal with gaslighting. Black and Brown educators who raise concerns about double standards or racial bias are sometimes “racially gaslighted” when White administrators and teachers vehemently deny this racial bias. Whether intentional or inadvertent, the result is the same: the perpetuation and normalization of the school’s racial bias and the pathologizing of Black and Brown faculty who raise these concerns (Davis & Ernst, 2017). One teacher of color remembers:
I was once invited to participate in a school-wide focus-group meeting of staff members—both administration and teachers—to discuss school challenges. I felt a little intimidated about speaking up, as two higher-up administrators were participating. However, I spoke up about two school practices I felt strongly about, explaining why I thought they were racially inequitable. The administrator who was running the meeting nonchalantly dismissed my first concern, explaining ‘Well, that is the way we like to do it, so that’s not for discussion. Next issue.’ However dismissive this was, it was still much kinder than the response to my second concern, raised much later in the meeting. The second administrator yelled at me, saying in a disrespectful, patronizing, and aggressive tone, ‘You are wrong! All teachers have the same access to the head of school and get treated equally! There is no in-circle and out-circle of faculty members.’ I would note that this administrator was widely known as the head of school’s favorite teacher. No one else in the room said a word. I knew it would be political suicide to cross a high-ranking staff member who had the head of school’s ear and who held significant unofficial power in the school, so I swallowed my pride and kept silent. Shortly afterward, the allotted meeting time ran out and the meeting was ended before we had a chance to discuss the last item on the agenda: the school’s poor retention rate of faculty of color. The first administrator shook his head as he snapped his laptop shut, ‘It’s such a mystery why we can’t retain Black and Brown faculty of color.’
Vulnerability to Privileged Parents
Related to their schools not “walking the walk” is the vulnerability some Black and Brown educators feel in relation to privileged parents. Some Black and Brown educators report that wealthy White students and parents appear to be more comfortable with unjustly challenging them about grades and academic consequences, and, in some cases, that their administration does not sufficiently support them when this occurs. Several studies document how higher-SES White parents pressure teachers and schools to win advantages or exemptions for their children (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Calarco, 2020; Reeves, 2017). In fact, a combination of direct and indirect pressure from wealthy parents at independent schools may be leading to higher levels of grade inflation (Hurwitz & Lee, 2018). Since Black and Brown teachers tend to have less power in independent schools—particularly as they tend to be newer to the school—it stands to reason that they may be particularly vulnerable to the efforts of overprotective, privileged parents who challenge or pressure teachers to maximize their child’s position in the world.
Speaking to this phenomenon, three Black and Brown teachers share their experiences:
If I get pushback from students about grades, it is almost always from a White student, more likely a White male student. These conversations have almost always started with a sentiment that the grade was too harsh or that the assignment itself was flawed in some way. In my first year at my current school a boy insisted that he be allowed to re-write an assignment, even though I had announced to the class ahead of time that I was not allowing re-writes of this particular assignment because the semester was ending and I didn’t have time to grade them. He emailed me, his parents, his advisor, and my department chair to claim that I had been unfair in denying him a chance to better his grade. While his advisor had my back, I had to have several lengthy and uncomfortable conversations with my department chair about the situation. (Teacher 1)
Parents often believed their adolescent children over me, the adult authority figure. One set of parents believed their teenage son over me when I let them know that he was falling behind in my class because he spent much of the class engaged in off-task activities on his laptop, and recommended they prohibit him from using his laptop for ‘note-taking’ in class. They responded that he had assured them that he was definitely on-task in my class, and that the real cause of his low grades was my “poor teaching style.” It took several months before one of his White teachers also reported that he was doing poorly because he spent most of his class time surreptitiously playing video games on his laptop, before his parents finally took his laptop away. (Teacher 2)
I once had a wealthy, connected parent insist that their child did NOT copy-paste a grad student-level passage on their test. They claimed that their child had read the passage a few days earlier, unconsciously memorized the entire thing world-for-word, than later typed it word-for-word from memory on their test, convinced they were their own words. The head of my department asked me if I could prove the student couldn’t have done that. (Teacher 3)
Double Standards
Black and Brown faculty are often held to higher standards by students, parents, and administration, and endure closer scrutiny while White faculty are allowed more leniency and understanding. This racial or ethnic double standard is exacerbated by the tendency to be less lenient with newer faculty, as the high turnover of Black and Brown faculty means that most Black and Brown faculty are relatively new to a school. While White employees are allowed to experiment and fail, Black and Brown staff are expected to do “perfect” work, with anything less considered a diminution of their value as staff member, and even of their race. In addition, faculty of color (especially women) may be expected to abide by policies (e.g., dress codes or lateness policies) that their White peers are not held to.1
Most people assume that “double standards” refers to raising standards for members of outgroups. However, research by social psychologists concludes that double standards, discrimination and bias are often more of a product of ingroup favoritism giving ingroup members the benefit of the doubt rather than of negative attitudes and behavior against members of outgroups (Brewer, 2007). This phenomenon is known as leniency bias, or sometimes as affinity bias or similar-to-me bias. Individuals also attribute less blame for ingroup transgressions compared with those of outgroups (Halabi et al, 2015). A teacher of color remembers:
In my first year as faculty at an independent school I was one of only two Black teachers in the upper school, and the only one teaching a core subject. My department head had already warned me that White students and parents often gave teachers of color a hard time until we ‘proved ourselves,’ while White teachers were automatically accorded this respect. Two different parents asked about my education credentials. I felt like I was under a microscope, alone, being scrutinized by students, parents, and administration. And whenever students and parents did have concerns—no matter how slight—they did not address them with me, but rather went to veteran White colleagues or the administration. Imagine the humiliation of having to ‘answer to’ and ’explain myself to’ White colleagues. It was one of the first times of my life where I felt that race was a major factor in my workplace. (Teacher 4)
White Blinders
White school administrators often deny that racial inequality is a problem in their school, even when the same patterns of inequity are repeatedly identified by different Black and Brown faculty over the course of years. Instead, they attribute the struggles and concerns of Black and Brown faculty to personal failings or to “being a bad fit,” rather than to racial and ethnic bias on the part of school administration, teachers, students, or parents. This phenomenon is not specific to independent schools. Broadly speaking, White people’s misperceptions and underestimation of racism are well-documented (e.g., Carter & Murphy, 2015). Research from the Centre for Community Organizations found that while approximately 30% of Black or Brown survey respondents said they had left a job due to an unwelcoming racial environment, White respondents underestimated how many people of color were leaving their jobs because of discrimination—thinking instead that their colleagues had left their jobs because, for example, “they got a better job” or “they wanted to spend more time with their family.”
I use the term “White blinders” to refer to this “inability” of many White Americans to notice racial bias and double standards in predominately White institutions; to justify, explain away, and deny racism and double standards, even after people of color repeatedly identify them. Of the factors described in this chapter, “White blinders” is the crux. Of what use is it to identify examples of racial and ethnic bias that Black and Brown faculty often face if White administrators are unable to recognize them when they occur in their schools? As long as White administrators insist that Black and Brown teachers are leaving for personal reasons or that they are pushing them out because they are “not a good fit,” they will not aggressively implement the recommendations made in The Colors of Excellence (Kane and Orsini, 2003) and the AISNE report (Brosnan, 2003a). As long as they are convinced that their school is equitable and inclusive, as long as they individualize and explain away the departure of each Black and Brown faculty member, they will not take a good, hard look at the racial environment of their school and understand how racial biases and double standards affect them.
The “White blinder” tendency is the product of a powerful brew of subconscious cognitive biases. First, since White faculty and administration are not Black or Brown, they do not personally experience or witness racial bias. Instead, they are likely to universalize their personal experiences, and assume that Black and Brown teachers also experience the school’s students, faculty, and administration the same way that they do. Secondly, because of intergroup attribution bias, White administrators tend to attribute the problems of Black and Brown teachers to personal failings rather than to unfair circumstances like racial bias or double standards. Intergroup attribution bias is the tendency for individuals to attribute the problems of ingroup members to outside circumstances such as bad luck or unfair circumstances, while attributing the problems of outgroup members to personal failings (Halabi, 2015; Van Assche, 2020). And lastly, many Whites assume that racial bias is something that only a “Racist with a Capital ‘R’”—a “bad” person—has. So, while they might have no trouble recognizing examples of racism and double standards in a race-awareness workshop or in reports on teachers of color, many Whites struggle to recognize very similar examples of bias when they are perpetrated by beloved colleagues, students, and families. These White blinders are so rigid that many White individuals will disparage Black and Brown individuals who raise even well-substantiated concerns about racial bias or discrimination (Kaiser & Miller, 2001).
This tendency to see members of an in-group in a favorable manner--self-serving bias—makes it difficult to believe that people who are ingroup members (both as colleagues and as fellow White people) would act in a biased manner. In fact, researchers have found that this need for Whites to avoid acknowledging racism among fellow Whites is so strong, that they tend to use “higher thresholds when detecting racism, applying the ‘racist’ label only to ingroup members who behave in blatantly racist ways” (Carter & Murphy, 2015, p. 270). Thus, they are much less likely than Blacks to perceive anti-Black bias. It should also be noted that researchers have found that Blacks tend to be more accurate than Whites in their perceptions of racism (Nelson, Adams, & Salter, 2012).
It is the combined product of these subconscious cognitive biases (“White blinders) that results in the tendency for White administrators to deny, deflect, justify, and explain away the microaggressions, double standards and marginalization that Black and Brown faculty at their schools face: “they weren’t a good fit” or “they left for personal reasons.” As one teacher of color remembers:
At my last school, I had several experiences that I perceived as racist, or at the very least as double standards for Black vs. White teachers. I confided in a White colleague who was a member of our school’s “White Anti-Racist Allies” (WARA) faculty group. But each time I told her about another racially suspect situation, she reassured me that they were just coincidences, or could be explained by another, extremely improbable reason. She said we should ‘assume the best intentions’ of people, and ‘not jump to conclusions.’ Some months after I left the school, I ran into a Black teacher who had left the year before I started working there. As we shared experiences at our school, I learned that she and many other Black colleagues had experienced almost identical experiences with racism and double standards that few, if any, White teachers had encountered. I then realized that I had indeed experienced racism and double standards, but my “White ally” had denied and explained them away because she was unable to acknowledge racism when they were being done by colleagues she knew. Apparently, racism was much easier to recognize when it occurs in anecdotal scenarios in training materials and when they were perpetrated by distant strangers.
Conclusion
The problem of low retention of Black and Brown teachers at independent schools will not be resolved until independent schools push past superficial racial equity programming and introduce structural, systemic reforms—until they actually start “walking the walk” of racial equity. Below, I offer specific recommendations for schools to take if they are genuinely concerned with the retention of Black and Brown faculty:
Ayo Magwood is an educational consultant specializing in anti-racist education with a decade of classroom experience in both majority low-income Black/Latino charter schools and majority high-income White private schools. Her areas of expertise include teaching about race and social justice through history, root causes, statistical data, and “A Perspectives Consciousness Approach” to discussing race and current issues.
www.uprootinginequity.com
REFERENCES
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Brosnan, M. (2001). Diversity efforts in independent schools. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 29, 467-487.
Brosnan, M. (2003a). The AISNE Guide to Hiring and Retaining Teachers of Color, Milton, MA: AISNE.
Brosnan, M. (2003b). Thriving in independent schools: An AISNE guide for educators of color. Milton, MA: AISNE.
Calarco, J. M. (2020). Avoiding us versus them: How schools’ dependence on privileged “Helicopter” parents influences enforcement of Rules. American Sociological Review, 85(2), 223–246.
Carter, E.R. & Murphy, M.C. (2015), Group‐based differences in perceptions of racism: What counts, to whom, and why? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 9, 269–280. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12181.
Davis, A. & Ernst, R. (2017). Racial gaslighting. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 7(4), 761–774.
Downey, M. (2019). A reflection and prayer at Marist leads to teacher on leave and students on edge. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Edwards, S. (2020, March 2). Teachers of Color support each other by developing community networks. DiversityIs. https://diversityis.com/teachers-of-color-support-each-other-by-developing-community-networks
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A., & Howard, A. (2013). Social justice, deferred complicity, and the moral plight of the wealthy. Democracy and Education, 21(1), 7.
Grinage, J. (2020). Singing and dancing for diversity: Neoliberal multiculturalism and white epistemological ignorance in teacher professional development. Curriculum Inquiry, 1-21.
Hagerman, M.A. (2018). White kids: Growing up with privilege in a racially divided America. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Halabi, S., Statman, Y., & Dovidio, J. F. (2015). Attributions of Responsibility and Punishment for Ingroup and Outgroup Members: The Role of Just World Beliefs. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 18(1), 104–115.
Hurwitz, M. & Lee, J. (2018). Grade inflation and the role of standardized testing. In Buckley, J., Letukas, L., Wildavsky, B. (Eds.), Measuring success: Testing, grades, and the future of college admissions (pp. 64–93). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kaiser, C. R., & Miller, C. T. (2001). Stop complaining! The social costs of making attributions to discrimination. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(2), 254–263.
Kohli, R. (2018). Behind school doors: The impact of hostile racial climates on urban teachers of color. Urban Education, 53(3), 307-333.
Lewis, A. E., & Diamond, J. B. (2015). Despite the best intentions: How racial inequality thrives in good schools. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Nelson, J. C., Adams, G., & Salter, P. S. (2013). The Marley hypothesis: Denial of racism reflects ignorance of history. Psychological Science, 24(2), 213-218.
Reeves, R. (2017). Dream Hoarders: The Dangerous Separation of the American Upper Middle Class. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Shapiro, E. (2019, March 12). After racist video surface, private school students protest with overnight lock-in. The New York Times.
Smylie, S. (2020, January 23). Black student group at Lab School speaks out against racism and bias. Hyde Park Herald.
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ENDNOTES
1 See the Centre for Community Organizations’ report “Diversité d’Abord: Race and Colonialism in the Nonprofit Sector in Quebec” available at https://coco-net.org/diversite-dabord/ for more information.
In this chapter, I elaborate on some of the most commonly named factors that lead Black and Brown faculty to leave—or get pushed out of—independent schools and explore the racial, psychological, and sociological dynamics underlying these challenges. Weaving together findings from research with insights from Black and Brown educators from independent schools, I focus on four challenges likely to be denied and resisted by independent schools as they operate on subconscious or structural levels: “talking the talk without walking the walk,” vulnerability to privileged parents, double standards, and White blinders.
Talking the Talk Without Walking the Walk
Over the last two decades, many independent schools have made concerted efforts to increase their numbers of Black and Brown faculty and students; hire diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) directors; increase racial awareness training; and increase multicultural and DEI programming (Brosnan, 2001). Yet these efforts do not seem to be having their intended effect. Over the last year, three reputable independent schools received negative national press when White students perpetrated racist acts (Shapiro, 2019; Downey, 2019; Smylie, 2020). This summer’s Black@ posts gave voice to a tidal wave of Black alumni, student, and faculty who shared an overwhelming number of anecdotal personal experiences that publicly gave lie to the insistent claims of independent schools that they are characterized by equitable racial climates.
One reason why these efforts at DEI training and programming are not having a notable effect on actual racial attitudes and behavior at independent schools may be that independent schools are “talking the talk” without “walking the walk.” This is out of necessity. While independent schools often profess values of diversity and social justice, they are careful to not pursue racial equity goals aggressively enough to ruffle the feathers of wealthy alumni donors or their paying parent customers, or impede their efforts to make sure their privileged students benefit from every possible advantage that money can buy. The way that these wealthy White parents and the schools they attend resolve what Hagerman (2018) calls the “conundrum of privilege” (Hagerman, 2018) (i.e., the phenomenon of many progressive wealthy White families maximizing their children’s advantages more than their commitment racial and social justice) is through “performative wokeness,” a form of politically correct virtue-signaling—“talking the talk” without any substantive “walking the walk.”
Thus, the racial equity and social justice programming in many independent schools takes the form of learning about diversity-related concepts and issues through “feel-good” awareness-raising assemblies and workshops (Grinage, 2020), or of learning about social injustice in faraway places. Students never need to question their complicity in systems of privilege or how their lives reproduce inequity. In fact, all too often, the racial equity and social justice programming of independent schools paradoxically becomes reduced to a way of allowing wealthy White students to develop cultural competency skills, signal virtue, and “divert attention away from the power of dominant groups by convincing subordinates that they are compassionate, kind, and giving” (Gaztambide-Fernández & Howard, 2013, p.3). This superficial racial justice programming and “performative wokeness” becomes a way for independent schools to increase their marketability and improve their brand, without having to fundamentally interrogate how their systems, policies and procedures reproduce a hostile racial environment and double standards for Black and Brown faculty and students, or how the school itself reproduces economic and racial inequity.
As one sign of how independent schools “talk the talk without walking the walk,” many DEI directors at independent schools note that they often do not receive the support, power or funds necessary to carry out the initiatives they are charged with, and that as one observed, “I am supported as long as I make faculty and staff feel good about the many “isms” prevalent on our campus. But when I ask the tough questions, I’m viewed as that angry black person” (Brosnan, 2003b, p.8). Many independent schools also resist meting out serious consequences to White students who perpetrate racist acts. For example, the three schools that received negative national press received it not so much for the racist students acts, but rather for their resistance to meting out serious consequences (Shapiro, 2019; Downey, 2019; Smylie, 2020). Perhaps most persuasively, the Black@ Instagram posts demonstrated that even in schools that tout themselves as racially progressive, Black students, alumni, and teachers over decades share a perception that Black faculty and students face a hostile racial climate.
Even when independent schools and parents talk to White students about the importance of equity, these students are “hearing” and learning from much louder actions about their position in social hierarchies and whether rules apply to them (Hagerman, 2018). They notice that they live in predominantly White wealthy communities and attend predominantly White wealthy schools where they observe the double standards faced by faculty and students of different races and classes, the lack of respect afforded Black and Brown faculty and staff by some White parents, the ways in which the school allows or enables higher-SES White parents to “rig the markets” and unfairly hoard opportunities for their children at the expense of less privileged children (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Calarco, 2020; Reeves, 2017), and more. This “hidden curriculum” is largely responsible for the hostile racial climate reported in the Black@ posts and takes a toll on the professional growth and retention of teachers of color (Kohli, 2018).
An additional layer of psychological stress is added to the stress of navigating a hostile racial climate if Black and Brown teachers also have to deal with gaslighting. Black and Brown educators who raise concerns about double standards or racial bias are sometimes “racially gaslighted” when White administrators and teachers vehemently deny this racial bias. Whether intentional or inadvertent, the result is the same: the perpetuation and normalization of the school’s racial bias and the pathologizing of Black and Brown faculty who raise these concerns (Davis & Ernst, 2017). One teacher of color remembers:
I was once invited to participate in a school-wide focus-group meeting of staff members—both administration and teachers—to discuss school challenges. I felt a little intimidated about speaking up, as two higher-up administrators were participating. However, I spoke up about two school practices I felt strongly about, explaining why I thought they were racially inequitable. The administrator who was running the meeting nonchalantly dismissed my first concern, explaining ‘Well, that is the way we like to do it, so that’s not for discussion. Next issue.’ However dismissive this was, it was still much kinder than the response to my second concern, raised much later in the meeting. The second administrator yelled at me, saying in a disrespectful, patronizing, and aggressive tone, ‘You are wrong! All teachers have the same access to the head of school and get treated equally! There is no in-circle and out-circle of faculty members.’ I would note that this administrator was widely known as the head of school’s favorite teacher. No one else in the room said a word. I knew it would be political suicide to cross a high-ranking staff member who had the head of school’s ear and who held significant unofficial power in the school, so I swallowed my pride and kept silent. Shortly afterward, the allotted meeting time ran out and the meeting was ended before we had a chance to discuss the last item on the agenda: the school’s poor retention rate of faculty of color. The first administrator shook his head as he snapped his laptop shut, ‘It’s such a mystery why we can’t retain Black and Brown faculty of color.’
Vulnerability to Privileged Parents
Related to their schools not “walking the walk” is the vulnerability some Black and Brown educators feel in relation to privileged parents. Some Black and Brown educators report that wealthy White students and parents appear to be more comfortable with unjustly challenging them about grades and academic consequences, and, in some cases, that their administration does not sufficiently support them when this occurs. Several studies document how higher-SES White parents pressure teachers and schools to win advantages or exemptions for their children (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Calarco, 2020; Reeves, 2017). In fact, a combination of direct and indirect pressure from wealthy parents at independent schools may be leading to higher levels of grade inflation (Hurwitz & Lee, 2018). Since Black and Brown teachers tend to have less power in independent schools—particularly as they tend to be newer to the school—it stands to reason that they may be particularly vulnerable to the efforts of overprotective, privileged parents who challenge or pressure teachers to maximize their child’s position in the world.
Speaking to this phenomenon, three Black and Brown teachers share their experiences:
If I get pushback from students about grades, it is almost always from a White student, more likely a White male student. These conversations have almost always started with a sentiment that the grade was too harsh or that the assignment itself was flawed in some way. In my first year at my current school a boy insisted that he be allowed to re-write an assignment, even though I had announced to the class ahead of time that I was not allowing re-writes of this particular assignment because the semester was ending and I didn’t have time to grade them. He emailed me, his parents, his advisor, and my department chair to claim that I had been unfair in denying him a chance to better his grade. While his advisor had my back, I had to have several lengthy and uncomfortable conversations with my department chair about the situation. (Teacher 1)
Parents often believed their adolescent children over me, the adult authority figure. One set of parents believed their teenage son over me when I let them know that he was falling behind in my class because he spent much of the class engaged in off-task activities on his laptop, and recommended they prohibit him from using his laptop for ‘note-taking’ in class. They responded that he had assured them that he was definitely on-task in my class, and that the real cause of his low grades was my “poor teaching style.” It took several months before one of his White teachers also reported that he was doing poorly because he spent most of his class time surreptitiously playing video games on his laptop, before his parents finally took his laptop away. (Teacher 2)
I once had a wealthy, connected parent insist that their child did NOT copy-paste a grad student-level passage on their test. They claimed that their child had read the passage a few days earlier, unconsciously memorized the entire thing world-for-word, than later typed it word-for-word from memory on their test, convinced they were their own words. The head of my department asked me if I could prove the student couldn’t have done that. (Teacher 3)
Double Standards
Black and Brown faculty are often held to higher standards by students, parents, and administration, and endure closer scrutiny while White faculty are allowed more leniency and understanding. This racial or ethnic double standard is exacerbated by the tendency to be less lenient with newer faculty, as the high turnover of Black and Brown faculty means that most Black and Brown faculty are relatively new to a school. While White employees are allowed to experiment and fail, Black and Brown staff are expected to do “perfect” work, with anything less considered a diminution of their value as staff member, and even of their race. In addition, faculty of color (especially women) may be expected to abide by policies (e.g., dress codes or lateness policies) that their White peers are not held to.1
Most people assume that “double standards” refers to raising standards for members of outgroups. However, research by social psychologists concludes that double standards, discrimination and bias are often more of a product of ingroup favoritism giving ingroup members the benefit of the doubt rather than of negative attitudes and behavior against members of outgroups (Brewer, 2007). This phenomenon is known as leniency bias, or sometimes as affinity bias or similar-to-me bias. Individuals also attribute less blame for ingroup transgressions compared with those of outgroups (Halabi et al, 2015). A teacher of color remembers:
In my first year as faculty at an independent school I was one of only two Black teachers in the upper school, and the only one teaching a core subject. My department head had already warned me that White students and parents often gave teachers of color a hard time until we ‘proved ourselves,’ while White teachers were automatically accorded this respect. Two different parents asked about my education credentials. I felt like I was under a microscope, alone, being scrutinized by students, parents, and administration. And whenever students and parents did have concerns—no matter how slight—they did not address them with me, but rather went to veteran White colleagues or the administration. Imagine the humiliation of having to ‘answer to’ and ’explain myself to’ White colleagues. It was one of the first times of my life where I felt that race was a major factor in my workplace. (Teacher 4)
White Blinders
White school administrators often deny that racial inequality is a problem in their school, even when the same patterns of inequity are repeatedly identified by different Black and Brown faculty over the course of years. Instead, they attribute the struggles and concerns of Black and Brown faculty to personal failings or to “being a bad fit,” rather than to racial and ethnic bias on the part of school administration, teachers, students, or parents. This phenomenon is not specific to independent schools. Broadly speaking, White people’s misperceptions and underestimation of racism are well-documented (e.g., Carter & Murphy, 2015). Research from the Centre for Community Organizations found that while approximately 30% of Black or Brown survey respondents said they had left a job due to an unwelcoming racial environment, White respondents underestimated how many people of color were leaving their jobs because of discrimination—thinking instead that their colleagues had left their jobs because, for example, “they got a better job” or “they wanted to spend more time with their family.”
I use the term “White blinders” to refer to this “inability” of many White Americans to notice racial bias and double standards in predominately White institutions; to justify, explain away, and deny racism and double standards, even after people of color repeatedly identify them. Of the factors described in this chapter, “White blinders” is the crux. Of what use is it to identify examples of racial and ethnic bias that Black and Brown faculty often face if White administrators are unable to recognize them when they occur in their schools? As long as White administrators insist that Black and Brown teachers are leaving for personal reasons or that they are pushing them out because they are “not a good fit,” they will not aggressively implement the recommendations made in The Colors of Excellence (Kane and Orsini, 2003) and the AISNE report (Brosnan, 2003a). As long as they are convinced that their school is equitable and inclusive, as long as they individualize and explain away the departure of each Black and Brown faculty member, they will not take a good, hard look at the racial environment of their school and understand how racial biases and double standards affect them.
The “White blinder” tendency is the product of a powerful brew of subconscious cognitive biases. First, since White faculty and administration are not Black or Brown, they do not personally experience or witness racial bias. Instead, they are likely to universalize their personal experiences, and assume that Black and Brown teachers also experience the school’s students, faculty, and administration the same way that they do. Secondly, because of intergroup attribution bias, White administrators tend to attribute the problems of Black and Brown teachers to personal failings rather than to unfair circumstances like racial bias or double standards. Intergroup attribution bias is the tendency for individuals to attribute the problems of ingroup members to outside circumstances such as bad luck or unfair circumstances, while attributing the problems of outgroup members to personal failings (Halabi, 2015; Van Assche, 2020). And lastly, many Whites assume that racial bias is something that only a “Racist with a Capital ‘R’”—a “bad” person—has. So, while they might have no trouble recognizing examples of racism and double standards in a race-awareness workshop or in reports on teachers of color, many Whites struggle to recognize very similar examples of bias when they are perpetrated by beloved colleagues, students, and families. These White blinders are so rigid that many White individuals will disparage Black and Brown individuals who raise even well-substantiated concerns about racial bias or discrimination (Kaiser & Miller, 2001).
This tendency to see members of an in-group in a favorable manner--self-serving bias—makes it difficult to believe that people who are ingroup members (both as colleagues and as fellow White people) would act in a biased manner. In fact, researchers have found that this need for Whites to avoid acknowledging racism among fellow Whites is so strong, that they tend to use “higher thresholds when detecting racism, applying the ‘racist’ label only to ingroup members who behave in blatantly racist ways” (Carter & Murphy, 2015, p. 270). Thus, they are much less likely than Blacks to perceive anti-Black bias. It should also be noted that researchers have found that Blacks tend to be more accurate than Whites in their perceptions of racism (Nelson, Adams, & Salter, 2012).
It is the combined product of these subconscious cognitive biases (“White blinders) that results in the tendency for White administrators to deny, deflect, justify, and explain away the microaggressions, double standards and marginalization that Black and Brown faculty at their schools face: “they weren’t a good fit” or “they left for personal reasons.” As one teacher of color remembers:
At my last school, I had several experiences that I perceived as racist, or at the very least as double standards for Black vs. White teachers. I confided in a White colleague who was a member of our school’s “White Anti-Racist Allies” (WARA) faculty group. But each time I told her about another racially suspect situation, she reassured me that they were just coincidences, or could be explained by another, extremely improbable reason. She said we should ‘assume the best intentions’ of people, and ‘not jump to conclusions.’ Some months after I left the school, I ran into a Black teacher who had left the year before I started working there. As we shared experiences at our school, I learned that she and many other Black colleagues had experienced almost identical experiences with racism and double standards that few, if any, White teachers had encountered. I then realized that I had indeed experienced racism and double standards, but my “White ally” had denied and explained them away because she was unable to acknowledge racism when they were being done by colleagues she knew. Apparently, racism was much easier to recognize when it occurs in anecdotal scenarios in training materials and when they were perpetrated by distant strangers.
Conclusion
The problem of low retention of Black and Brown teachers at independent schools will not be resolved until independent schools push past superficial racial equity programming and introduce structural, systemic reforms—until they actually start “walking the walk” of racial equity. Below, I offer specific recommendations for schools to take if they are genuinely concerned with the retention of Black and Brown faculty:
- The school contracts an independent inquiry into long-term patterns of low retention rates of Black and Brown teachers. The quick departure of a handful of Black or Brown teachers may very well be due to personal failings or to them not being a good fit. However, long-term patterns of rapid turnover or repeated concerns being raised by Black and Brown teachers suggest that the problem lies in the school itself.
- The school administration takes aggressive steps to hold all students equally accountable to school rules and expectations.
- The school administration takes aggressive steps to hold all faculty equally accountable to school rules and expectations, and to protect Black and Brown faculty from undue pressure from privileged parents.
- The school curriculum—particularly the U.S. History curriculum—is revised to include the histories of significant American Black and Brown communities, including a robust history of systemic racism in the United States. Opportunities for education about the history of systemic racism in the United States are extended to school alumni, parents, faculty and administration.
- Opportunities are systematically created in the curriculum for students to interrogate the ways in which their family, school and community contribute to systems of economic and racial inequity, and for them to learn about ways to disrupt these. Many of the chapters in this book provide examples and strategies for doing this.
Ayo Magwood is an educational consultant specializing in anti-racist education with a decade of classroom experience in both majority low-income Black/Latino charter schools and majority high-income White private schools. Her areas of expertise include teaching about race and social justice through history, root causes, statistical data, and “A Perspectives Consciousness Approach” to discussing race and current issues.
www.uprootinginequity.com
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ENDNOTES
1 See the Centre for Community Organizations’ report “Diversité d’Abord: Race and Colonialism in the Nonprofit Sector in Quebec” available at https://coco-net.org/diversite-dabord/ for more information.
