What’s in a Name? The Confluence of Confederate Symbolism and the Disparate Experiences of African American Students in a Central Virginia High School

Abstract

Introduction and Review of Literature The K-12 student body in the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, which poses implications in terms of equity, access, and social justice for schools and school leaders (Marshall & Olivia, 2009; McKenzie & Scheurich, 2004). Implications include tackling the four types of racism, as individual, cultural, institutional, and collective that American students of color experience on a day-today basis (Jean-Marie & Mansfield , 2013). Love (2016) states, Race-centered violence kills Black children on a daily basis by either murdering them in the streets-taking their bodies, or murdering their spirits-taking their souls. Spirit murdering within a school context is the denial of inclusion, protection, safety, nurturance, and acceptance because of fixed, yet fluid and moldable, structures of racism. (p. 2) Recurring manifestations of White supremacy in recent years have led many to more closely examine these various manifestations of racism in our society and schools. Furthermore, Dumas (2016) calls for an explicit recognition of what he refers to as "antiblackness" or the ontological position that makes individual, cultural, institutional, and collective racism possible. Dumas notes, The aim of theorizing antiblackness is not to offer solutions to racial inequality, but to come to a deeper understanding of the Black condition within a context of utter contempt for, and acceptance of violence against the Black. (p. 13) Dumas underscores the importance of first recognizing that while dismantling slavery did legally occur, it was not coupled with the social recognition of "Black citizenship and Human-ness" (and never has been since). Thus, "Black subjugation" is perpetually embedded in our culture, conjoined with the development of psyches and bodies, and enacted on the Black in material ways. Consequently, dismantling tracking, for example, is not enough to rid schools of racist practices. Rather, ending racism starts with recognizing that celebrating diversity, for instance, does not necessarily equate with the recognition that to be Black is to be "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." 1

The Resolution Passed, Now What? A Superintendent’s Commitment to Racial and Social Justice and the Complexities of a Police-Free Schools’ Resolution

“…Equity-oriented changes to school climate, culture, and discipline have also incurred White resistance (Theoharis, 2007; Wiley et al, 2018; Wiley & Garcia, 2023). Efforts to rename school buildings bearing monikers of segregationists and Klansmen have also faced White resistance (Carson, 2019; Levy et al, 2017; Mansfield & Lambrinou, 2022). Successfully implementing Union’s police-free schools’ resolution would likely require Stone navigate strong, racialized, political opposition.…”

The crisis of Confederate memory in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil

“…upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition” (American Battlefield Trust, 1861b). Scholars in fields such as anthropology, literature and rhetoric, sociology, public history, cultural geography, memory studies, and others have critically analyzed the politics of writing US Southern textbooks and school standards (Bailey, 1991; Loewen, 2007; Sebesta, 2012), constructing, relocating, and removing monuments to Confederate heroes (Cox, 2003, 2021; Domby, 2020; Sheehan and Speights-Binet, 2019; Wahlers, 2015), (re)naming streets and schools after Confederate soldiers (Brasher et al, 2017; Hague and Sebesta, 2011; Levy et al, 2017), and fighting to retain traces of Confederate imagery within official state buildings and flags and on courthouse grounds and centrally located plazas (Webster and Leib, 2001, 2002). Studies of Confederate and US Southern memory politics, as a result, have often focused on the racialized memories of enslavement to the exclusion of Indigenous genocide and dispossession (but see Denson, 2017).…”

The Politics of Student Voice: The Power and Potential of Students as Policy Actors

“…Criticalists view interaction with cultural politics as essential to education wherein "dialogue, debate, dissent, and habits of engaged curiosity become the lifeblood of schooling as they are the lifeblood of democracy" (Saltman, 2018, p. 8). Moreover, critical educators understand education as inherently political and thus, underscore how long-held beliefs and deeply-held values influence how educational policies and practices play out in schools (Levy et al, 2017;Mansfield & Newcomb, 2015). For example, we have known for a long time that social constructs such as race/ethnicity, gender, and class are closely tied with educators' perceptions of students' abilities ("little p" politics), as well as how housing values and property taxes determine whether neighborhood schools are equitably funded by the state ("Big P" politics) (Mansfield, 2015;Mansfield & Newcomb, 2015).…”