Chapter 1 Resource Guide

The Opportunity Myth

“...we as dark people see- which White Americans cannot- a country with enough promise to capture and hold four hundred years of freedom dreams while systematically attacking, reducing and/or destroying each and every aspiration” (Dr. Love, 2019, p.1).  

• The promise...the Opportunity Myth 

• The Opportunity Myth Executive Summary

Kimberle Crenshaw’s Intersectionality

“Intersectionality is not just about listing and naming your identities- it is a necessary analytic tool to explain the complexities and the realities of discrimination and of power or the lack thereof, and how they intersect with identities”- Dr. Love, 2019, p. 10

“Morris argues that Black girls never get to be girls, a phenomenon, she describes as “age compression,” in which Black girls are seen as Black women, with all the stereotypes that go along with Black womanhood (e.g., hypeprsexual, loud, rude and aggressive).  (Dr. Love, 2019, p. 14). 

To continue learning: Teaching, Loving, and Believing in Black girls

Probability of Suspension for Black students 

Do you know what colorism is? It's the kitchen staff who are darker than the people out front waiting tables. It's my family members hoping their kids will be light-skinned. And it's here, in the US school system. Using data from The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, US sociologists found a clear correlation between how dark a student's skin is and the probability that they would be suspended. I found this part of the study important: "The disadvantage for darker-skinned young men derives from their link to a disfavored group (criminals) in an analogous way that the disadvantage for young women does (unfeminine and unattractive)." The researchers note that there's a lot of discretion when it comes to how the school system punishes small offenses (like talking loudly) and darker skinned pupils suffer disproportionately. They note that future research should look at Hispanic communities too (I would add all poc communities to that list!) Source: Lance Hannon et al, Race and Social Problems, 2013 The Guardian has a special series all this week on colorism edited by Dream McClinton that I highly recommend!

Source of caption and infograph IG: @monochalabi, https://www.instagram.com/p/BwCtC4znI6K/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link 

Additional Resources, Colorism/Shades of Black Series  by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/shades-of-black

Incarceration vs. Education

‘School officials grossly and racially punish dark students. The American civil Liberties Union reported that “students of color, students with disabilities, and other students of color with disabilities are more likely to be funneled into the criminal justice system for behavior that may warrant supportive interventions or a trip to the principal’s office, not a criminal record (Dr. Love, 2019, p. 16).”’

Read: Against Prisons and the Pipeline to Them by Crystal T. Laura

Beginning and Ending with Black Suffering

Education researcher Michael Dumas argues that schools operate as spaces of “racial suffering” because “educational access and opportunity seems increasingly (and even intentionally) elusive” to dark children. To understand schools as sites of dark suffering is to understand how antidarkness works in the day-to-day lives of both dark and White children (Dr. Love, 2019, p. 31).

Resource: Beginning and Ending with Black Suffering by Michael Dumas

T. M Landry and the Tragedy of Viral Success Stories: we focus on outliers and ignore systemic injustice by Casey Gerald 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/tm-landry-louisiana-school-abuse.html