Our Spring Contributor: Terry Gibson
May 2021
By now, most of us have seen this cartoon image of three people standing at a fence to view a baseball game. On one side of the image, equality is depicted as all three characters standing on their own single crate to see over the fence. However, the crate gives an unfair boost to one of the characters while for another, a single crate doesn’t help at all. On the other side of the image, equity is depicted as giving two crates to the shortest character, one to the person in the center and none to the tallest, which gives everyone a supposedly fair chance to see the game.
This cartoon has come under some scrutiny since it was first created in 2016, some believing it was an example of deficit thinking others saw it as White Supremacy disguise. For a better visual representation of Equity vs Equality, Tony Ruth’s example using the Giving Tree shows not only how to provide fair opportunities but the effort needed to address the injustice caused the inequities.
As a community organizer, equity to me is a means towards addressing the longstanding effects of disenfranchisement and cultural erasure brought on by various forms of systemic oppression. Equity means creating and preserving a fair and just society, community, or organization, in which those folks who’ve been historically and systemically excluded, are now systematically and intentionally included.
Strategies built to heal inequities should be steeped in historical context. Housing equity initiatives must work to undo the effects of redlining and predatory loan programs, health equity initiatives must take into account the untrustworthiness of American medicine and the profits driving treatments rather than cures.
Having the history of disenfranchisement in focus is also an imperative for cultivating equity in America’s education system. Educators, administrators, staff, students and parents, must remember the history of hindrance Black & Brown students faced throughout the provenance of American education.
As Bekezela Mguni mentioned in our talk, Black people were the only people legally barred from learning in America. Despite this, enslaved Africans developed their version of public scholarship. Clandestine Black schools were made out of the dark corners of cabins or hiding in the plain sight, singing in the fields and yards of plantations. Ancestral African knowledge and customs melded with early colonist ideas and language forming itself into new understandings and speech.
At the end of slavery in America, folks like Robert Moton who were inspired by Booker T. Washington, built thousands of schools across America. Some schools, funded by Julius Rosenwald and other wealthy donors, were multi room buildings walled with bricks community members formed themselves, like Tuskegee and Colman College. Others were one room shacks made of spare wood and metal collected by community members, like the grade school my grandmother graduated from on Union Street in Westminster, Maryland.
By the time of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, these schools had developed countless students and sharpened the skills of an unnumbered amount of teachers. Desegregation, believed to be a way to stymie the racial divide, only widened disparities. Black, Brown and Indigenous students were and even still, forced to carve up their culture, deemed savage or unacceptable, to replace it with Eurocentric standards structured by western colonization. Black teachers and administrators were simply fired or sent to White schools where they too were outnumbered, underpaid and overqualified. An estimated 38,000 teachers lost their jobs in the southern states alone. Ultimately, it can be argued that desegregation stunted the growth of Black American intelligentsia.
The history of Black schools in the United States reveals that faculty, staff and students shared a common understanding of their need for survival and in a collective effort, worked towards their own liberation. The question then becomes: How can Black students or educators feel affirmed or be successful in an institution that isn’t fully supportive towards their leadership, freedom and intellectual growth but in fact, deems them lesser than?
Equity work in education means accepting the hardest parts of American history and working to reconcile the effects of disenfranchisement in education. This isn’t “cancel culture” but context culture; transforming our perspectives to fully understand the work and truths that lay before us.
White privilege is being able to take the offerings of education for granted. Seemingly, America’s education system has been ready-made and waiting for White folks. Schools are a place where culturally, Whiteness is not just welcomed but centered and expanded, while BIPoC students are overpoliced into compliance. Economically, schools that serve a predominantly White student body rarely find themselves in need, being fully equipped with the newest editions and staffed with educators who fit best within the institution’s paradigms.
Though it may seem like all White folks are protected and accepted in America’s schools, the atrocity of truncating oneself to fit into America’s education system happens to White students, faculty and staff as well. When we understand that race is a social construct meant to classify people groups based on their skin color, we can see how White centered education rejects some of the histories and customs of European cultures and replaces it with the narrative and practices of White Supremacy. When we recognize those patriarchal values and traditions intended to structure American society as racist and xenophobic, we notice the intersections of inequality; how this ideology marginalizes disabled people, trans folks as much as women and people of color.
Oftentimes equity comes off like this confusing, ambiguous catch-all term used to describe diversity and inclusion efforts. Some of my associates offer an immediate eye roll to organizations that claim to be doing equity work. To them, corporate efforts to address inequities prove to be shallow; hiring another Black or Brown employee or hosting a day long diversity training won’t upend the culture that maintains inequities. Even further, these efforts do not rebuild the relationship with the greater community most harmed by marginalization.
Though I agree with many of my friends who feel this way, I do understand equity to be a first step; an acknowledgement that there is a need to make an organization or society fair and just for all people. And, I understand my friends’ frustrations with corporate statements and passive actions towards equity. This work goes further than thoughts and prayers, beyond the hiring of someone of a different skin color. Equity is much more than ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity. Equity initiatives must be transforming policy and practice in a way that bolsters fairness and holds accountable those who may continue to disenfranchise community members.
ABOUT TERRY GIBSON
Terry Gibson is a program assistant at the Picknelly Center and sitting Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee at Holyoke Community College. For over 10 years Terry has been operating with secular and faith based organizations throughout Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, Pa., Oakland,Ca., Mexico City, MX. and Morocco to advance the causes of the Marginalized. Terry Gibson has studied marketing, theology, social work and seeks to complete his academic scholarship with an LLM in Human Rights Law From Howard University.
