Racially Just,Trauma-Informed Care for Black Students

Abstract

Anti-blackness precludes Black people from being viewed as rights-bearing individuals and justifies the degradation of Black people, Black history, and Black culture. In this conceptual article, we suggest that (1) anti-blackness is trauma-inducing, (2) schools are often the first sites where Black students encounter anti-blackness and subsequent trauma, (3) anti-black racial trauma deleteriously affects Black youth's holistic wellbeing. Moreover, we contend that schools’ writ-large and teacher education programs can play an important role in providing the knowledge, resources, and dispositions needed to train teachers to recognize the persistence of anti-blackness and play a pivotal role in ameliorating it.

Anti-blackness is ubiquitous and can result in the spiritual, psychic, and literal physical dismemberment of Black people; this is a global phenomenon. Shantal Bailey contends that the racist abuse that her son Raheem experienced at school ultimately led to him losing his finger. On May 16, 2022, 11-year-old Black boy Raheem Bailey from the United Kingdom called his mother in tears to tell her he was being bullied and that, despite being the target of the bullying, his teacher threatened him with detention. On the following day, he was attacked by a group of children who repeatedly kicked him while he was on the ground. In a moment of desperation, Raheem fled from the bullies by climbing a fence in an effort to leave the school grounds. His finger got caught on the fence.

After being informed of the incident, Raheem's mother, Shantal, was told by school officials to wait for 5 h for an ambulance to transport him to the hospital. According to Shantal, “As time rolled on, it became more apparent that the possibility my son was going to lose his finger was a real one” (White, 2022, para. 11). Doctors later informed her that this would be the case. Despite 6 h of surgery, doctors were unable to save the 11-year-old boy's finger. The school did not reach out to the Bailey family to check on Raheem's wellbeing for days. According to Shantal, following the incident “Sometimes he [would] start saying ‘mummy I didn’t lose my finger, I was just having a really bad dream, I am having a dream, right?’ and I have to bring him back because I don’t want to lie to him and I don’t want to pretend” (BBC, 2022, para. 8).

The family attorney of Montravious Thomas argued that had he received adequate and timely medical care after being “body slammed” by his teacher, he would not have lost his leg. In September 2016, 13-year-old Black boy Montravious Thomas attempted to leave class to go to the administrative office at his school to call his mom and ask for her to pick him up. One of the school's behavioral specialists, Bryant Mosley, picked Montravious Thomas up and slammed his body to the ground. This happened twice more. At one point, Thomas was face down on the floor, with Mosley sitting on top of him. After the incident took place, Montravious complained to school staff about numbness in his leg, but the school refused to call an ambulance, denied that he was experiencing any pain, and told him to take the bus home. After realizing that Montravious was unable to walk to the bus, Mosley “threw him over the shoulder and carried him to the bus” (Brocchetto, 2016, para. 4). Once he arrived home, Montravious's mother called an ambulance. After spending weeks in the hospital and undergoing multiple unsuccessful surgeries, Montravious lost his leg. His family's attorney stated that if he had been provided timely and adequate medical care, his leg could have been saved (Brocchetto, 2016).

We share these excerpts not to sensationalize Black dismemberment and suffering, but to “present it as worthy of solemn reflection and remembrance” (Dumas, 2014, p. 3) and use their experiences as a springboard to call attention to the insidious ways that anti-blackness produces Black suffering in schools. Although Raheem Bailey and Montravious Thomas attended school in different countries, the “disdain, disregard, and disgust” (ross, 2020a, 2020b, para. 5) that characterizes how they were treated points to the globalized nature of anti-blackness in schools (Dumas, 2016; ross, 2020a, 2020b). For both Raheem and Montravious, the indifference and casualness with which their situation was treated led to them not receiving the medical care they desperately needed, and as a consequence, they lost their limbs. Each of these respective events speaks to how violence as a form of trauma is something that is encountered by many Black students in schools every day, in what could be considered anti-blackness.

In this article, we suggest that the anti-blackness that Black students experience in schools inflicts racial trauma upon them and has deleterious consequences on their academic, physical, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing. We also suggest that the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing racial trauma that Black students experience in and outside of schools has created a unique set of obstacles that Black youth face in their schooling experiences. Moreover, we contend that school districts, individual schools and teacher education programs, leadership and counselor credentialing programs can play an important role providing the knowledge, resources, and dispositions to individuals in recognizing the persistence of anti-blackness, and can play a role in ameliorating it. In this article we will discuss the pervasiveness of trauma, racial trauma, trauma-informed care, and more specifically anti-blackness as a form of trauma that is often overlooked, and misunderstood. Finally, we will provide design principles that have implications for teacher education research and practice that may help schools interrupt anti-blackness and address the racial trauma inflicted upon Black students.

Trauma and Racial Trauma

To anchor this work around the importance of trauma, we first provide a context for how we operationalize it. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Bureau (2014), trauma is an emotional response to an intense event or events that threatens or causes harm. It is important to also note that non-event-based trauma which is systemic and structural is also real for many people. Hence, systems of oppression such as racism, patriarchy, or homophobia all manifest in various ways that are traumatic for those it affects (Khasnabis & Goldin, 2020).

Education scholar Ginwright (2016) defined trauma as reactions to stressful, harmful or oppressive environments, and suggests that instead of the over emphasis on discussing trauma in the abstract, more focus needs to be placed on hope and healing for students in urban contexts. Over the last quarter of a century, trauma-informed practice has expanded significantly in education, and even more so since COVID-19. Trauma-informed approaches are usually characterized as general knowledge and information about trauma, and how to respond to it when it manifests in classroom settings. A scholarly review conducted by Goldin et al. (2022) documented the positive intentions of school-based trauma-informed practices but cautioned against some of its potential dangers. While they cite a number of scholars that report schools that have implemented trauma-informed practices with varying benefits, they uncover tweets that reveal the pervasive nature of White saviorism when discussing trauma-informed practice and call for “disruption and critical pushback on the weaponization of trauma-informed practice” (p. 10).

Incurring racial trauma is the consequence of experiencing racial discrimination or being the target of racial animus and often goes unsuspected and unrecognized (Alvarez et al., 2016). Saleem et al. (2020) explained that racial trauma may significantly contribute to high rates of trauma among Black youth, and Carter (2007) argued that regardless of the magnitude of the traumatic race-based event, the experience itself can have deleterious, long-term consequences for Black youth and other students of color's health. One of the ways that racial trauma manifests itself for particular groups is through the othering of non-white students (Howard, 2020). For example, a Black student who is subjected to unfair discipline practices, or students who are not given the same access to Advanced Placement (AP)/Honors classes as non-Black peers could be examples of racial trauma. Restrictive policies around language support are also racially traumatic (Gándara & Ee, 2021). We raise the works of these scholars because they have challenged the traditional notions of trauma that have greater relevance for Black students and other students of color.

As more teacher education programs teach preservice candidates about the pervasiveness of trauma and how to create healing and supportive learning conditions that support students (Thomas et al., 2019), there must be a recognition of the ways that racism serves as source of trauma for countless numbers of non-white students (Goldin et al., 2022). Moreover, teacher education programs cannot make contentions about their commitment to social justice and equity, yet refuse to engage in serious discussions and knowledge-building about the persistence of racial trauma in schools when discussing trauma. The failure to take action or remaining indifferent or silent in the face of racial animus for students is essentially an endorsement of its presence, persistence, and harm for Black students, and asks preservice candidates to co-sign it.

Racial Trauma Through Anti-Blackness

One of the more pernicious ways that racial trauma manifests in schools is through anti-blackness. An understanding of how anti-blackness shapes Black students’ schooling experiences is key to understanding how schools are sites of racial trauma for many Black students. In this article, we define anti-blackness as society's disgust with and for Black people and Black culture that (a) justifies the degradation and devaluation of Black students, their culture, and their ways of knowing and being; (b) positions them as problems needing to be fixed/solved/controlled through punitive and carceral strategies; and (c) justifies and normalizes educational policies and practices that are detrimental and antagonistic to their holistic wellbeing (Dumas, 2016; Dumas & ross, 2016; Spencer & Ullucci, 2022; Vargas, 2021;Wilderson, 2020). As a consequence of anti-blackness, Black students navigate schools without being seen as rights-bearing individuals (Dumas, 2016).

The purpose of exploring anti-blackness is not to start an “oppression Olympics,” of comparing levels of oppression across other minoritized groups, but rather to excavate how Black people move about a world where blackness is generally disdained and dishonored (Dumas, 2016; Vargas, 2021; Wilderson, 2020). In the supposed postracial era defined by an embrace of multiculturalism and diversity, exploring the unique experiences of Black students through the lens of anti-blackness is imperative due to the ways that it can explicate how interventions designed to achieve racial justice and further diversity may ignore, uphold, or even compound the consequences of anti-blackness in Black students’ educational experiences (Grant et al., 2021).

The consequences of anti-blackness in the educational experiences of Black students are cause for alarm. In today's highly globalized and competitive economic markets, one's level of education has become increasingly linked with key future socioeconomic indicators such as income, healthcare quality, occupation status, and even life expectancy (Howard et al., 2012). Black students who are not able to graduate high school and/or college are at a significant disadvantage in comparison to their peers that do. Consequently, Black people who are underserved by their schools are frequently relegated to the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder and are pushed even further to the margins of society (Gilmore, 2007).

The aforementioned description of how anti-blackness shapes the schooling and life experiences of Black students suggests that schools are often sites of Black suffering that produce racial trauma for Black students that can have lifelong consequences (Dumas, 2016). Describing how anti-blackness shapes the schooling experiences of Black students is not intended to contribute to deficit-oriented understandings of Black students’ experiences nor to suggest that Black students only experience suffering in schools (as opposed to joy). Rather, we seek to provide a theoretical understanding of anti-blackness in schools and the conditions that produce Black suffering and racial trauma for Black students in schools. As outlined in this section, Black students often attend schools where “anti-blackness [functions] as total climate” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 21), resulting in Black students experiencing daily interpersonal and structural anti-blackness that is detrimental to their wellbeing and creates conditions for the quotidian nature of the racial traumatization of Black students in schools.

The Effect of Anti-Blackness on Black Students’ Health and Wellbeing

Schools are often one of the first sites where Black youth experience anti-blackness, and thus racial trauma and its physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences (Marie & Watson, 2020). The incessant nature of anti-blackness inflicts racial trauma on Black students by repetitively exposing them to racially traumatizing events, minor or major, that deleteriously impact their physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing (Jernigan & Daniel, 2011). The race-based traumatic stress theory (Carter, 2007) suggested that racial discrimination may manifest as psychological trauma and may trigger symptoms typically caused by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), such as cognition, mood, arousal, and reactivity issues. Psychological trauma is damage or injury to the psyche after living through an extremely frightening or distressing event and may result in challenges in functioning or coping normally after the event (American Psychological Association, 2014; Harris, 2018). Saleem et al. (2020) suggested that although racial trauma can contribute to a PTSD diagnosis, “it is distinct due to ongoing collective and individual injuries and exposure and re-exposure to racial stress, which can collectively become traumatic” (p. 1).

Though silent, the impact of psychological trauma is pernicious. Psychological distress is defined as nonspecific symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. Subsequently, “high levels of psychological distress are indicative of impaired mental health and may reflect common mental disorders, like depressive and anxiety disorders” (Viertiö et al., 2021, p. 2). Psychological trauma, because of its ability to generate mental disorders, has the potential to negatively impact Black students’ mental health, access to opportunities, quality of life, and ability to cope with future harmful experiences. Because psychological trauma can affect how students react to trauma, it is necessary to examine how Black students cope with racism and race-based trauma to understand how Black students can begin to heal from psychological damage caused by racial trauma. Furthermore, it is critical to continue researching the lasting impact of racial trauma on Black youth and adults so that schools can tailor their actions and resources to help heal Black students’ psychological trauma sooner. If schools do not, they are assisting in exacerbating psychological trauma in Black students.

Critiques of Race-Neutral Trauma-Informed Care Frameworks

In recent years, scholars and educational practitioners have uplifted trauma-informed care as an approach to addressing trauma faced by students (Avery et al., 2021; Kimberg & Wheeler, 2019; Walkley & Cox, 2013). Trauma-informed care refers to approaches of care that are rooted in an understanding of trauma and the complex, profound ways that it impacts individuals who experience it (Craig & Sporleder, 2017). According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014), trauma-informed care is guided by the necessity to (a) realize and understand the impact of trauma and individuals’ wellbeing, (b) recognize how trauma manifests among individuals, (c) respond to or address trauma through policies and practices in a way that is grounded in knowledge about trauma, and ultimately (d) resist re-traumatization. SAMHSA (2014) has also identified six key principles of trauma-informed care, which are (1) safety; (2) trustworthiness and transparency; (3) peer support; (4) collaboration and mutuality; (5) empowerment, voice, and choice; and (6) cultural, historical, and gender issues. Taken together, it is assumed that these principles and guidelines for trauma-informed care may enable practitioners and caretakers with a framework for understanding and addressing trauma and its consequences.

A significant amount of the existing trauma-informed care literature is located with various organizations such as the SAMHSA, Trauma Informed Care Resources, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (Reeves, 2015). Much of the literature also centers on individual responses to trauma, and not necessarily root causes and systemic factors. Trauma-informed education is often characterized as fostering a school climate where students feel safe and confident in their ability to learn, can differentiate between trauma-induced behavior and appropriate behavior, and connect with adults and peers in a positive manner (Cohen & Barron, 2021).

Within educational contexts, trauma-informed care is in need of additional empirical data which shows what it looks like and its impact on students. Many schools have placed an emphasis on organizational assessment, paradigm shifts, safety, and wellness and self-care, but more research is needed (Maynard et al., 2019). Scholars such as Camangian and Cariaga (2022) have strongly critiqued such trauma-informed approaches by many schools as being race neutral and ahistorical, and suggesting that they do not take into account historical, cultural, racial, and gendered systems of oppression and say such mainstream approaches can do harm to students of color.

In the context of schools and educational research, discussions about trauma-informed care approaches primarily consider how “behavioral problems” exuded by students may in fact be responses to traumatic events that they may have experienced at home, in their community, or within the school itself (Edwin & Daniels, 2022). According to Edwin and Daniels (2022), schools that implement trauma-informed care “aim to create a school system and culture where students who have experienced trauma are supported and affirmed, rather than punished, viewing behaviors as an expression of trauma response rather than as deviant” (p. 4). According to this line of scholarship, reframing so-called “behavioral problems” as valid responses to trauma enables schools to teach their students various skills and techniques that may help them address and cope with the consequences of experiencing trauma.

As previously mentioned, scholars have critiqued early trauma-informed care literature for its race-neutral approach and inattentiveness to how racism and white supremacy produce and reproduce trauma for students of color (Khasnabis & Goldin, 2020). Alvarez (2020) argued that research on youth trauma must be undertaken from a perspective that acknowledges the centrality of racism and white supremacy in creating the conditions that produce disproportionate exposure to trauma for youth of color. In a related work that builds on this critique of mainstream trauma, Joseph et al. (2020) similarly argued for the integration of key tenets of Critical Race Theory, such as (a) acknowledging the centrality of race and racism, (b) challenging dominant perspectives, (c) valuing experiential knowledge, and (d) committing to social justice into trauma-informed care approaches in order to adequately address how racism and white supremacy.

The merging of trauma with tenets of CRT provides a different and more critical framing that shifts the discourse away from seeing trauma as something that all students experience in similar ways, and posits that identities matter; which causes additional stressors. It is vital to note that Edwin and Daniels (2022) have also suggested that trauma-informed care that take a race-neutral approach runs the risk of further perpetuating racism and retraumatizing students who have experienced racial trauma. Henfield et al. (2019) also suggested that ignoring race as a factor in understanding the traumatic experiences of students of color may contribute to a lack of full recovery from said trauma.

Missing from the emerging race-centered critiques of trauma-informed care is a meaningful engagement with the unique ways that anti-blackness creates the conditions for Black youth to incessantly be exposed and re-exposed to racial trauma. This is particularly problematic because of how the insidiousness and persistence of anti-blackness and its consequences are virtually inescapable for Black students, meaning that trauma-informed care practices/frameworks that do not address the “specificity of anti-blackness” (Dumas & ross, 2016, p. 416) risk overlooking, failing to address, and even perpetuating the unique ways that anti-blackness induces trauma in Black students. Given the inescapable nature of anti-blackness for Black students in schools, it is imperative that researchers and educators consider how trauma-informed care approaches may specifically address how anti-blackness induces racial trauma in Black students. We explicitly call for a race-conscious framework of trauma-informed care that takes into consideration the unique experiences of Black students in traditional schools that typically utilize race-neutral trauma-informed approaches.

The effect of racial trauma, rooted in anti-blackness, on Black youth calls for teacher education programs, school leaders and districts to take an aggressive stance on ending acts of discrimination and harm done to Black children. Below, we outline ways in which anti-blackness impacts Black youth in schools and how these experiences induce racial trauma frequently. These are examples that are essential for teacher education programs as they think about the essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to identify various forms of trauma which often affects Black students.

Micro-Aggressions

For many Black youth, schools are often the first and most frequent sites where they can expect to encounter racial micro-aggressions, a significant contributor to the racial trauma they experience in schools (Hines & Wilmot, 2018). Racial micro-aggressions are spoken and unspoken attacks in the form of words or actions directed toward people of color—often done subtly or unknowingly—that cumulatively impact people of color's physical, psychological, and academic wellbeing (Pérez Huber & Solorzano, 2015). Chester Pierce's seminal work on racial micro-aggressions and their consequences on Black people suggested that micro-aggressions stem from the feelings of superiority that non-Black people feel that they possess in relation to Black people (Pierce, 1970).

The feelings of superiority that nonblack people hold in relation to Black people are a direct consequence of the history of the insidious nature of anti-blackness in the United States. Consequently, for Pierce (1970), these feelings of superiority that “[accompany] contemptuous condescension toward a target group are so rampant in our society that it is virtually impossible for any negotiation between Blacks and whites to take place without the auspices of such offensive tactics” (p. 265). On racial micro-aggressions, Allen (2012) further explained that “microaggressions affect all marginalized groups and are felt through environmental cues as well as verbal and nonverbal hidden messages that serve to invalidate one's experiential reality and perpetuate feelings of inferiority” (p. 175). Pierce (1970), Allen (2012), and Pérez Huber and Solorzano’s (2015) analyses on racial micro-aggressions suggested that their frequency is a consequence of the pervasive nature of anti-blackness and how it filters the way that non-Black people read Black bodies and that because of this pervasiveness, the experience of racial micro-aggressions for Black people is ubiquitous.

According to Saleem et al. (2020), the consequences of frequently experiencing anti-Black micro-aggressions “may increase hypervigilance, avoidance, and contribute to PTSD symptoms or the development of a PTSD diagnosis” (p. 4), in addition to depression, anxiety, and a decrease in self-efficacy. Further, the repeated experience of micro-aggressions for Black youth means that they often lack a safe space to process the experience and the negative feelings that may arise as a result, causing repeated distress without reprieve (Saleem et al., 2020). In their study, Nadal et al. (2019) also found a relationship between experiencing frequent racial micro-aggressions and expressing symptoms of traumatic stress. Sanders-Phillips (2009) argued that frequent experiences of racial discrimination can influence youth's academic outcomes, and intensify the effects of experiencing violence in their home or community, among other troubling outcomes.

The findings from the aforementioned studies suggest that the insidious, covert, incessant nature of micro-aggressions in the schooling experiences of Black youth inflict racial trauma on Black students and deleteriously impacts their short-term and long-term health outcomes. Micro-aggressions can manifest in a variety of ways for Black students, including, but not limited to suspiciousness around their academic success, over surveillance, punishment, and discipline in classrooms, lack of access to Gifted, AP, and Honors courses, or the everyday acts and interactions which convey low expectations, lack of concern, and happiness about the presence of Black students in schools in classrooms.

Tracking

Academic tracking is the “practice of separating students for instruction, ostensibly based on their ability and prior achievement” (Tyson, 2011, p. 6). While the practice of academic tracking has roots that can be traced back to the late 19th century, following the Brown decision and subsequent desegregation efforts, the process of academic tracking became highly racialized and has worked to stifle a meaningful integration of students of different races in American classrooms (Tyson, 2011). Academic tracking perpetuates in-school segregation by stratifying students into “low,” “average,” and “high” groups using measures that are highly subjective and often racialized (Tyson, 2011). While some schools place students into academic tracks based on achievement measures, oftentimes schools group students into tracks based on how teachers perceive their ability (Lofton, 2021).

The highly subjective nature of academic tracking is subject to being clouded by anti-Black bias, resulting in a highly hierarchical and racialized process (Lofton, 2021; Tyson, 2011). Studies have shown that even when students’ have similar test scores and socioeconomic backgrounds, Black and Brown students still tend to be disproportionately placed in lower academic tracks (Lofton, 2021; Oakes, 2005; Tyson, 2011). As a consequence of a myriad of factors shaped by anti-blackness such as lowered teacher expectations, structural barriers disproportionately faced by Black students, and stereotype threat, the highly subjective nature of placing students into academic tracks often results in Black students being disproportionately placed in lower academic tracks (Lofton, 2021; Tyson, 2011). For Tyson (2011), “racialized tracking has made it possible to have desegregation without integration” (p. 6).

Being placed in lower academic tracks has dubious academic and psychological outcomes, as these students are often the victims of lowered expectations, are taught by less-qualified teachers, and are negatively stigmatized (Lofton, 2021; Oakes, 2005). Placing students into lower academic tracks sends “powerful messages to students about ability, race, status, and achievement” (Tyson, 2011, p.8) and has negative consequences on many students’ sense of self, self-efficacy, and desire to achieve academically (Oakes, 2005; Tyson, 2011). Tyson (2011) argued that one of the consequences of racialized tracking is that many Black students associate doing well in school with being white, implying that students who are Black are inferior intellectually and incapable of doing well in school.

According to Tyson (2011), the racialized grouping of students into categories often “mirror the racial, gender, and social class hierarchies in place outside of school, [and] they can lead students to perceive their own and others’ assigned placements as accurate and permanent”. Thus, academic tracking induces racial trauma due to how it inflicts psychological harm onto Black students by repetitively communicating messages to those placed in lower academic tracks that they are not intellectually capable of performing well-academically, often creating a self-fulling prophecy and resulting in those students experiencing disparate academic outcomes.

Discipline, Punishment, and Criminalization

The proliferation and widespread adoption of zero-tolerance policies (ZTPs) by schools throughout the past 25 years has undoubtedly inflicted racial trauma on Black youth who disproportionately experience discipline and punishment in schools. ZTPs became prominent in schools amidst a sociopolitical environment in the 1990s where “crime” was a central issue and thus, widely held tough-on-crime attitudes by policymakers across the political spectrum led to the widespread adoption of zero-tolerance laws that mandated harsh punishments for minor and major offenses alike (Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2020). Following the passage of the Gun-Free Schools Act gave states and districts monetary incentives to enact ZTPs that would deter gun violence at schools, these policies were applied to a wider set of behaviors and actions that students engaged in such as truancy, use of drugs, or disobedience (Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2021).

As ZTPs began to become more widely adopted, Black students frequently were suspended for willful defiance, “a highly subjective judgment often made by a teacher in a classroom” (Warren, 2021, p. 28). The vague and highly subjective definition of willful defiance has led to its application being highly racialized. Due to how anti-blackness filters the lens through which teachers, staff, and non-Black students view Black students, these students are more likely than their nonblack peers to have their normal childlike activities and behaviors criminalized and considered willfully defiant by school staff, ultimately contributing to them experiencing higher rates of exclusionary discipline than their peers (Bryan, 2021; Dumas & Nelson, 2016; Morris, 2016). Despite years of reform efforts that sought to outlaw willful defiance as a reason for suspension, Black students continue to be disproportionately suspended and expelled from schools (Johnson et al., 2021; Wang, 2022).

In the 2018–2019 school year in the state of California, Black students were overrepresented among students suspended from school as they represented 16% of suspensions despite only making up approximately 6% of the student population in the state's public schools (California Department of Education, 2022; Wood et al., 2018). Ultimately, disproportionate rates of experiencing exclusionary discipline for Black students have been a significant contributor to the proliferation of the school-to-prison pipeline, a phenomenon whereby students are pushed out of school through punitive disciplinary practices and are often directly or indirectly funneled into the prison system (Coles & Powell, 2020; Sojoyner, 2016, 2017).

According to Saleem et al. (2021), students who report experiencing racial discrimination such as being suspended for an unjust reason at school were more likely to experience negative psychological and academic consequences such as depression, anxiety, anger, lessened self-esteem and self-efficacy, lower engagement in class, and lower grades. Additionally, frequently being suspended or experiencing exclusionary discipline may create self-fulfilling prophecies where anti-Black teacher attitudes and expectations about Black students’ abilities may become internalized and impact their short-term and long-term academic experiences and outcomes (Howard, 2014; Joseph et al., 2020; Saleem et al., 2021). In addition to being the frequent target of anti-Black micro-aggressions, constantly experiencing exclusionary discipline in schools ultimately further inflicts racial trauma on Black students by incessantly subjecting them to punitive policies and practices that criminalize them and their childlike behaviors, restrict their autonomy, and communicate negative messages to youth about how the school and society see their race.

While oftentimes schools may serve as sites that ameliorate the trauma that students may experience outside of schools, researchers, and educators must not lose sight of the ways that Black students experience racial trauma within schools. The impact of racial trauma, rooted in anti-blackness, on Black youth calls for school leaders and districts to take an aggressive stance on ending acts of discrimination and harm done to Black children.

Design Principles for Dismantling Anti-Blackness

Educators have a duty to Black students to enact practices that support the holistic wellbeing and psychological and physical safety while in schools. In order to eliminate racial trauma for Black students, school leaders, teachers, and teacher educators must commit to creating a safe, empowering, affirming, and joyful campus climate for students. Below, we outline five recommendations of practices that school districts, schools, and teacher education programs may engage in order to interrupt anti-blackness and the ways it produces racial trauma for Black students in schools.

Creating Third Spaces

One way to ensure Black students feel safe and empowered is to create third spaces that enable students to develop their critical consciousness and sociopolitical awareness. Third spaces are defined as spaces created when the “scripts” of formal spaces (such as classrooms) and informal spaces (such as socialization among students) can meet and new meanings can be negotiated (Gutierrez et al., 1995). Third spaces are those in which “counter-hegemonic activity, or contestation of dominant discourse, can occur for both students and teachers” (p. 451). Because third spaces acknowledge that “concepts of cultural identity and knowledge are constantly being negotiated and re-created” (Sodusta & Labos, 2015, p. 445), they are places where students can define who they are according to their own values and ideas. Culturally specific third spaces, like a Black Student Union, allow students to feel culturally validated as they contribute to their overall school culture.

Third spaces must be informed by culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), which seeks to engage students by making the curriculum connected to students’ lives. Students must see their interests, backgrounds, and lived experiences reflected in the third space. Ladson-Billings (1995) defines culturally relevant pedagogy using three principles: building cultural competence, creating opportunities for academic success, and helping students develop a critical consciousness. Educators must help connect students to a sense of purpose that students feel responsible for so they persevere when faced with racial trauma, race-based events, and other obstacles. Schools must commit to fostering spaces where Black students can develop a critical lens of the world. Having a critical lens allows students to see beyond the challenge and acknowledge, navigate, and help eradicate systems of oppression.

Third spaces that center Black students’ races and other identities, can disrupt anti-blackness on campuses by empowering Black students to develop a collective voice (and space) to address anti-blackness. Freire argues that critical consciousness development involves “gaining knowledge about the systems and structures that create and sustain inequity (critical analysis), developing a sense of power or capability (sense of agency), and ultimately committing to take action against oppressive conditions (critical action)” (El-Amin et al., 2017, p. 20). It is important that students have the space to process their racial trauma and create action plans to resist racial violence. Curating spaces that allow Black students to process their experiences, hurt, heal, and celebrate moments of triumph builds community that strengthens their critical consciousness.

In addition to building Black students’ ability to process and heal from racial trauma, third spaces (Gutierrez et al., 1995) should also be an environment where Black students experience joy. Black joy is essential for students to thrive in a world where they are subject to adultification, which robs them of their childhood and the right to play. Abu-Jamal (2015) raises a question all educators must reflect on: “When is a child not a child? When he is a Black child, apparently … Black children are projected as a dark symbol of social pathology, with little or no hope of [their] renewal” (pp. 78–79). As educators, we are responsible for creating environments where Black children can laugh, play, process, heal, and resist.

The Role of Teacher Education

Any efforts to challenge anti-blackness would be assisted by having individuals think early and often in their professional careers about the historical nature of race and racism in society writ-large and schools in particular. To that end, teacher education programs can be more intentional in making sure that the complexities of trauma, harm, and healing discussions in courses include explicit analysis of race, antiracism, and anti-blackness. Such discussions should not be siloed or one-offs that offer only superficial mention of such topics; rather, these conversations must push teacher candidates to think deeply and persistently about their own beliefs, thoughts, and experiences with Black people and communities. The development of seminars, courses, professional learning communities, common book reads, guest lectures, or dissecting research from faculty on the topic are all worthy efforts.

It is also essential for teacher candidates to remain in constant reflective mode about whether or not they harbor deficit beliefs about the potential and promise of Black students. Howard (2003) encourages teacher candidates to engage in ongoing critical reflection about themselves, their students, and the communities where they are doing the work. Howard suggests that

In order to provide more meaningful knowledge and skills for teaching in today's cultural context, teacher educators must be able to help preservice teachers critically analyze important issues such as race, ethnicity, and culture, and recognize how these important concepts shape the learning experience for many students. (p. 195)

As a result, responsibility lies on teacher educators to be better equipped to discuss the complexities and dimensions of anti-blackness.

The challenge here is the overwhelming number of teacher educators who are white, and many of whom have not done the work of reflecting on race and anti-blackness themselves. To that point, schools of education have a duty and responsibility of hiring more racially conscious faculty, who possess the expertise or lived experience to speak to and teach about how anti-blackness manifests, how to identify it, and how to work consistently to undo it in educational practice, theory, and research. Anti-blackness in schools can and will only be undone when those in positions of influence and power in schools (teachers, staff, and administration) speak out and act consistently about disparate outcomes that Black students suffer academically, call out punitive disciplinary practices that harm Black students more than anyone else, anti-Black curricular violence is undone, and when there is an authentic willingness to listen, learn and believe Black students when they talk about their exclusionary experiences at schools.

From a school organizational standpoint, one school can shift over time as racial demographics change, and new realities emerge regarding who is being seen, served, and heard in schools. Teacher education programs must be mindful of demographic shifts as they prepare teacher candidates. As a result, a focus on anti-blackness cannot only be done in schools that are predominately white, and where Black students are a minority; while such acts do occur in these spaces they are not limited there. The work of undoing anti-blackness has to be front and center in schools that are predominantly Latinx or Asian American where Black students are in the minority. The same can be said for schools that are predominately Black; even in these spaces, anti-blackness can remain present. An important nuance in the work of anti-blackness is the recognition of the centrality of anti-blackness in the racial-organizational dynamics of schools, whether the population is 1% Black or 100% Black.

The racialized dynamics at play are not always between whites and Blacks but can occur within and across other racially minoritized groups doing so, or even in the total absence of Black people. Teacher education needs to tend to all of the complexities as teacher candidates prepare to enter schools and classrooms. Goldin et al. (2021) remind us that

The exposure and opportunity that TCs (teacher candidates) have to engage with and learn from people of color should not be so rare … it is especially critical that beginning teachers have these opportunities. Without such opportunities, much is at risk. Only when teachers are able to see their students fully, for the knowledge bases and experiences that they have developed even in the face of racism, can they work to support their full brilliance. (p. 1423)

In short, teacher education cannot expect schools and districts to be alone in teacher learning and development. Teacher education programs can play a pivotal partnering role in providing a solid foundation around anti-blackness before candidates step foot in classrooms.

Racially Informed Professional Development

Creating a safe environment for Black students begins with systematic ways of understanding their racial trauma and experiences. School leaders must ensure professional developments are intentional and explicit about how anti-blackness functions and teachers’ role in perpetuating it. We advocate for professional development (PD) that focuses on understanding Black students’ lived experiences, meeting their needs, abolishing harmful policies, and creating affirming systems. Ongoing, research-based professional development that is done in this manner may encourage reflexivity among educators regarding how schoolwide policies and classroom practices they enforce may perpetuate anti-blackness in addition to pushing educators towards adopting more humanizing policies and practices that support Black students’ holistic wellbeing and improve their educational outcomes.

Williams et al. (2022) suggested that school leaders frequently analyze data on Black students and that the data is “analyzed and discussed through an asset-based lens, including looking at examples of anti-Black microaggressions that are often commonplace in schools and classrooms” (p. 1). Additionally, we recommend that PDs are led by Black teachers and administrators, or school staff who are effective in teaching or supporting Black students, and if needed, outsource to experts such as community members and organizations to help facilitate meetings. It is important that professional development on Black children and racial trauma are facilitated by leaders and educators who care for Black children and are active in improving their wellness and education. If schools do not have racially conscious Black leaders or educators facilitating, school leaders risk having facilitators perpetuate their own biases about Black children and their experiences.

Madkins and Morton (2021) argued that in order to equip teachers with the tools needed to combat anti-blackness in their practice, professional development should emphasize cultivating a sense of “political clarity” among educators. Madkins and Morton (2021) defined political clarity as “the understanding of the sociopolitical and classed realities that shape our learners’ lived experiences, and how structural and school inequalities work to reproduce differential learning experiences for minoritized learners” (p. 246). Cultivating a sense of political clarity among teachers is the first step schools can make toward pushing their educators to develop a greater understanding of how anti-blackness shapes the lived realities of their Black students.

With an increased understanding of anti-blackness, teachers may be pushed to unlearn the deficit-based ways of viewing and engaging with their students and begin to adopt a more asset-based lens (Madkins & Morton, 2021). Developing professional development strategies that seek to cultivate educators’ political clarity and push them toward developing an ethic of “politicized caring” (McKinney de Royston et al., 2021) may disrupt anti-blackness in schools by pushing educators to unlearn the deficit-based ways that they view Black students and interact with Black students in service of creating a more equitable, and most importantly, safe school climate conducive to Black students’ wellbeing.

Make a Sustained Commitment to Hiring More Black Staff

Districts, teacher education programs, and school leaders can make certain Black students feel safe by hiring more Black, race-conscious faculty, administration, and staff. Representation matters and it is important that schools hire more Black psychiatric social workers, psychologists, and educators to support Black students’ emotional wellbeing. Furthermore, at the teacher education level, hiring more Black faculty would be a step in the right direction. In order to hire more Black staff, the nation must acknowledge that hiring Black professionals and educators is a larger structural problem. For example, In the 2017–2018 school year, only 7% of public school teachers were Black (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020), and approximately 2% of teacher education faculty were Black (Goings & Lewis, 2020). As of 2019, the Black children population was 13% (Brown, 2021). It is easy to ask schools to hire more Black staff; however, it is not that simple. We recommend that the school districts, teacher education programs, and the local and federal government create systems and programs that help attract more Black professionals to the field. Programs can include funding for professionals’ programs, monthly stipends, and access to quick loan forgiveness.

It is important to emphasize that teachers should not just be Black, but they must be advocates for Black students. The fact that a teacher is Black and shares the same racial background as their Black students does not exempt them from engaging in anti-Black pedagogical and disciplinary practices. We argue that implementing professional development that acknowledges the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in Black students’ day-to-day experiences as shaped by anti-blackness will help cultivate political clarity (Madkins & Morton, 2021) among educators that may push them toward adopting what McKinney de Royston et al. (2021) call an ethic of “politicized caring” for their Black students.

Rooted in the acts of nurturing and protecting Black students from the physical and psychic assaults substantiated by anti-blackness, McKinney de Royston et al. (2021) argued that politicized caring may protect Black students from anti-blackness due to how politicized caring requires the “(re)positioning of Black children as worthy of the expectations and opportunities of any child, and shielding students from racialized harms” (p. 75). Hiring more Black teachers who are encouraged to engage in “politicized caring” as conceptualized by McKinney de Royston et al. (2021) is imperative for mitigating the consequences of anti-blackness in Black students’ schooling experiences.

Radical Care Through Case Loads

Holcomb-McCoy (2007) identified five challenges Black students experience when transitioning from middle school to high school: stereotyping, scarcity of positive role models, lack of culturally competent schools, ethnic identity development, and emotional adjustment to discrimination. Holcomb-McCoy (2007) also described signs of students’ emotional adjustment to discrimination as depression (Hammack et al., 2004), psychological distress (Paxton et al., 2004), family dysfunction (Cunningham et al., 2003), and community distress (Noguera, 2003), which leads to “possible variables in the lack of academic and social progress of African American students” (Holcomb-McCoy, 2007, p. 256). Moreover, research shows that Black students experience more school-related stress than white students (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986).

In addition to experiencing more school-related stress, many Black students are not encouraged to think about and articulate clearly defined goals for themselves (Holcomb-McCoy, 2007). Holcomb-McCoy (2007) highlights that

African American students will frequently be unaware of the connection between what they want to do and the time and energy that they expend. It is, therefore, important for counselors, teachers, and African American students/families to work together to provide opportunities for students to identify short- and long-term goals. (p. 257)

Given these challenges, school leaders need a systematic way of supporting Black students and staying abreast of their day-to-day experiences.

By establishing small caseloads, educators can provide tailored support, and mentorship, and communicate with families effectively to create “school environments that give African American students the best opportunities possible and that are not places in which only the resilient can be successful” (Holcomb-McCoy, 2007, p. 257). Although counselors utilize a caseload model to support students, oftentimes, large caseloads make counselors ineffective at disseminating information and checking in on students. Gast (2016) argued that “urban schools and those with higher percentages of low-income students are particularly affected by high counseling caseloads” (p. 1432). As a result, we advocate for smaller caseloads to provide equitable guidance, assistance, and individualized support to Black students.

In order to effectively create caseloads to support Black students, we recommend that schools establish small caseloads where two or more teachers, administrators, and out-of-classroom staff are entrusted with checking in with, mentoring and counseling small groups of Black students. The collective support of educators is important for Black students to feel valued. We suggest meetings not only focus on postsecondary plans or goals but also on the emotional wellbeing of Black students and their experiences with racial trauma. Establishing a caseload model where caring adults consistently check in with small groups of Black students can positively impact Black students’ academic experience.

Moreover, educators and staff can create systems such as reoccurring meetings, where case managers share students’ current experiences and discuss student data such as attendance, academic progress, and emotional wellbeing to ensure that Black students graduate. It is imperative that staff learn about and discuss students’ experiences of racial trauma because schools have a responsibility to make students feel safe. Data-driven meetings make certain that educators are using Black students’ lived experiences to inform how they support Black students. The creation of systems that make room to learn about Black students’ lives and provide holistic support is a mechanism schools can use to build relationships, identify moments of anti-blackness, provide radical care (Howard, 2021), and increase Black student academic outcomes (Williams et al., 2022).

Conclusion

We began this manuscript with two anecdotes that exemplify how schools often function as sites where Black youth are physically, emotionally, and spiritually dismembered. Although the physical loss of limbs may be rare, the “spirit murder” (Love, 2016, p. 1) inflicted on Black youth in schools by the incessant anti-blackness they face is not. We are disheartened to acknowledge that despite decades-long efforts at reforming schools to improve the schooling experiences of Black youth, far too many Black youth continue to incur racial trauma in the very places where their loved ones expect that they and their humanity will be cared for, nurtured, and nourished. As educators, we must be firmly committed to transforming schools and the ways that we address anti-blackness in order to cultivate school climates that are safe and welcoming for all students.

This requires centering the needs of Black students in determining how we determine what constitutes school safety and academic success, which many school districts have begun to do in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Following protests and advocacy led by Black student leaders the Los Angeles Unified School District committed to divesting $25 million from its school police department and reinvested it into a district-wide program called the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP). Each school identified as a BSAP school received funds to strategize, program, and build community for Black students in efforts to support their unique needs. We call on more school districts, schools, and educational professional programs to undertake such efforts to ensure Black students are cared for in school environments.

As teacher education programs make bold statements about their commitment to equity, the proof must be in the practice. Our collective efforts must be dedicated to establishing a research base, theoretical frameworks, effective policies, and affirming practices that uplift the humanity of Black students. School and district leaders along with teacher education programs and educational researchers have to engage in the uncomfortable work that is tied to trauma and anti-Black racism. Teacher education programs must engage in persistent and focused messaging and learning to ensure that topics such as trauma, trauma-informed practice, race-based trauma, and anti-blackness as a form of race-based trauma are explored, discussed, and examples are given. School and district leaders along with teacher education programs and educational researchers must engage in sustained, uncomfortable work that is tied to eliminating the root causes of trauma and working to address the problems Black youth face as a consequence of anti-blackness. Moreover, equity audits are needed to see how anti-blackness is prevalent in teacher education and school curriculum, teacher–student interactions, access to opportunities, and the perception of parents and caregivers.

Finally, the damage that is caused to the psychological, social, and emotional wellbeing of Black students cannot be overstated enough. The consequences of the daily barrage of subtle and not-so-subtle acts which undermine the safety, happiness, and hope of millions of Black students are something that should concern all educators. Our collective efforts must be dedicated to transforming schools and society writ-large in such a way as to end the assaults on Black humanity sanctioned by anti-blackness and create a world where Black joy and Black freedom flow freely and in abundance.