What this Black alum of Missouri school district thinks of parent diversity protests

I generally enjoyed my time as a student in Missouri’s Rockwood School District, which has made national headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. A group of angry parents raised a stink about the reading of a book that featured a young Black male character on the cover, for crying out loud.

I earned my high school diploma from Eureka High School well over 30 years ago. The experience of being a voluntary desegregation student in a predominantly white setting was life-changing for me. But it wasn’t sunshine and rainbows for others from St. Louis.

But folks opposed to the district’s strategic commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion need to chill.

Seriously.

Threats have been levied at two district administrators of color. Extra security was needed at Thursday’s school board meeting despite a plea for civility. The hate-filled words being spilled are real and have been taken seriously by the district.

Thank God.

The district is indoctrinating children, critics contend. The argument is completely asinine. What’s wrong with an inclusive curriculum that includes students reading books by Black authors or featuring children of color on the cover?

Why shouldn’t children have equitable opportunities for a good education?

Not once from sixth grade until my high school graduation in 1992 were books written by Black authors required reading. A character that looked like me on the front? Forget about it.

But I digress.

Critical race theory not in curriculum

A very loud vocal minority is trying to cancel all things diversity in a school district that counts 1,400 minority children among 21,000 students. The superintendent and his hand-picked director of diversity and inclusion have essentially been forced out.

Mark Miles, Rockwood superintendent, is retiring just two years into his tenure at the suburban St. Louis school district. Brittany Hogan, one of two administers of color who have received threats, will not return. She was the district’s first diversity director. At the urging of Miles, she was promoted after serving as program coordinator.

Accordingly, the Rockwood school board’s call for civility was much needed. It followed a dustup that gained national attention after a concerned parent went viral for a tear-filled rant against critical race theory, an academic approach to teaching about race and society, which officials said isn’t included in the district’s curriculum.

Miles also took an unfair beating this spring when he ordered a “thin blue line” decal removed from the caps of the Eureka baseball team. The visible support for law enforcement violated district policy, Miles said. More vile comments followed.

Miles is beyond disappointed in how the district has been portrayed, he told me during a telephone conversation Friday. He struggled to put into words the fire that has ignited. He is proud of the school board for taking a stand against hate, and he thanked a group of Black alums from the district who have stepped up to add to the discourse.

(Full disclosure, I am a member of the desegregation alumni Facebook group. The goal is to share our experiences as deseg students. Who better to ask about diversity than a group of successful Black adults who as children were educated at a majority white school?)

“Our group of Black alums can lend a voice of positivity and highlight the success of the district,” Miles said. “This is a good thing for the community.”

For years, students such as Muhammad Abdulqaadir woke around 5:30 a.m. to be at the bus stop an hour or so later. A one-hour ride to a school was routine. Eureka is some 27 miles west of St. Louis.

Those former students can aid in finding solutions, Abdulqaadir, 39, now of Kansas City, said.

“You need to talk to the people closest to the problem,” he said. “And that is not happening.”

Black students face additional challenges

As a three-sport high school athlete, I often returned home at 9 p.m. or later on game days. All of this while trying to navigate the pitfalls that befell many of my comrades in the city: drugs, gangs and crime.

Not once did a teacher or coach ask me about my experience as a Black student at Eureka. No one thought it wasn’t OK for a teacher to read “Nigger Jim” out loud as we discussed “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

And there was hardly an opportunity to discuss the culture shock of leaving an urban environment for school in a suburban/rural setting.

As the minority group, we had to assimilate to the norms and culture of Eureka. We faced suspension or expulsion if we didn’t, as my older sibling can attest. My brother Antoine never graduated after being kicked out of Eureka High at age 16. Three years later, he started a 12-year prison sentence as a convicted drug dealer.

Others, such as myself and Abdulqaadir, excelled as student-athletes. Despite being the minority, Black students at my time in the Rockwood School District were never afforded the benefit of the doubt, and that is what diversity, equity and inclusion work is about. A white teacher with trouble reaching a minority student may simply not understand the student’s background, life or lived experience.

I played for coaches — all white — whom I would run through a brick wall for. Even today. But not one of them ever came to my home in the city to get a firsthand look at life on a daily basis in the 1980s and ‘90s. There was no way they would have known my single mother of three struggled with drug addiction, and my older brother was dealing drugs.

Despite it all, I succeeded. And that is something that I and others would like for the loud angry parents dead set against an inclusive curriculum in the Rockwood School District to know.

And it starts with dialogue and honest conversations.