Civil Disobedience & School Board Meetings

"Minoritized communities throughout the world engage in spaces of educational decision-making to advocate for equity-oriented policies (Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.1)."

The researcher's of this article investigates what that advocacy looks like at the local level in the United States at school board meetings rules "from meetings featuring the advocacy of mainly Black community members who aimed to address inequities in a suburban school district governed by a largely white school board (Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.1)."

The community members engaged in civil disobedience in order to "advance resistance capital (Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.15) to achieve their purpose of taking actions toward racism in the district. They do this by breaking the rules and engaging in a power struggle with the board. The researchers discuss "how board rules that aimed to exclude community voices by confining public comments were met with community resistance aimed at advancing equity (Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.8)." The bulleted list below provides examples of this and some of my reactions.

The board implemented a rule to 3 minutes per public comment. I thought to myself "what if they were just trying to be mindful of time?" However, the researchers commented that "we can surmise that the board imposed this new rule as a response to the community’s advocacy, judging by the timing of its creation(Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.9)." It went from a suggestion to a mandate. Some community members abided by it and some didn't. The ones that didn't refer to what they were doing as civil disobedience.

Another rule"written in the WUSD policy manual, stated that the board president’s role was to recognize community speakers. The subtext of this rule was that community speakers must have permission to speak (Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.10)." The civil disobedience was that the community spoke from the audience instead of from the podium. The board members attempted to regain control by telling people to speak from the podium.

According to the researchers "By leaning on board rules to control when, how, and how long community members spoke, Frank, Bill, and Nancy appeared to attempt to shore up whiteness as property. Though one of the board members was Black, the board nonetheless acted in ways that affirmed the hierarchy of Black and white (Harris 1993 in Sampson and Bertrand, 2020, p.9)." There was a rule that public speakers only speak to the board. In civil disobedience, speakers spoke to the audience when speaking. There was a rule that only the board president could direct and facilitate the meeting. However, community members often broke this rule as an act of civil disobedience.

I am struggling with the researchers' viewpoint because it appears that board members were just trying to have an orderly conversation. However, I also understand how the audience members feel when it was apparent that they were not going to focus on solving racial issues. It is very hard for Black people to succumb to racial issues being ignored because of the unimaginable and shameful racism in this country. So I guess a better question is "should we expect people to be quiet and orderly when they feel that injustice is prevailing against them with no hope of change?" The Black School board member said that "we can't stop racism." I am wondering why though, that this is defined as whiteness.

However, I found that based on the article "whiteness as property implies that individuals and groups associated with the social construction of whiteness benefit from legalized rules, systems, and institutions, which conversely disadvantage minoritized people (p.4)." Specifically, the district was predominantly white, represented a predominantly white school board, the board was slow to punish acts of racism, and they Board appeared to align more with the comfort of the white families than the harm experienced by Black families (p.17). Additionally, the only Blackboard member had ideas that often aligned with the board. Lastly, "whiteness was masked by the technicality of rules, allowing the board to justify who deserves time and space to speak based on a false notion of fairness that worked to conceal racism (p. 16)."

Overall I think this was an awesome way for the community activist to engage the board.

References

Sampson, C. & Bertrand, M. (2020). “This is civil disobedience. I’ll continue.”: the racialization of school board meeting rules, Journal of Education Policy, DOI:10.1080/02680939.2020.1778795