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Fortunately, Civil Rights
advocates were relentless in their strenuous struggled to
ensure the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Title VI of that
act prohibits private and public institutions which receive
federal funds from discriminatory policies and practices
that violate the tenants of the Equal Protection Clause.
Similarly, in major cases (e.g., Grutter v. Bollinger and
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin) the U. S. Supreme
Court, reversing itself from the 1857 Dred Scott decision,
held that racial diversity of students was a compelling
state interest.
Despite laws and Supreme
Court rulings, ideologies have been advanced to subvert the
advocacy for diversity in higher education. This teach-in
addressed a number of these ideologies because it helps when
teachers and administrators understand the arguments buried
in ideologies intended to circumvent policies and practices
that promote diversity. Directly and indirectly, the aim of
such ideologies is to perpetuate white supremacy and
buttress institutionalized racism.
For years, scholars have
noted that, “while most White Americans value liberty,
justice, and equality, there is a gap between these ideals
and their willingness to support policies” that will foster
egalitarianism in society. Similarly, scholars note that
“White Americans’ racial attitudes have shifted from being
primarily based in overt Jim Crow, biological racism … to
being characterized as symbolic racism or racial
resentment.” Thus, Burke et al. (2017) maintain that
despite appreciation for the presence of nonwhite bodies in
various spaces, real systemic changes in the American racial
hierarchy are not likely soon because of a reliance on
diversity ideology.
Burke et al. (2017) argue,
“Diversity ideology is used to maintain whiteness—a set of
power relations that socially, politically, and historically
privilege those identified as white and conversely,
disadvantage others—in multiracial spaces. Diversity
ideology helps whites move between valuing diversity and
maintaining a lack of support for policies that would bring
those values to fruition” (p. 890). Here, based largely on
Burke et al. (2017), I present an overview of the most
prevalent diversity ideologies in hopes that being able to
recognize and name them will allow us to challenge and
change them.
Colorblind Ideology.
A dominant mode of thinking about issues of race is
colorblind ideology. Essentially, proponents of this
ideology maintain that differences in opportunities between
the races are not due to past and present patterns of racial
discrimination. Allegedly, this is because, in a post-Civil
Rights era, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
If, on the other hand, there are racial inequalities, or
persistent patterns of differences in outcomes seemingly due
to race, such differences are actually due to culture,
natural occurrences, or “a little bit” of residual racism
that exist among prejudiced individuals. In other words,
systems and institutions bear no culpability for racial
inequality. Rather, blame is shifted to cultural practices
and individual behaviors for racial inequality. This
ideology therefore “serves to prop up the existing racial
hierarchy, where whites dominate” (Burke et al., 2017).
Diversity as Acceptance. With this ideology, diversity is not
only accepted but also characterized as a celebration of
differences. In that celebration however, power asymmetries
are ignored and racial inequality denied. Therefore, as this
ideology ignores inequitable power distribution and racial
inequality, it is a medium for maintaining the existing
racial hierarchy and a tool of oppression for the powerful
(Burke et al, 2017).
Diversity as Commodity. This ideology also allows whites to
celebrate the presence of people of color and other
“minorities” in their midst. They celebrate because
“nonwhites teach them something, help them become well
rounded, and enrich their lives.” In other words, people of
color are viewed as “tools to enhance the lives of whites”
but in that process, whites do not have to be concerned
about structural disadvantages and racial inequalities
people of color face. Put differently, with diversity as
commodity, nonwhites are not treated as people. They are
treated as “objects that serve to benefit, entertain, or
color the lives of whites.”
This diversity ideology
allows whites to be lauded as antiracist for appreciating
the different perspectives of people of color without
considering the underlying structures that lead them to have
these “different” perspectives and experiences than whites.
For example, “in employment settings, a diverse workforce
is embraced symbolically as a marketable commodity.” In
neighborhood and educational settings, the value of
diversity is often framed in terms of the enhancement people
of color bring to the lives of their white neighbors and
colleagues.” Hence, based on these benefits, “diversity
becomes another good in the market that whites can consume
to fulfill their individual desires and make themselves more
attractive in the marketplace.” In that marketplace, while
whites seem to emphasize inclusivity and broad acceptance,
emphasizing such an ideology of diversity becomes a tool and
a new way of maintaining white supremacy and status. This
leaves little or no room for power sharing or any emphasis
on equity.
Diversity as Intent. This ideology requires whites to have
intentions of being inclusive with little or no emphasis on
results. With this ideology therefore, “firms,
universities, organizations, and individuals—however well
intentioned—use the language of diversity to signal a
commitment to principles of justice and equality” without
focusing on creating systemic change with equitable results.
Stated differently, this ideology is another means of
sustaining “a system of structural inequity because
equitable results are not required.” This is what we see in
strategic plans, corporate handbooks, and policy guidelines
that accentuate a need to promote diversity with no effort
to foster systemic and structural changes for justice, power
sharing, and racial equality.
Diversity as Liability. This ideology focuses on the
shortcomings of diversity. For example, diversity is seen as
“incompatible with other values, such as meritocracy.” Burke
et al. (2017) argue that, in emphasizing this ideology,
“Whites use their political, economic, and social prowess to
make whiteness the norm in multiracial spaces. In this way,
liability is framed in contrast with racial comfort, not
just meritocracy.” On one hand, the ideology emphasizes love
of diversity while on the other, it stresses a “need to
control diverse spaces and people of color for the sake of
comfort, fairness, and high standards.” For example, some
students see diversity as a liability in that the presence
of students of color on campus makes them uncomfortable
because of the expectation that they must interact with such
students. In other instances, this ideology “protects
whiteness because whites can resort to notions of
meritocracy (based on measures that structurally advantage
them), fairness, and colorblind ideals.” Furthermore, this
ideology stresses that, without regulation, diversity will
create as many problems as it solves. This is therefore a
form of social closure. Another scholar characterized this
as a “process of subordination whereby one group monopolizes
advantages by closing off opportunities to another group of
outsiders beneath it which it determines as inferior and
ineligible.” Murphy (1988, p. 8).
In sum, colorblindness,
diversity as acceptance, commodity, intent, and
liability are ideologies employed (although sometimes
not articulated) to circumvent advocacies for promoting and
perpetuating diversity through power sharing, racial
equality, and equal opportunity. These ideologies fly in the
face of the many documented advantages of diversity within
educational institutions. It is realized that, in covering
these ideologies briefly, “whites” are generalized. Of
course, there are exceptions but the focus here is on
systemic and institutionalized racism fostered and
maintained by the powers that be.
References
Burke, M. A., Smith, C.
W., & Mayorga-Gallo, S. (2017). The new principle-policy
gap: How diversity ideology subverts diversity initiatives.
Sociological Perspectives, 60(5), 889-911.
Sakui Malakpa will address the advantages of diversity in
institutions in part II of this article in next week’s
Truth.
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19th
Century School Segregation in Toledo
By Lynne Hamer, Ph.D.
The University of Toledo
Special to The Truth
(Part I of a series.)
Since coming to Toledo in 1994, I have been often
amazed by how segregated we are as a city and how
silent we are on our past. Immediately upon arrival
as a new faculty member at UToledo, unofficial
sources—students and community members—told me that
racism was prevalent in Toledo’s schooling at all
levels, P-12 and higher education. Their
information seemed in part a warning to me but more
so an admonition to change that—something I was
ill-equipped to take on having graduated from a
Eurocentric Ph.D. program in a PWI that didn’t know
it was predominantly white. |
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To emerge from my confusion, and to become a white ally for
antiracism in education, I had to do my own research to
understand what was going on and how my actions would either
support racism or support antiracism—there being no neutral
ground. As a humanities scholar, I knew and know that
knowing the past is essential in making sense of the
present, and as a teacher education professor, I know that I
need to teach my students who are preparing to be teachers
or who are already teachers and administrators about the
history of white violence and school segregation in Toledo.
My awareness and understanding of Toledo history comes
primarily from conversations with colleagues in the
community who are dedicated to understanding and sharing
history, among them Diane Gordan, Gregory Johnson, Twila
Page and Rahwae Shuman. Although beyond them, I have drawn
from Toledo Lucas-County Public Library’s excellent local
history archive, I have learned most of the history included
here from three under-utilized print sources, which I now
incorporate in my classes: Wilburforce University’s Dr.
McGinnis’s (1962) history, The Education of Negroes in
Ohio, and two amazing Master’s theses, Musteric’s (1998)
Perpetuating patterns of inequality: School segregation
in Toledo, Ohio in the 1970s and Williams’s (1977)
Black Toledo: Afro-Americans in Toledo, Ohio, 1890-1930.
This article is limited to the 19th century,
with 20th and 21st century articles to
follow.
In 1802, the Ohio Constitutional Convention voted to
prohibit slavery in Ohio, with the decision passing by
one single vote. Between 1804 and 1807, in response to
our new free state status, the Ohio legislature passed
sweeping Black Laws. Williams (1977) described the scope of
these laws: “These Laws prohibited blacks from testifying in
court against whites or serving on juries. They required
that black residents in Ohio be registered while those
entering the state be compelled to post "good behavior and
support bonds" and furnish positive proof of their free
status. In the absence of "freedom papers," entering blacks
were to be denied employment” (p. 5). These laws dominated
Ohio’s white and Black experience for half a century, making
work and movement—and therefore growing prosperity—available
to whites like my ancestors while denying it to Blacks.
One indication of the strength of Ohio’s Black Laws is that
40 years after their legislation, in 1847, Toledo’s Jesup W.
Scott, writing as the Toledo Blade editor, endorsed
the Black Laws and cautioned Toledoans to enforce them. Mr.
Scott “warned against offering blacks ‘any inducements to
come among them’” (in Williams, 1977, p. 6); As Williams
(1977) explained, “In the main, the majority of white
Ohioans, while opposed to slavery and its extension, seem to
have believed that ‘the south should give the Negroes
freedom in the south and not send them to the north to be
free” (pp. 6-7).
Establishment of Toledo schools intertwined with politics,
legislation, and the ideologies of racism, segregation, and
white supremacy enacted by the legislature and popularized
by the press. In 1837, Toledo incorporated and established
one grammar school in each of its three wards. As Musteric
(1998) documented, around the same time, in 1838, Ohio
established a fund for the education of white youth: “in
exempting blacks from the school tax, Ohio also
systematically excluded them from public education” (p. 5).
In 1849, Toledo Board of Education was established and
increased the number of elementary schools. Notably classes
were taught in multiple languages: Retired teacher Maria
Farst recalled in a 1937 Blade article teaching in
German at TPS’s Franklin school. But while effective
education of white immigrants was prioritized in this way,
education for Toledo’s Blacks was not. According to Musteric
(1998), in 1850, Lucas County’s population included 139
blacks (just over one percent of the total population) and
Black families lived in seven of the eight city wards;
however, all went to one one-room school, located
downtown at the corner of Erie & Canal streets.
Meanwhile, in the larger society the fight between slavery
and antislavery forces continued with the passage of the
federal Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Though there was an
abolitionist movement in Toledo calling for repeal of the
Fugitive Slave Law, the Toledo Blade, still under
editorship of Jesup W. Scott. “warned its readers that …
‘the law and the constitution had to be obeyed.’ It labeled
as treasonable critical challenges to the fugitive law made
by free soil editor Charles R. Miller and declared they [the
challenges] were obviously the work of a ‘vulgar knave’ who
was ‘hopelessly insane’” (Williams, 1977, pp. 15-16). It was
in this ideological context that most Black children from
across the eight city wards made their way to the one
crowded school open to them.
In 1857, again at the federal level, the US Supreme Court
decided with the Dred Scott Case that the U.S. Constitution
does not include people of African descent and therefore
Blacks had no legal rights. Perhaps emboldened by the
decision, in 1859 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled “distinctly
black” children could not attend public school with whites;
according to Williams (1977), Toledo schools continued
occasionally to allow Black children to attend white public
schools, so long as no white parent objected. I have found
no record of the numbers of Black students this affected,
but histories of Toledo and its schools tend to focus on
these exceptions, presenting them as the rule.
Also in 1859, the state legislature reaffirmed its
commitment to white supremacy with passage of SJR 78, known
as the “Safford Resolution,” reaffirming that Black persons
in Ohio could not vote. This decision was controversial
throughout the state and specifically in the Toledo area,
but it was reaffirmed in 1867 when Ohioans defeated
referendum to extend suffrage to Blacks; as an indication of
the climate in Toledo at this time, the resolution was also
defeated in Lucas County.
Against these movements to establish and maintain white
supremacy through segregation and denial of rights, Warren
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church established the
Toledo Colored Schools Association in 1862. Throughout the
1860s, members of Warren AME protested segregation of Toledo
high schools—specifically unequal conditions and over-sized
school zoning—by withdrawing their children from Toledo
public schools and instead enrolling them to attend classes
held at the church. Throughout this time, Toledo’s Black
citizens petitioned for entrance into various wards’
schools, citing unequal facilities (Williams, 1977, p. 38).
By the 1870s, calls for school integration could not be
ignored, and in 1871, amid rampant Blade editorials
(Williams, 14-15), Toledo school board members voted in
favor of desegregation. Interestingly, this gets
represented simply in dominant culture history, such as
WGTE’s (2018) documentary, Toledo stories: A chance
for every child, as Toledo’s desegregating voluntarily
and relatively early, i.e., before desegregation was
required by law. Absent from that dominant culture narrative
but documented by Williams (1977) and Musteric (1998) is the
hard work Black Toledoans put into making desegregation
happen. Also absent is the resistance from the white
Toledoan school board and the continuation of de facto
segregation in Toledo, throughout the 20th
century and into the present, through housing patterns and
school board policies.
In its broader context, Toledo was indeed in some ways
progressive for that time. According to Musteric (1998), at
the same time Toledo was officially desegregating its
schools, the Ohio Legislature revision of school laws in
1873 provided for continued segregation. In 1878, Ohio
Legislature further revised school laws, specifying
districts must furnish Blacks with schooling for same term
as whites retained segregation as an option. Finally, in
1887, the State of Ohio legally abolished segregation and
repealed the Black Laws.
As most of us know, the 19th century concludes
with a reaffirmation of segregation and endorsement of white
supremacy in the form of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision
in Plessy vs. Ferguson establishing the “separate but equal”
doctrine that supported Jim Crow de facto segregation
for the next half century and beyond.
Though far from a comprehensive history of 19th
century segregation in Toledo’s schools, my teach-in raised
the following questions for discussion that all of us can
think about, but that I as a white person particularly need
to consider: (1) Why didn’t I know this history? (2) How has
not knowing it supported both myself as an individual and
white supremacy in society? (3) How does this history and
lack of knowledge of it continue to affect me today, both
personally and professionally, with unearned rights and
privileges? And, most importantly, (4) What do I do now that
I do know this?
References
McGinnis, F. (1962). The education of Negroes in Ohio.
Wilberforce, OH: Wilberforce University.
Musteric, M. (1998). Perpetuating patterns of inequality:
School segregation in Toledo, Ohio in the 1970s.
(Master’s thesis, Bowling Green State University).
Toledo Lucas County Public Library’s Local History archives.
WGTE. (2018). Toledo stories: A chance for every child
[documentary]. Toledo, OH: WGTE. Retrieved from
https://www.pbs.org/video/a-chance-for-every-child-haspda/
Williams, L. (1977). Black Toledo: Afro-Americans in
Toledo, Ohio, 1890-1930 (Master’s thesis, University of
Toledo).
Anti-Racism Teach-Ins, hosted by the Toledo-Lucas
County Public Library and supported by The
Sojourner’s Truth, ended its first series with Labor Day.
Dr. Malakpa and Dr. Hamer were both part of the group that
started the teach-ins and organized this first series, and
that group is meeting to determine next steps for the
teach-in. Materials from the first ten teach-ins are
available via the Truth’s website and at
https://www.utoledo.edu/education/programs/educational-theory-and-social-foundations/anti-racism-teach-ins.html
Follow
Anti-Racism Teach-Ins on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100053978557767
for a schedule of future events and links to materials
shared in teach-ins. If you would like to be on our mailing
list, contact Dr. Hamer at
lynne.hamer@utoledo.edu
with Teach-Ins
in the subject line.
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