The National Interest: Once a month, this column is tackling broader questions about what the country should do about gaps in achievement and opportunity, especially for boys of color, in a partnership with The Root.
Colin Kaepernick is a role model whether you like it or not. Many view Kaepernick’s choice of protest as disrespecting the flag, our armed forces and America itself, but the vitriol toward the football player represents the fears that children may grasp the power of civil disobedience. Students who idolize athletes like Kaepernick may also mimic him at school and sit during the pledge of allegiance in protest.
Children in our broken US school system have many reasons to take a seat.
Every morning in most public and private schools, students recite the Pledge of Allegiance, although schools can’t legally force them to do it. The 1943 Supreme Court decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, ruled that students are protected by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Consequently, schools can’t force students to stand, recite, salute, place a hand on one’s heart or acknowledge the Pledge in anyway if the student objects.
In 2014, teenager Mason Michalec refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and the Texas Pledge, which is tacked on in the Lone Star state. “I’m really tired of our government taking advantage of us,” said Michalec. The principal punished him for exercising his basic rights by giving him in-school suspension.
Last year, 16-year-old Lauryn Crawford of Lakewood High School in Los Angeles made waves by taking a seat during the pledge in protest to injustice and disgust with religious hypocrisy. A teacher reprimanded her, but the school didn’t pursue disciplinary action when Crawford and her family reminded them of the Barnette decision.
If Kaepernick’s actions influence more students to protest the Pledge, it shouldn’t surprise us. Education has become about control, especially in schools that serve students of color. One example: more urban public schools these days require students to wear uniforms, an extension of the belief that schooling should teach students to fall in line. In some buildings, students are even forced actually to walk on white lines. This isn’t instilling the kind of discipline required for college — unless you’re planning to go to a military academy. Perhaps more nefariously, it’s subtly training students to bow to the status quo and not to take bold stands against injustice as Kaepernick did, and the teenagers in Texas and California did before him.
Then again, it’s an American value to punish black children to make them learn. The uneven use of suspension and expulsion weighted heavily against black children reflect this value.
Black students are 4 times more likely to be suspended than their white peers. Even the babies aren’t spared. In Louisiana, more than 7,400 Louisiana children from kindergarten to third grade last year were suspended for loose charges like “willful disobedience” (aka being a kid). Is it because what’s labeled “willful disobedience” in school could become civil disobedience once kids get older, a true threat to the order of things? Learning has been reduced to compliance. But no self-respecting family should have their children genuflect to unjust authority.
As a parent I applaud children, including my own, who protest the disparities they see everyday. Black and brown students have a first row seat to the racial differences between them and their mostly white, less experienced teachers. Students in urban schools grasp the consequences of inexperienced teachers rolling in and out of their classrooms each year. Youth see what’s fundamentally wrong with the way public schools are funded in America and how resources can provide laboratories, updated facilities and books, and how the lack of them can leave schools and children behind. The inequalities are especially clear when you’re a student-athlete traveling to other, more well off campuses. The differences in facilities, equipment and sponsorships are more intimidating than their opposing team.
Just as Kaepernick responded to “bodies in the street,” students’ experiences with inequitable funding, harsh discipline, inexperienced teachers and other disparities should prompt a response. But don’t blame Colin Kaepernick if students take a seat. Instead, correct the injustices that have given students reason to exercise their Constitutional right to demand better.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.