by Berkeley Gillentine, LL’ 13, Senior Associate Director, Leadership Annual Giving at Washington University in St. Louis (MO)
In 2013 gcLi presented me with amazing gifts: new friends, future colleagues, and, most importantly, the concept of “mirrors.” Our group learned to succeed as a team by sharing our strengths to cover a broad range of needs. Wherever there were opportunities, our partners worked as mirrors in order to provide feedback for our growth. I had an amazing buddy who was an honest reflection of my words and deeds that week, and her style (and training as a counselor!) allowed me to stay in the learning zone as I learned how to accept constructive criticism.
Were it not for that experience, that group, and that buddy, I would not have been able to face what awaited me at home.
Toddlers.
First, some context: I grew up in South Carolina, went to school in Tennessee and Georgia, and lived in Texas during the summer of LL’13. To say that my life lacked diversity would be an understatement. Not only were my schools white, but also my church, my teams, my friends, and my neighborhood.
Yet, despite this pervasive whiteness, I was unaware of its presence. My family members did not identify themselves or our friends as “white” when describing a person or sharing stories; however, we were clear to highlight other races. Thus, my world held a “white normative” standard. I had developed unconscious biases so that every person’s look, words, deeds and behaviors were implicitly measured against my white experiences.
For many years, the only feedback I received was from people like me. White people, southern people, family, friends – people who could claim influence on my life. Their perspective had been from a place of similar experiences. My actions were compared to their own, so their biases were in play too…and none of us was examining our race.
Then two things happened: I had children, and I realized one question could make a huge impact.
I returned from gcLi to spend the rest of the summer caring for our toddlers. Like many new parents, I was in awe and terrified by the small humans that looked to me for answers. Our girls are curious and friendly and, like many children, ask A LOT of questions. About strangers. In public. My husband, Andrew, and I were not prepared. As toddlers, their worlds were formed in Crayola. The person in front of Target was “bronze” or “brown.” Their friends were “mocha” in drawings. If I said that our family was “white”, they corrected me with the shade “peach.” I started to become hyper-aware of my own word choices. I did not know if correcting them or naming color at all made us racist. The mere conversation about skin color made me panic. Trying to explain race to a child – when you do not know yourself – is tough. I saw what looked like failure in the mirror.
At this point, we lived in Dallas and were part of a diverse community. In this setting, my whiteness started to become more and more noticeable — to others. Multiple families asked administrators if I was a racist. My colleagues explained to those families – and thankfully to me as well – that I was not intending to be racist. I was simply a “clueless white woman.” I remember vividly one experience when I was a new dean and excited to attend the first welcome event for the freshman class. Although I had worked with many of these students, I had not met the families so I was eager to match names with faces. As I greeted these families, a beautiful Black woman approached me. She was not wearing a nametag but looked “just like” one of my students. I asked if that student was her daughter, and she said, “I guess we all look the same to you, huh?”
The mirror cracked.
I froze.
I mean – I’ve been called the wrong name, had my name mispronounced, been mistaken for someone else, so why was she being “so sensitive?” I was devastated. Her daughter was in my class for the next four years, and from then until her graduation, she was a constant reminder of that moment. That failure.
I could no longer view the world through one lens. I could not deny the fact that my white, blonde girls were treated differently than the sons and daughters of my Black colleagues. I could not deny that I was treated differently. Our family was never followed in stores. I was never questioned if, before paying, I opened the Goldfish to appease a screaming child. The worst-case scenario for speeding was a ticket. Meanwhile, the list of what was (and still is) safe for Black families had been growing shorter – whether running in their own neighborhood, getting snacks at a gas station, or driving with their children. My husband and I started to recognize our privilege as white parents, and so, for ourselves as well as our daughters, we began to name that privilege with our children.
Any time our girls held up a mirror, we realized that they were internalizing messages from us about race and ethnicity. We wanted to be better for them, so we braced ourselves for this journey. We started small, simply allowing them to ask questions without judgement. Why is her skin dirty? It isn’t dirt, her skin has more melanin than ours. We also returned questions back to them to allow them to reflect. Why doesn’t Tiana have a ride at Disney World? Is she different from other Disney princesses somehow? Every conversation gave us practice with language and a chance to learn about aspects of white culture together.
Where once I could not see my whiteness, I now saw it everywhere – not just my individual whiteness but a collective culture of whiteness. By now, I had moved into an administrative role and, with that more expansive view, white culture was clearly dominant. For example, I found myself frustrated that we held the exact same expectations for students no matter their home structure, and my advisees ran the gamut. On the one hand, I had students who drove their BMWs five minutes to get home where tutors assisted for hours. On the other hand, I had sofa-surfers who rode the Boys’ and Girls’ Club bus two hours twice a day for their school commute. This particularly small group of students was Black, and we considered any issues to be a THEM problem. But these students had tremendous talent and intellect, so whose problem was it? By looking in the institutional mirror with others, I realized that the questions we needed to ask had less to do with them than with the institutional structure.
Since I was still teaching a few classes, I wondered if there were more equitable and inclusive practices for grading. Little did I know that this one question could lead to such a huge change! I found mastery-based learning and standards-based grading, and my classroom culture changed almost overnight. We gained some attention. With the mindset of mastery instead of a score, a broader range of students began to see greater success. They were able to lead their own academic path in partnership with a teacher, and they appreciated the freedom to make choices about their education. So many students were signing up for Latin classes that numbers were rivaling Spanish — in Texas! Additionally, we had glass walls in our classroom, so faculty and administrators would often do a double take when they saw our rooms, rooms packed with this ethnically-and-neuro-diverse microcosm of our student body.
The more I learned about diversity, the more I wanted to learn. To be clear, the mirror offered plenty of moments where I failed. I had to reframe often. “Failures” instead became “opportunities to learn.” I had to force myself to engage in difficult conversations, to hear critical feedback, and to grant dignity. The mirror was a gift, unfolding a new version of myself as I grew in my racial identity. While I was still early in the journey, I felt brave enough to engage in the process.
I carried this new courage with me as I traveled north to fulfill a life-long dream of working at a boarding school. Living in a dorm, as many of you know, is exhilarating and exhausting. This new administration sent me to the Diversity Leadership Institute for National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) to learn about equitable and inclusive practices for schools. After that experience, I was invited to be a facilitator for the white people who attend NAIS’ People of Color Conference. Hearing stories from white educators across the country reminded me of my own racial identity journey and urged me to continue “the work.” At that point, the dorm was my crucial place of learning. As they would relax in the common room, eating snacks and stretching out on sofas, 18 year-olds from around the world would share stories of family, culture, and beliefs. I listened and learned, and as a result, I changed from asking myself what they needed to learn to succeed in school, to a place of wondering what gaps I needed to fill in order to create an inclusive environment in the classroom.
Two years later, the departure of a history teacher (also a gcLi alum) left no one to teach our course on the History of Race and Ethnicity. I did not want the school to lose the class, so I took a BIG leap and offered to teach it. This southern white woman was now teaching a class on race and ethnicity. I knew that I had to own all my discomfort with the students for them to trust me. I had to model what work white people have to do to become engaged. We had to create a classroom culture of vulnerability as we learned and held mirrors for one another. I loved that class; teaching it added more voices to my understanding of history. This work was hitting my head and my heart.
I would offer to educators – white educators in particular – to partner with one another to do this critical work in schools. For too long, the work for equity and inclusion has landed on and exhausted our colleagues of color. We have much to learn, no matter how long you have been in “the work.” The first step is easy – grab a mirror.