Vermont-NEA News

George Floyd wasn’t murdered just by the police, but by centuries of oppression

We Must Teach the Fundamental Lesson of America: 400 Years of Systemic Racism

George Floyd wasn’t murdered just by the police, but by centuries of oppression

MONTPELIER – Don Tinney, a high school English teacher who serves as the elected president of Vermont-NEA, issued the following statement about the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers:

As public school educators, we take pride in our ability to teach valuable lessons to the young people of Vermont. The recent events tearing our country apart demand that we use our talents and skills to teach the most important lesson of American history: For more than 400 years, our institutions and fundamental structures have been built on systemic racism. Beginning in 1619, our national economy has been built on the backs of Black people and their slave labor.

As educators and as citizens, we decry the barbaric murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers. We demand that all four of these now-former police officers be charged in George’s death; and we demand that they be held to account for the killing of a Black man. A father. A son. A brother. A friend. A Black Life.

George Floyd was not the first Black person to be murdered at the hands of police officers. As peaceful protests about his death continue in our nation’s streets, we must remember that people are protesting the cruelty and brutality inflicted upon Black people for generations.

Given the actions of the temporary occupant of the White House, we must all fight to assure that Americans never lose “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Our democracy is at risk.

But the protests, as well as our outrage, are about more than just police killing people of color. It is about the legacy of slavery, and the appalling, systemic racism that is at the core of this nation’s life. Institutional racism permeates our economic system, our justice system, and our education system. Systems designed to keep Black people and other people of color, including indigenous people, from fully realizing their potential as human beings should not be tolerated. We must collectively do a better job at making sure our schools expand the opportunities for all our students, not just the privileged few.

While we are grieving in these difficult days, we are fundamentally aware of the role public education must play in racial justice and know we have work to do. We must make sure all our schools have all the resources they need to ensure that Black children have the same opportunities as White children. If we have the money to turn tanks and guns on protestors at a moment’s notice, we can divert the billions spent on weaponry to ensure Black children thrive by providing them the resources they deserve and the services they need. “We can’t afford it” is an unacceptable excuse.

In our schools, we must review our curriculum and make sure we teach our children the truth about the ugly reality of slavery, racism, inequality, and White supremacy. To show our children that we will go beyond platitudes of equality, school boards and administrators must review and revise policies and practices to ensure they are explicitly anti-racist. We must demilitarize the nation’s police forces. We must eradicate policies and laws that find people “guilty” merely because they are Black. We must use our privilege to amplify the voices crying out for justice, and work to tear down the centuries of tyranny and oppression.

And we must listen. Black people are taking to the streets, demanding long overdue change. Their voices have been silenced and muffled for hundreds of years. For once, we need to listen to what they are saying. As educators, we must listen closely to the voices of our students, especially our students of color. While we may have lost patience with ourselves and our political leaders who have failed to do the right thing about race in America, we must be patient with our students as they struggle to understand our nation’s history. While our children are not responsible for the culture into which they are born, we are responsible for teaching them how to right the wrongs of their society.

Until we do, until we acknowledge and eradicate the fundamental White Supremacist truth of our American reality, countless more Black people will suffer and die.

#BlackLivesMatter must become more than a hashtag. It must become our national – and state – priority. We as school leaders should and must re-examine everything in our schools to ensure the students of today become the anti-racists of tomorrow.

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Darren Allen Jun 03 2020
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