Commentary: Ghosts in the School Yard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side by Eve. L Ewing
"...losing a school is losing a piece of history, a piece of self-understanding and personal narrative... the city is counting on older Black Chicagoans who carry this history to eventually disappear, and by shutting down the institutions that bear our collective memory, those in power ensure that it will be gone forever."
“That's how you get Black history to go away."
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Eve L. Ewing's Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side tells a story most of us are familiar with-- schools closing. When many of us encounter news of a school closing, whether it is in our neighborhood or all the way across the country, the image conjures assumptions-- assumptions that Ewing's critical and devoted writing masterfully upends. We have assumptions like,
"Well, it must be closing for a good reason."
Or, "This must be their last resort, so there is nothing else to be done about it."
Or, "Of course under-performing schools will get closed down. That's why the students get sent to better schools!"
Ewing's book explores each of those assumptions and their falsehoods, unearthing histories and context that have largely gone ignored for Black and Brown communities who face a majority of school closures. Those histories and contexts change everything about how we see schools and the decisions made about them, meaning they can also change everything about how we fight for schools, but only if we are willing to listen and take action.
We hear "underserved," "underutilized," and "failing schools," and we know what metrics are used to arrive at those words. Metrics like standardized testing scores, student-to-teacher ratios, and attendance. These metrics are often used to argue for school closings and they are formulated carefully to absolve those in power of responsibility-- as if access to resources and decision-making power doesn't flow through their very hands. When the blame is thus shaken off the shoulders of the officials in power, it falls back into the community's lap, perpetuating false notions of failure into the communities suffering the most.
But there are other metrics we aren't thinking about and, in some cases, ignoring-- other experiences that define for students, parents, and teachers the influential and important role that their school plays.
Metrics like the history of racism in Chicago's public schools, which continues to design schools to "contain Black students rather than... educate them," and therefore perpetuates a long legacy of a "disregard for Black life."
Metrics like the housing situation in the school's neighborhood. Gentrification has knocked down entire public housing blocks to make way for something more "marketable" to White people, leaving Black and Brown students homeless and in turmoil.
Like the stories from the kids who love and cherish their schools because their parents and grandparents went there, because they know everyone's names, because they feel safe.
Like the meaning behind each school's presence in their neighborhood-- the name of the school itself reminding Black and Brown students about their history and culture.
Like the stories of teachers being there for students not just in the classroom but out in the community too, at football games, at Church, at the local deli, at the community picnic.
Like the urgent words from parents pointing to the school's vitality and centrality in their kids' lives-- how the school is a safe walking distance from their homes, how the parents trust the teachers there with their precious children, how the students can access programs and support systems they may not have at home.
These metrics-- for many of us-- lie under the surface. They are visible and a part of everyday life and conversation, but they are ignored in decisions about school closings as if they aren't valid enough to keep a school open.
At the close of Ewing's book, readers will find scattered around them the empty, useless frames that had only pages before been solidly mounted on the walls, holding our assumptions in place. In their stead are new frames, ones that allow us to tell the true story, rather than telling us stories we know aren't true. I walked away from this book into a space redecorated for the purpose of action and resistance, meaning action towards new versions of what community-based, public schools can be and resistance against the old assumptions that, in the hands of those in power, convince us that schools can't be what communities need them to be.
I recommend this book for so many different kinds of people.
There are those who will find Ewing’s ideas not at all new, but perhaps they will find comfort in being heard and being seen. Like Black and Brown teachers, students of schools that have been closed, parents of those children, and other administrators who devote so much of themselves to the schools and students they serve. Your grief and mourning for lost schools is honored in Ewing’s work. And your experiences are pointed to not as supplemental information, but as evidence and proof as sound and true as sources claiming to be “objective”.
But there are others for whom Ewing's book will shatter old assumptions, as it did for me. Like school board officials, city government leaders, and especially White students, parents, and community members who think they understand why schools close down-- particularly predominantly Black schools.
But perhaps above all else I would recommend this book to White parents of school-aged children, no matter where you live, no matter what grade your kids are in, no matter what school district you live in. I recommend this book to those folks because White Supremacy threatens Black and Brown schools, students, teachers, and administrators all the time. If White folks aren't stepping up, aren't adding their voices to Black and Brown communities fighting for their kids' schools, then all we are doing is hurting, not helping. And we can't wait for what Ewing points to in her book called "interest convergence," or "the idea that black people will be permitted to achieve a measure of racial equality only in moments and through methods that happen to serve the interests of white people..." We have to listen and support every day.
If you are reading this as a White person and you don't know what to do better or how to support resistance movements against school closures in Black communities, definitely pick up this book yourself. In its pages, you will find numerous stories of community resistance and activism led by Black teachers, students, families, and activists. This isn't a chance for you to leap center stage and be the savior. Rather it is a chance for you to put down those assumptions you might have about school closings so that you can show up for others when the time comes.
Listen and learn so that school closures don't erase Black history. Then fight to amplify that history in every school.