How to Be an Antiracist

Martin Luther King Jr. also privately disagreed. “I favor integration on buses and in all areas of public accommodation and travel…. I think integration in our public schools is different,” King told two Black teachers in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1959. “White people view black people as inferior…. People with such a low view of the black race cannot be given free rein and put in charge of the intellectual care and development of our boys and girls.” King had a nightmare that came to pass. Non-White students fill most of the seats in today’s public school classrooms but are taught by an 80 percent White teaching force, which often has, however unconsciously, lower expectations for non-White students. When Black and White teachers look at the same Black student, White teachers are about 40 percent less likely to believe the student will finish high school. Low-income Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are 29 percent less likely to drop out of school, 39 percent less likely among very low-income Black boys.