Clip from Keynote Lecture, “Educational Equality in an Unequal World: Creative Strategies for Making All Students Successful.”

Lane Community College, Eugene, OR
February 6, 2015

Transcript has been edited for clarity.

Without the idea of equal access to an excellent, public, free education, we can make no claims to being an egalitarian society. Because without that education, we know what class positions people will follow in. We know that poor people and working class people do not elevate out of their economic and social positions without education. It's extremely difficult. Yes, you have the occasional small business entrepreneur who sells something on the street corner and, you know, moves up.

But systematically, education is a critical piece of how we explain equal opportunity. Education is supposed to level the playing field, create this context where competition is driven by individual talent, will, drive, etc., etc.. It's to be the great equalizer. That's a heavy burden for education. It's also a little bit unrealistic for a variety of reasons. But we'll hold that off for a moment. But it's a heavy burden.

And that means for us to retain the idea, not the practice, the idea that we are in an egalitarian and meritocratic society (where merit is what drives success) for us to even continue saying this with what my mother would say “a straight face,” we have to confront the serious nature of educational inequality. To do otherwise is to really do a certain kind of harm.

We talk about education, allowing the notion that those who are in power, those who succeed, those who do well, are there because of their effort, their commitment, their sacrifice and hard work pays off. Whether it's bootstrap philosophy or just simply, you know, working hard and being responsible for all of our own fate, we nonetheless use this kind of ideology to talk about the current circumstances. So high performance produces just high rewards. You work hard, you do well, what's the complaint?

And this has been going on quite a lot recently because a lot of the Democratic Party's recent efforts, you know, that are OK but they're better than the other party's options in my opinion, on this. But they involve sort of making the case that people need some help to be at this proper starting line. And everyone on the other side of the political fence is complaining that these are handouts and 47% of the country is just sort of takers, not job providers. Right. There's this whole rhetoric, right. That those who’ve been rewarded with wealth or pass down wealth or whatever it is they have are worthy and they've received it in a just way. And those who have not are there because of their own making. This is the kind of sort of subtext for all of these conversations.

So are the rewards for this kind of opportunity just? Is the educational system creating a starting line for us all that is relatively similar? Personally, I wouldn't mind if Sarah started at the starting line and I started a step away, and Mark started another step away. It's human society. We're going to have variations. But we're talking about some people starting at the starting line while some people are at the back of the room, or outside of the building and not even sure that a starting line exists in the first place.

So are these rewards just? My argument is, no, it is not just. The system is heavily stacked against all poor people, all working people, and the vast majority of people of color. Of course some very wealthy people of color do exist, but this is true for the vast majority of people of color, and certainly what we call under-represented minorities.

So this notion that hard work can overcome educational inequality is a deep and dangerous myth.

It's a myth that puts the entire burden on the individual student to overcome both visible and invisible structural conditions and circumstances, many of which happen way outside the classroom but infect the context of learning. It demands that they carry this entire burden, that all of the burden of that different differential gap be something that they make up.

Recalling my description of the starting line, these kids are outside, at the back of the building, carrying 57,000 pound backpacks, and they've got to run to this imaginary starting line that they don't even know is in here and do the best they can. And if they fail, if they make it only to this front row or they don't break into the building, we shake our heads and we say, “Oh, goodness, you know, they just need to work a little harder.”

Some sociologists will say, “They just need to set their alarm clocks earlier.” I’m not making that up. Some people say, “You know, if they just cleaned their neighborhoods more and stopped breaking the windows and vandalism, they would respect their space. And that respect would therefore lead to the proper behavior of discipline and self-respect, which would lead to them starting and figuring out where the starting line is.”

Now, I don't mean this to say that all poor people are noble. This is not the noble story of the perfect person of color, aggrieved and victimized and unable to find their way. It's not what I'm saying at all. Nor am I saying that some people don't work hard. In fact, I think some people from all classes really don't work so hard.I know a lot of pretty well cared for people who are really not interested in certain kinds of work. I know lots of people from different backgrounds, so I'm not making a claim that we all work equally. That's not true.

But it is true that these kinds of structural impediments make a myth out of meritocracy and therefore normalize, signify against structural oppression.