It’s Deeper Than That!: Restorative Justice and the Challenge of Racial Reflexivity in White-led Schools

Abstract

This paper uses critical race theory to analyze several case studies focused on the experiences of two restorative justice coordinators (RJCs), both Black women and how they understood and responded to perceived racial injustices in urban schools with white leadership. These schools were attempting to address unequal disciplinary practices toward students of color through restorative justice and the RJCs adapted their approaches to addressing racialized dynamics while also developing school-wide networks to foster broader critical reflection on race. They navigated the risks of challenging white privilege and systemic racism both of which at times limited their attempts at influencing change.

Keywords

race identity restorative justice cultural responsiveness social racism violence school reform urban education leadership discipline policies subjects school to prison pipeline critical race theory

Introduction

Restorative justice (RJ) has proven itself worthy of serious consideration as a framework that can be mainstreamed to promote pro-social behavior and address racial disparities in schools. Initial research indicates that RJ programs have a positive effect in reducing school suspensions and improving the school climate; in some cases, RJ programs across the United States have significantly reduced racial disparities in discipline (Gonzalez, 2012; Washburn & Willis, 2018). In California, for instance, between 2012 and 2016 the proportion of all students suspended from school at least once during the year fell, with Hispanic students experiencing the largest decrease, with a 30% drop in suspensions (Loveless, 2017).

Despite these advances, definitively determining the scope of the impact of RJ is difficult because of the rapid growth of school programs in the U.S. over the last decade and relatively limited formal research about them. Although the RJ programs in some schools have significantly reduced Black/white discipline gaps, these gaps persist. When RJ processes are used as a disciplinary response, marginalized youth are still often being referred more than their peers because RJ processes alone do not eliminate racial bias in schools or in the individuals carrying them out (Gregory et al., 2018; Schiff, 2018). Additionally, schools with proportionally more Black students may be less likely to have access to restorative practices (Payne & Welch, 2015). Restorative justice scholars and practitioners also caution against using RJ solely in response to disciplinary responses, and emphasize the vital role it plays in developing a healthy school climate (Hulvershorn & Mulholland, 2018, Morrison et al., 2005; Oliveira, 2020) and introducing restorative values and practices to educators and the wider community (Gal, 2016; Sandwick, 2019).

Given the growth in the number of school-based RJ programs over the past decade, largely in response to racially disproportionate school discipline outcomes, there is an increasing need to explore some of the challenges and institutional barriers that limit successful RJ implementation (Joseph, 2018; Schiff, 2018). Calls for the integration of race-conscious RJ approaches mainly focus on the integration of a critical race lens (such as examining the negative impacts on youth of color) given the prevalence of color-blind approaches today (Ragland, 2015). Yet, the literature focuses minimally on how RJ practitioners committed to a critical race lens of analysis navigate the everyday demands of this work and their specific interventions and adaptation at the micro level.

To address this gap, we integrate elements of Emirbayer and Desmond’s (2012) tiered taxonomy of the concept of racial reflexivity which includes accounting for racial hierarchies and having an awareness of one’s position in a social space and sense-making about the history that has led to those arrangements. Further we center our analysis on extensive work done in critical race theory (CRT) highlighting the risks of challenging white privilege and systemic racism and forms of resistance that often arise in schools in response to those efforts aimed at racial reflexivity. These forms include pathologizing critical race talk, marginalizing those that act to disrupt these arrangements and the subtler dynamics of evading racialized subject matter (Chapman, 2013; Pinterits et al. 2009; Solomona et al., 2005).

We argue that the work of restorative justice coordinators (RJCs) to confront racial injustice in urban schools led by a majority white staff and administration provide a particularly interesting context to explore, especially given the current gap in the qualitative literature examining in depth the responses of RJCs to this racialized terrain. Case studies offer valuable examples of the complex demands of how skilled practitioners handle the obstacles of responding to racialized dynamics at the micro level, especially when responding to issues of racial marginalization or harm in urban schools

In this study, we highlight the challenges that Black RJCs face when trying to respond to racial bias and institutional marginalization in predominately white-led urban high schools. We use CRT to examine how in practice, RJCs often use a complex range of strategies and approaches when addressing issues of race, negotiating resistance, and seeking support in schools (Griffin & Tackie, 2017), yet these approaches often do not fit neatly into many existing RJ frameworks regarding “best practices.” Thus, there is a need to provide greater insight into how RJ can be implemented to directly address racial disparities and facilitate racial reflexivity in urban schools. Other studies examine the experiences of restorative practitioners of color in urban schools (Klevan, 2018; Lustick, 2017; Wadhwa, 2016). We hope that the detail in our case studies will support those nascent bodies of work by informing program design and providing specific examples of these embedded demands that can be used in future RJ trainings for practitioners who are explicitly navigating race-related issues in diverse urban schools led by primarily white staff and administration.

Race and Restorative Justice Programs in Schools

The integration of racial justice frameworks and practices in RJ has garnered increasing attention from professional and academic circles recently given increasing awareness of racial disparities in justice outcomes. Over the past 5 years alone, we have seen significant growth in discussions about the intersections of racial justice and RJ at the national and state levels in RJ-themed conferences, perhaps most prominently through the largest national conference of RJ practitioners, the biannual National Association for Community and Restorative Justice. This gathering has increasingly highlighted the intersections of social and racial justice in workshops and keynote presentations (National Association for Community and Restorative Justice, 2017).

Academic literature on RJ in schools and communities has begun to explicitly highlight the need for more attention toward racial justice issues and toward the missing voices of people of color in RJ thought leadership (Davis et al., 2015; Normore & Lahera, 2017; Payne & Welch, 2015; Wadhwa, 2016). The newly published book, Colorizing Restorative Justice (Valandra, 2020), is a significant milestone in the RJ field to racially diversify not just topics in the literature but also the authorship. As stated in its introduction, the book is a compilation of writings by 20 restorative justice practitioners of color who are responding to “the contradiction between restorative practices and the Western, white supremacist, settler societies in which [they] practice them” (Valandra, 2020, p. 1). In key chapters, authors explore the complexities of issues of power, privilege, and race as they reflect on restorative justice work in predominately white-led schools (Arms Almengor, 2020; Parker, 2020; Sherrod, 2020).

Other RJ scholars highlighting the need for a critical examination of restorative justice practices today include Knight and Wadhwa (2014) and Vaandering (2010) as well as Gregory and Evans’ (2020) recent report about the current state and promise of Restorative Justice in Education (RJE). Winn (2020) and Wadhwa (2016) are both RJ scholars and practitioners of color whose books have made important contributions to our understanding of what Wadhwa terms critical restorative justice (RJ that integrates racial and social justice). Additionally, two recent books in the well-known Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series also focus on RJ and racial justice: Race and Restorative Justice and The Little Book on Racial Healing (Davis, 2019; DeWolfe & Geddes, 2019). Davis’ work critically evaluates how racism permeates the individual, institutional, and wider structural levels offering concrete recommendations about the role that RJ must play in disrupting and repairing the harm caused by these dynamics. Dewolfe and Geddes introduce the work of Coming to the Table, a restorative collaboration between descendants of slaves and of slaveowners to address effects of the legacy of slavery.

Although not extensively documented in the formal literature, practitioners of color have been pioneering efforts to engage in RJ with an explicit racial justice lens for decades. Organizations, such as Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth in Oakland, California and Community Justice for Youth Institute in Chicago, are predominantly led and managed by people of color who are explicit about the impact of institutionalized racism on their communities (Davis et al., 2015). Despite the underrepresentation of minority leaders in RJ programs and the lack of adequate support in schools for RJ coordinators of color (Arms Almengor, 2020; Wilson, 2020), it is these coordinators who are often on the front lines of implementing existing RJ models in addressing issues of race. However, because RJ models often do not build in attention to race, race-aware practitioners must often improvize in response to significant daily challenges (Gregory & Evans, 2020). Further some RJ trainings do not offer explicit cases (like those highlighted below) to provide opportunities to grapple with the embedded demands of doing racially reflexive work in schools.

Purpose of the Current Study

The present study was part of a larger study of restorative justice practitioners working in urban intensive public schools which included interviews with RJ program directors, community advocates in order to better understand how RJ practitioners and their allies navigate the complex terrain of addressing racial justice in urban intensive educational contexts. Our study focuses on the use of restorative justice practices in urban intensive schools, because the density, diversity, and numbers of people, as Milner notes, create a complex context and one in which the application of restorative justice to address issues of racial justice is still underexplored (Milner, 2012; Milner & Lomotey, 2013). In this article, we excise data from two cases to vividly capture the complexities in how restorative justice coordinators (RJCs) of color in urban intensive high schools navigate the demands of working with predominately white educators and students of color.

The decision to focus solely on these cases was motivated by several reasons. Unlike the majority of our interviewees, these cases were part of RJ interventions that were formulated to explicitly address racial disparity in the schools where they worked. Of those who were part of this project, the two participants we focus on related richly detailed narratives of specific interventions in these schools as a result of their full time work in the schools. The other eight participants were either coordinating school-based restorative justice programs or volunteering on a rotating basis within a restorative justice program in a school or advocating for restorative justice rather than working full-time within the school.

Finally, the fact that these two RJCs are Black women working in a school where the racial composition of educators was overwhelmingly white and most of the learners were students of color builds on existing conversations in the field of urban education about the demands of racial justice in these environments. Specifically, they bolster growing evidence that long-term student outcomes—especially for students of color—are positively impacted by having educators who are demographically similar to them, and that educators of color experience serious challenges when this contribution is not recognized (Egalite & Kisida, 2018; Gershenson et al., 2017).

Application of Critical Race Theory

We use Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the ways that female RJCs of color respond to forms of racism that are normalized in school settings where whiteness is consciously or unconsciously privileged (Madden, 2017) and where racialized forms of social control exist (Bryan, 2018). CRT is a useful theoretical lens to examine the power dynamics that have shaped the history and the current experiences of Black people and other people of color in the United States in ways that create a racialized social order (Alexander, 2012; Hooks, 1995; Vaandering, 2010). It highlights how structural violence built upon the colonial “othering” of “subhuman” groups was interwoven into the fabric of the United States and its school system (Delgado & Stefancic, 2000). However, CRT alone has been criticized for its penchant toward de-construction while giving too little attention to applied processes of reflexivity aimed at influencing change. In response, we apply CRT to make sense of attempts by Black RJ practitioners to facilitate reflexivity for white educators and other members of the school community in uncovering their own unconscious biases and assumptions and to analyze systemic racism (Emirbayer & Desmond, 2012).

Critical race scholars rightly highlight the need to center the experience and knowledge of Black people and other people of color in order to better understand and challenge existing inequalities. Increasingly, CRT draws on intersectional analysis that centers race while making sense of the complex and overlapping forms of oppression that shape people’s lives (Collins & Bilge, 2020; Crenshaw, 2020; Turner, 2019). Using an intersectional approach to CRT to analyze these two cases, we explore the following central research question: How do RJCs of color understand and respond to perceived racial injustice in schools with white leadership that reinforces unjust discipline practices toward students of color?

Methods

Participants and Sampling

In order to recruit participants for the larger study, the authors reached out via email to members of several RJ networks in two large cities on the east coast, including listservs and community-based organizations (CBOs) to ask them about the challenges and successes that arise while implementing new restorative justice programs in schools. Through this initial wide outreach we were informed that several organizations had been selected as part of a grant initiative to place restorative justice coordinators (RJCs) in struggling urban intensive high schools. Further, these organizations were required to implement restorative justice with an eye on racial inequality in their schools. Because better understanding practices aimed at explicitly addressing racial disparity was a central theme in our research of RJC experiences, our two case studies were drawn from those organizations.

Our current study focuses on a subsample of two participants from the original 10 participants selected for the larger study, previously mentioned above. The RJCs whose experiences we selected for this article are both women of color (Black women) working in schools every day with a majority of students of color, led by a majority white teaching staff and administration, a common demographic dynamic in urban intensive high schools across the United States (Carter et al., 2017). This dynamic allowed us to also explore how these RJCs navigated the demands of a context where school leadership often did not share the racial, cultural, or linguistic background of the majority of the students or the RJCs themselves.

Demographics

The two participants highlighted in this study, pseudonymized Tonya and Theresa to preserve confidentiality, are both Black women in their 30s with higher education degrees. Tonya’s professional background was in social services and Theresa’s background was in community organizing. Both grew up and attended school in urban intensive locations in the United States.

During the year we met with Tonya, 2015 to 2016, her school had a total enrollment of 569 students in grades 9 to 12.¹ Fifty-seven percent of the students were students of color, with Black students comprising 23% of the students and Hispanic students 22%. Fifty-three percent of the students identified as economically disadvantaged. Forty-eight percent of students in Tonya’s school were eligible for free lunch in 2015 to 2016, and there was a 2% suspension rate during Tonya’s first year at the school (when we interviewed her), down from a 3% suspension rate the previous year. Tonya’s school had an approximately 80% graduation rate, in line with the state standard.

In Theresa’s school 89% of the students were African American and 2% were white with over 70% of the students identified as economically disadvantaged. Sixty-eight percent of students were eligible for free lunch and there was a 4% student suspension rate during Theresa’s year at the school, down 4% from the previous year. In Theresa’s school approximately 55% of all students graduated, a rate less than the state standard.

Both of the interviewees identified that teachers and administrators were predominantly white, though statistics were not publicly available about the ethnicity breakdown of teachers and administrators at the schools. Each of the schools were identified for participating in the RJ programs because they had elevated referral and suspension rates of students of color.

Design and Measure

A multiple-case study design allows for deep exploration of a topic using qualitative data from a sample of cases. Critical case studies are a specific form of empirical inquiry which enables richly contextualized understandings of phenomenon being studied. Moreover, in critical case studies researchers attempt to not only understand how social processes develop over time but also deepen analysis of social justice including “our conceptions of power and privilege through participants’ interpretations of their contexts” (Butler et al., 2018, p. 11). The goal is to help lay the groundwork for critical analytical generalizations and not statistical generalization (Bramley & Eatough, 2005; Yin, 1994).

Data from this study came from two primary methods: interviews and informal check-ins, which were conducted over a 9-month period from November 2015 to July 2016. In total, we conducted four semi-structured interviews with these two participants, lasting approximately 2 hours each, and we had six informal check-ins total (three each) with these two participants, via phone and in person between the interviews. The check-ins ranged from 30 to 60 minutes, and were often used to ask the participant to further clarify or follow up with a theme or topic that emerged in the initial interview or to affirm or expand upon a topic that they had previously raised. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed and in total over 12 hours of conversations were analyzed.

All transcriptions were coded by the authors, using an inductive approach with open and axial coding, which involved deconstructing, labeling, and then selectively categorizing the emergent themes (Corbin & Strauss, 2019). Coding was repeated until there was inter-rater reliability as the authors reviewed and refined the consensus coding process after posing questions about the themes and discussing contradictions and other possible interpretations of the data (Gonzalez, 2012). In analyzing the data, we drew further drew upon critical race theory by giving careful attention to the RJCs’ stories about their experiences of racial marginalization in the school (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and our own biases and background. The informal check-ins also provided opportunities to discuss possible themes and clarify points with interviewees.

Researcher Positionality

The lead author is a middle-aged white male, newly class-privileged urban academic with formal academic training in conflict resolution and a background in informal and community-based social justice education. As an activist scholar, he is explicit about his interest in racial justice with participants which can create opportunities to directly discuss issues of racism, explore points of connection in working on justice related to issues, and differences in power and privilege during the research process. At the same time, numerous studies demonstrate that white and Black people differ widely in their perceptions of racial discrimination (Cox & Jones, 2015). Similarly, perceptions of the features of racial problems vary with economic class, education, geography, and other issues as even the best intentioned white researchers often minimize and essentialize these differences (Collins, 2002). As a result, the author focuses on making conscious effort to challenge these blind spots in the process of conducting and analyzing research.

The second author is a middle-aged Latin American female urban academic with 20 years of experience as a conflict resolution and restorative justice practitioner, including as a former RJC in an urban intensive high school. Her academic work focuses on the study of conflict resolution practice with an orientation toward reflective practice and reflexivity. She identifies as a scholar-practitioner of color and generally aligns with participatory research methods as a means of reconciling numerous positionalities: practitioner, peer, and academic researcher. Her familiarity with restorative practices and with the community of restorative practitioners to which all of our case study subjects belonged supported an instinctive understanding of RJC experiences and ways of articulating those experiences, while at the same time risking narrow frames in her analysis as a result of her adherence to established practice norms.

While objectivity in research is a concept under debate (Cerwonka & Malkki, 2007; Fine, 2008; Herr & Anderson, 2015) it is certainly challenged when one is studying one’s own milieu; the risk of blind spots and groupthink is significant. For this reason, it is helpful for scholar-practitioners to conduct research with what Herr & Anderson refer to as “critical friends,” researchers with no direct involvement in the subject being investigated, who can bring a fresh and less biased view (Herr & Anderson, 2015, p. 98). Both authors engaged other academics, practitioners and colleagues of color that served as critical friends through our regular conversations about the theories and experiences of RJC we examined in this writing.

Results

The analysis from our interviews resulted in two overarching themes: the importance of facilitating racial reflexivity and the need to build a more race conscious community in schools. The section below on facilitating racial reflexivity includes six sub-themes that illustrate the ways that participants understood that work and how they addressed specific challenges and opportunities they faced in their schools. The final theme elucidates Theresa and Tonya’s emphasis on the long-term need for building communities of practitioners working together in a supportive context.

Facilitating Racial Reflexivity in Schools: Navigating a Difficult Terrain

Challenging the deficit narrative promoted by white educators

A female student was referred to Tonya because she had raised concerns to her teacher about what she saw as problematic racial and gender dynamics that were marginalizing and dehumanizing other students in the school. The student was referred, however, not to address or explore the issues she raised, but rather to correct her response, which both the student’s teacher and an administrator labeled as “problematic.” Tonya explains as follows:

The reason why the biracial young lady was referred to me was. . .because [the principal] thought she was too “sensitive” or “hypersensitive.” Her teacher [also a white male] actually came to see me . . . he feels that she kinda just “needs to thicken her skin ‘cause this is the world, and it is what it is.” But they felt that she’s just too sensitive . . . [what bothers the student is] not just matters of race, it’s sexism, so like ‘slut shaming,’ like all the –isms . . . offend her. (RJC, personal communication, February 18, 2016)

In this case, Tonya was bothered by the ways in which the white educators in the school not only dismissed the student’s experience of harm, but also viewed her act of raising the issue as a “problem behavior.” On the other hand, the RJC perceived this student in a different light, calling her “brilliant” and “a good kid,” who was courageous in raising issues of injustice, which she felt had been normalized by the adults in the building. She also empathized with the ways in which this student was deeply upset about racism in the school and was highlighting multiple intersecting forms of oppression that included gendered dimensions. Tonya, like this young woman, has experienced multiple forms of oppression and empathized with her resulting feelings of frustration, anger, and worry.

Both Theresa and Tonya were privy to hallway conversations between teachers who sized up students according to their attire, neighborhood, relatives, skin color, religion, or ethnicity. In our interviews, they explained that the white adults in the building regularly spoke negatively about the students. In both settings, the RJCs viewed these moments as evidence of a culture of discrimination, intentional or not, that manifested in disproportionate disciplinary actions primarily toward students of color.

While it seemed that adults in both schools often wanted the RJCs to be their messenger to the young people they perceived as problematic, both RJCs regularly found themselves needing to go in the other direction—advocating for young people’s ways of seeing and understanding the world when adults were quick to judge or use their power in order to try to frame the important issues that should or should not be discussed. In Tonya’s approach to these situations, she was indirect and attempted to be cautious; she was mindful about her own vulnerable positioning with colleagues who had the power to support or invalidate her. She used an array of strategies, including having conversations with multiple adults and talking about these dynamics with varying degrees of directness, to create opportunities for greater reflexivity over time.

In Tonya’s example described above with the female student who was considered “hypersensitive” by her teachers, Tonya described her attempts to more directly engage one of the white teachers to support them in considering the potential negative impacts of these kinds of incidents on the student. In this case when she approached one of the white educators of Jewish ancestry, he responded defensively by citing how his people suffered great injustices historically as a reason for why he did not place too much weight on the student’s complaints. Tonya shared that she thought to herself, “Yeah, a lot of bad things have happened to a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean you don’t care [about this student’s experiences].” What she ultimately voiced to the teacher and the message she found herself regularly giving adults in the school was, “Hey, there is room for everyone [and their differing experiences]” (RJC, personal communication, February 28, 2016). Tonya had hoped to have a deeper conversation about the effects of intersecting forms of oppression that included both gender and race, but this interaction left her with a sense of frustration as she was unable to achieve that depth in her exchange.

Theresa on the other hand, discussed an incident in which she directly brought up racialized comments with her fellow RJC, a white male, even when the issue of race had not yet been broached by either the student or the other coordinator. In this case, it was a Black girl in her school who was the target of racist name-calling, and was called “a monkey” by another student in the school. In a racialized society with a history of depicting Black people as less civilized and less human, the term evokes a long line of painful historical traumas beset upon African descended people in the U.S. Racist imagery depicting Black people as monkeys and apes was common-place in the United States for much if its history and continues to this day (Kendi, 2017; Sebastiani et al., 2016).

When the incident occurred, the other RJC, was planning on meeting with both students to explore the negative impacts of teasing. But as a Black woman, Theresa was unequivocally clear that she would have approached the situation differently than her white counterpart. She put it as follows:

It’s deeper than that! The conversation has to be deeper, because this isn’t just about teasing people for the fun of it. . .[Here’s] a young Black girl who just had her magic attacked - crying because she has to navigate the system that [dehumanizes you] about being Black, right? - Not only in this place [school], but in a society that doesn’t support it either. So, when you go to Google and you type in “beautiful woman,” 99% of the women that’d pop up are white. [So, this girl is] not being validated anywhere else. And I’m very much in my Blackness. I walk around with shirts that say, “Black girl is like God.” So - I can talk to her about white supremacy and how it’s indoctrinated within us, and talk to her about the issues of colorism. And [my white male colleague] is very well equipped to have those conversations, but he can’t talk to her as a Black girl, as a Black woman, to validate that. . . (RJC, personal communication, February 19, 2016)

Theresa understood that she was in a unique and indispensable position to be able to connect with young women of color. Yet like many people of color in white-led spaces, she found herself needing to skillfully educate her white male colleague about the larger context in which teasing in this case is a part of a racialized hierarchy of beauty that is reinforced throughout society, including at school. While, in this example, the deeper analysis of the racial and gendered dynamics went unrecognized initially, her colleague—whom she considers an ally—acknowledged that he had missed this deeper dimension of analysis.

Establishing and nurturing relationships with white allies

Theresa explains the primacy of building these relationships and wider networks of learning as a starting place for her work: “Before I come in here, or before we come in here – ‘cause I’m a part of the team . . . trying to do anything . . . [I had] to attempt to build relationships.” She reflects often on the importance of deepening the working relationship she built and talked about her relationship with her white male colleague. He was someone who—despite not being able to fully know the experience of Black and Brown students—was keenly aware that the stories behind incidents with students reflected a wider structural harm. He supported Theresa’s uphill work to challenging racism and other isms within their school. She shared what their conversations were often like:

He was very much in tune with the conversation of, uh, that we’re up against systemic issues, right? That we’re up against white privilege, white supremacy . . . you know, not just for white teachers . . . but teachers who . . . you know, who have color. Talking about racism and naming it explicitly, right? Because you walk into a lot of places and meet people who don’t feel safe enough to have that conversation. . .. Uh, and for me, that was a—it was a relief. (RJC, personal communication, February 19, 2016).

Theresa and Tonya’s views on what constituted white allyship reflect wider research on the topic highlighting how allyship involves becoming conscious of white advantage, listening to and learning from people of color, developing ways of being accountable to people of color and being willing to take action to disrupt racism (Barton, 2020; Brown, 2013).Where Theresa could rely on her team for primary support, in Tonya’s case, she explains that allies in the school played an important role in helping her understand the larger school culture, including how other people processed (or did not) issues of race. Here her wider network in the school included both people of color and white people that could help her in navigating forms of colorblindness that lead to push-back when challenged. Tonya explains, “I hear some allies [saying], ‘I don’t know if they’re ready for that. . .I don’t know if they’re ready for the conversation,’ ‘cause it’s true. Like some things are overly, overly, overly, like politically, you know, correct. We are not talking about [race]” (RJC, personal communication, March 24, 2016).

While others in the school had voiced their concerns about this kind of discussion, Tonya had not given up on the possibility of speaking directly about race, as she considered it essential for her work: “We are talking about the understanding that you have students from various cultures in the school. And because you do, you should maybe acknowledge that and not just look [at] every Brown or Black or whatever child in whatever [way] you think of ‘cause of the TV or the news or what you’ve experienced, ‘cause I get that sometimes [from teachers and administrators]” (RJC, personal communication, March 24, 2016).

Tonya pointed toward a shift in the attitude of one of the white administrators in her school after she discussed with him how multiple forms of oppression can weigh on students and that different students experience differing levels of impact. In relation to the student she had spoken about earlier, Tonya noted that “The [Assistant Principal is now sounding] a little more empathetic of trying to understand her point of view, [recognizing] ‘Yes, I don’t know what that feels like [to be her]’” (RJC, personal communication, February 18, 2016).

One key to nurturing relationships with white allies that both RJCs discussed was the need to not view any adult in the school as completely unconcerned or immovable in their views. They both demonstrated the importance of this mindset in helping establish meaningful relationships with white allies willing to engage in more affirming practices and in reaching back out to people over time.

A teammate or a piñata?

For Tonya, as one of the few Black adults in the school, walking the tightrope between addressing racialized comments or preserving relationships with the staff was a regular challenge that she negotiated.

Tonya questioned the degree to which she could explicitly educate her new colleagues or hold them to account. Doing so, while she was still trying to garner their trust, was a risk she was not always willing to take and arguably was not in her best interest for influencing long-term change. Tonya explains, “I don’t mean to laugh, but . . . I’m a piñata here. [Teachers think] ‘Let’s just beat up on her’” (RJC, personal communication, March 24, 2016). Tonya often discussed challenging situations with the wry humor of someone who has weathered too many storms to be easily shaken. In practice, her experience of persistent vulnerability was not funny to her but rather, like for many people of color, a tiring and painful experience in white-led spaces (Smith et al., 2011). In response, she regularly reached out to friends and colleagues when possible for emotional and strategic support.

Tonya felt a need to tread carefully around the teachers’ evaluations of the student as she navigated her own disappointment with their minimizing comments. She admits to not wanting to be the “Black steward” who white teachers and administrators judge as “coming to talk to us about race,” implying a perception of herself as a teachers’ monitor on these issues. She recognizes that she was transgressing unspoken norms of silence around race in the school (Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2020; Sleeter, 2017). In this and other situations in which she perceived discrimination from adults in the school, Tonya questioned the degree to which she could explicitly educate her new colleagues or hold them to account. The balancing act between addressing racialized comments and dismissive treatment toward students while preserving relationships as one of the few Black adults in the school was a regular challenge that she negotiated.

Tonya’s position within the school context differs from Theresa’s. First, the implementation team in Tonya’s school was only beginning to learn about RJ and the staff did not explicitly talk about race with her. The in-school support and allies with whom she formed relationships, the ones who were willing to critically discuss issues of race, remained an informal network within the school outside of the leadership team. Furthermore, the CBO she was a part of did not encourage explicit exploration of race and racism.

The struggle to maintain critical consciousness

Throughout this study, both practitioners often described the challenges of attempting to maintain their commitments while engaging in critical RJ work with majority white educators in urban intensive schools. Tonya was challenged to continually search for other adults in the building to critically reflect with, and she also feared that by working in a school where critical race work was not a part of the mainstream culture, she was beginning to lose some of her perspective as a Black woman.

Other people’s perspectives [in the school] have shaped my mind a bit, and I noticed that’s a problem. It’s very lethal. I wouldn’t want my child or myself walking in somewhere and being seen some way, like “she’s a cancer,” and that’s a quote [from a teacher in the school]. Everyone seems to co-sign onto that, staff of color and not of color. Even [staff of color’s] words can be shaming and dismissive. (RJC, personal communication, February 23, 2015)

Tonya was not alone in her concerns about the ways in which school culture and institutional practices that reinforce racial hierarchies and racialized forms of marginalization and humiliation could become invisible over time. Describing herself as someone who outwardly celebrates Black beauty and creativity in defiance of systemic oppression in many urban schools and communities, Theresa also felt fatigued in constantly challenging the shame, low self-esteem, and other negative psychological impacts that were pervasive in the school culture. She explains:

You know, when you talk to [students] in a condescending way, in a way that doesn’t leave them in a place to walk away with their dignity, that is not restorative. And when it’s done by key players . . . in an institution and the school, who claim that they believe in and support restorative justice, it does more harm than good because now it’s like . . . a wolf in sheep’s clothes (RJC, personal communication, February 19, 2016).

Eye on the Prize: Toward a More Race-Conscious Community

Tonya was keenly aware of the need to make the racial dynamics in the school more visible and to emphasize why a whole-school commitment to critical racial reflexivity matters for race-conscious RJ to be successful in urban intensive environments:

For me personally, [it’s about] getting people to understand that the way they read [the world] is not the same as everyone else. The staff is eighty percent Caucasian. Some of them may not think they’re doing anything via a racial lens, but they kind of are in the way they speak about certain students or certain things. Doing RJ in that setting is challenging. I’m very careful not to shame people, but shameful things and implications are said without realizing. The sense [of the teachers] is that, “We love these kids, but they’re not like my kids. They’re different from my kids.” (RJC, personal communication, February 23, 2015)

While also navigating risk, Theresa’s sense of connection to a race-conscious community of practitioners both inside and outside the school gave her confidence that creating such a community was also possible within the school. Theresa believed that she, several other members of her in-school team, her wider allies at the school, as well as her CBO and the activists communities of which she was a part, were enough of a support system to encourage her speaking out about her experience. This bolstered her efforts to develop explicitly race-conscious RJ practices that would be taken seriously within the school walls. In our work experience and through conversations with many RJCs, however, we recognize that the strength of Theresa’s support system within the school is unusual. For those who do not have strong support networks with other staff and don’t have a sense of community, the challenges day in and day out can be truly frustrating and potentially overwhelming. However, the call by practitioners and scholars for whole-school approaches with broader networks of support, especially for explicitly addressing issues of race, is swiftly growing (Payne & Welch, 2015; Schiff, 2018).

Discussion

Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education provides well developed analytical tools for making sense of the ways that restorative justice coordinators of color attempt to unmask racism and examine broader racial hierarchies in school settings and the challenges those practitioners face in the process of engaging in that critical work (Evans, 2019; Gillborn, 2013; Lynn & Dixson, 2013; Howard & Navarro, 2016). CRT holds that racism is a normal, everyday reality for people of color (Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2010; Tate, 1997; Taylor, 2009)

Importantly however, CRT research has also demonstrated that educators in white-led schools often minimize those experiences and resist attempts at critical racial reflexivity (Ohito, 2019; Picower, 2009). Given the commitment within CRT to social justice and to take seriously the experiential knowledge of women and people of color there is a need to better understand how RJCs of color are attempting to resist, build alternatives to and navigate these dynamics. By employing a CRT lens of analysis with an awareness of racial hierarchies, Theresa and Tonya’s cases reveal a complex and tenuous balancing act in their attempt to disrupt racial power dynamics.

White-led Institutions Minimizing Experiences of People of Color

Numerous studies employing a CRT lens have highlighted the ways urban intensive schools with predominately white leadership have ignored or minimized the experiences of people of color and served as sites of persistent dehumanization (Hope et al., 2015; Ispa-Landa, 2013; Swanson & Welton, 2019). Importantly, minimization and other efforts to not see race conversely position those who critically view racial inequality and discrimination (Annamma et al., 2017; Bennett et al., 2019). Both RJC’s believed that their schools espoused a sincere interest in reducing disproportionate minority suspensions, expulsions, and other exclusionary discipline practices and in creating a wider culture of belonging, but not all staff were prepared or willing to openly talk about race. In fact, our participants were often met with indifference, resistance, and minimization. These experiences are widely cited in the CRT literature about urban schools (Shelton & Barnes, 2016; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) but are infrequently applied to the analysis of interventions in the broader RJ literature (Valandra, 2020).

This reality highlights the need to learn at a micro level from approaches that do employ a critical race lens (Knight & Wadhwa, 2014). In Theresa’s case for example, when she and her students attempted to raise issues of racism and minimization, some school leaders flipped the script on their framing of harm, instead positioning them as deviant. This made it difficult for Tonya to critically explore ways that implicit bias, especially when teachers underestimate the potential for students of color to be successful (Allen & Liou, 2019; Ferguson, 2003) can be damaging to students’ self-esteem and academic performance (Ho & Cherng, 2018). In these moments of minimization, both Theresa and Tonya found it difficult to achieve their goals, to implement what Roberts (2009) calls “critical care,” to reflect the value of students’ cultural and racial identities, while recognizing them for having the courage to speak up. This striving for a praxis of care is part of what led Theresa to wonder aloud if, under these conditions RJ may serve as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” (Williams, 2017).

Theresa and Tonya’s work in this context was demanding and highlights the complexity of engaging in educational work with a commitment to racial justice, while at the same time attending to the immediate demands of organizing circles, professional development opportunities, and a host of other activities needed to make RJ operational in their schools. The testimonies of these RJCs demonstrate the self-awareness they have about their vulnerable racial and gendered positions in social spaces. They grapple with the trajectory of racial hierarchies for themselves and for many of their students (Emirbayer & Desmond, 2012). They are not alone in this tiring and trying work. Prior research shows that Black educators in urban intensive schools are often positioned as disciplinarians (Pabon, 2016), are asked to engage in additional work when compared to their white peers as a result of their positionality (Hogarth, 2019) and must try to maintain precarious relationships to sustain their work.

Importantly, Tonya and Theresa’s testimonies highlight the need for a wider reflective conversation with staff and students about the racialized culture and power dynamics in urban intensive schools. Without it, there may be little hope for racial reflexivity to take root among the school staff and for RJCs to get the support they need. While this work undoubtedly involves facilitating difficult conversations with youth, it also requires adults to develop more adeptness at recognizing and engaging with these issues both in RJ processes and in the everyday life of their schools (Brooks et al., 2007).

Part of the weight that Tonya and Theresa were carrying was a recognition that is widely cited in the CRT literature—that educators’ inattention to issues of social and racial injustice can come with a host of negative outcomes for students as well (Ho & Cherng, 2018). As highlighted here and elsewhere, such inattention or ignorance can result in a missed opportunity by adults to explore an important lived reality for students, especially young people of color living in urban intensive environments that differ from the racial homogeneity they experience in school leadership. This type of dismissal can have negative impacts on students’ self-esteem, trust of adults, and their sense of agency and inclusion in the school (Samuels et al., 2019). A starting place for racially reflexive restorative justice practitioners and their allies is the recognition that public schools are not race neutral locations, and they have a specific history and context that can reproduce racial hierarchies and harm.

Challenging Subjugated Positions and Resistance to Racial Reflexivity

As Tonya pointed out so succinctly in our discussion, there are risks to challenging institutional practices and white educators’ perceptions of race. Specifically, conversations in schools aimed at exploring particular experiences of racial oppression and the assumptions embedded in disciplinary practices with white teachers and administrators are often met with persistent and complex forms of racialized resistance (Carter et al., 2017). In her case, this included questioning a student’s claims about injustice and inequality on the grounds that she is too emotional or “making a big deal out of nothing,” comments that had both a gendered and racialized component. Further, during follow-up conversations one of the white teachers compared the student’s experiences to their own familial history of discrimination, effectively limiting the student’s attempts to be taken seriously. This type of minimization was a significant source of tension for both RJCs and mirrors a dearth of research on the dynamics of intersectional oppression in line with its dismissal by white educators (Armstrong & McMahon, 2006; Normore & Lahera, 2017).

Like other educators who do attempt to raise these issues explicitly, RJCs of color face resistance. However, unlike classroom-teachers, which may have greater job security (via tenure and due process), school-based RJCs, such as Tonya and Theresa who operate via contracts from community-based agencies, may be putting themselves financially at-risk if they push for greater racial reflexivity “too hard, too fast.” Further, restorative justice work is emotionally demanding in the best of circumstances, and they both highlighted how experiences of resistance amplified their experiences of vulnerability (“I feel like I am a piñata”) in these spaces.

In response, Tonya and Theresa who were responding to racialized dynamics of harm in their schools, both proactively reached out to adults and students who were willing to critically explore the themes of race and gender with them. Theresa and Tonya’s insights about this necessity for solidarity to survive and thrive in these settings echo wider work by Black feminist scholars that call for us to move away from a primary focus on individual intervention in response to intersectional oppression and toward building with other people of color in the face of resistance and risk (Gumbs, 2014). Further, they both understood restorative justice as a holistic framework that serves as theoretical lens for making sense of pedagogical approaches, curriculum, and engagement that allows white educators and school leaders to experience not only cognitive but emotional shifts around issues of race in order to “unmask racism” (Evans-Winters & Hines, 2020). This is no easy task given resistance to racial reflexivity in schools, but as Theresa noted, the experiential and normative approach of restorative justice is a valuable addition when considerering the possibilities for transformative education in white-led schools,

How do I create an environment where you are able to experience white privilege? . . . How do I get you to experience, um, what our students go through? . . . I’m still figuring it out. But one thing that I know is that when people feel and experience that, then they can be the key to the change. (RJC, personal communication, February 19, 2016)

Conclusion

The two cases analyzed demonstrate that while difficult, extending, and sustaining conversations about racial inequality and the responses to it within the wider school environment in urban intensive schools with predominately white leadership is critically important for RJCs committed to racial justice. Using Critical Race Theory, we argue that the types of interventions and practices that Tonya and Theresa undertook were shaped by unequal and layered institutional dynamics in the school, racial hierarchies in the wider society, their wider networks of support, previous experiences and training, and finally by the individual perspectives of the students and staff in the school. Each demonstrated persistence and applied multiple creative strategies in response to a high degree of complexity, ambiguity, and significant differences in power. In practice, these efforts came up against long-standing institutional practices and deeply pervasive cultural attitudes and beliefs that at times limited their attempts at change and resulted in a range of responses that included resistance, ambiguity, indifference, and sporadic and unreliable interest.

Yet the RJCs we interviewed also highlight some of the ways in which RJ practitioners experiment with strategies in urban intensive schools in order to expand conversations about racial justice and co-create strategies for shifting the school climate and school practices. The RJCs in both cases expanded what is generally referred to as “pre-work” in RJ in order to critically explore racialized dynamics with the adults involved in the process. They developed formal and informal networks of support that were unique to the schools they worked in, allowing them to sustain and expand the work aimed at facilitating racial reflexivity by building wider support in the school. Tonya and Theresa utilized an array of direct and indirect approaches to initiating and sustaining critical conversations about race in response to the specific risks and opportunities they perceived in their schools’ environments.

The application of CRT to these cases highlights an important challenge for the RJ field—without a wider commitment and subsequent buy-in from the schools to address institutional and systemic racism, RJ implementation is likely to be a band-aid solution only. Schools can deploy RJ while avoiding the deeper questions or changes needed to address racialized forms of discrimination over the long haul. This “RJ-light” implementation which does not go deeper may still decrease the overall number of detentions, suspensions, and expulsions—and it has already shown great promise in doing so—but it will not likely address causes of racial disproportionality in school discipline, or other forms of racialized harm in schools that interfere with learning and have other negative impacts on both students and educators.

Limitations

While this study design allowed for the exploration of specific contextual dynamics that RJCs were responding to over time, focusing on only two case studies and the experiences of these two practitioners limits the applicability of the findings to other settings. The individuals studied may be atypical of a larger population, and the relevance of these findings to schools in other parts of the cities that in the study or other cities is unclear. Also, the data collection for this project was completed in 2016 and since that time the national landscape and discussions of issues of systemic racism has shifted with ongoing social movements bringing these issues to the forefront.

Furthermore, we were not able to track the impact of the RJCs’ choices on the wider school environment or even among the wider teams of which they were a part. Given the very limited research on the dynamics that RJCs, particularly RJCs of color, are navigating at the micro level when trying to integrate a racially reflexive practice, we hope that this research will highlight the need for broader empirical work and allow for larger comparative case studies exploring these themes with a wider array of participants. There is far more well-developed research on how teachers and administrators develop, promote, and try to sustain racial reflexivity in urban schools (Carter et al., 2017; Pennington et al., 2012; Sue et al., 2011) which can inform future studies on RJ, especially as it relates to understanding the impacts of structural influences on RJCs’ efforts (Osher et al., 2012; Martinez, 2015). This underscores the need for broader comparative case studies that highlight both the structural dynamics and specific, discrete, and embedded micro-level demands that RJCs are navigating.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Arthur Romano

Rochelle Arms Almengor

Notes

Author Biographies

Arthur Romano is an Assistant Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and the Elise Boulding Scholar Practitioner for the National Peace Academy. His research and applied interests include the use of experiential and transformative education in communities affected by violence, global education movements and nonviolence education. He has published on Black-led truth-telling as a response to police violence and systemic humiliation, grassroots peace and conflict resolution education, the use of experiential education in higher education classrooms and urban peacebuilding. He is currently completing a book focused on community-led nonviolence education and the living legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Rochelle Arms Almengor is Assistant Professor of Dispute Resolution in John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In August 2021 she will become Assistant Professor of Peace and Social Justice in Berea College. She has twenty years of experience in Mediation and Restorative Justice as a practitioner and scholar. She received her doctorate from the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (now the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution) at George Mason University.

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