As the Black Lives Matter movement sweeps the country once again, we continue to cry out for justice and equality in all aspects of life. With wider eyes, we are monitoring what politicians do and say to support us. It’s a moment when they can’t so easily “fake the funk” when it comes to empowering people of color. Pandering and platitudes just won’t do.
Nebraska is home to great restaurants, a phenomenal zoo, and truly decent people. But when it comes to politics and policies that affect black people, it needs some work. With its unicameral legislature, it is the policymaking unicorn of the United States. That may be a point of pride for many, but it doesn’t seem to be working so well for some.
The state’s largest school district has a majority-minority student population, but most of the legislators who represent it are white. Perhaps that’s why Nebraska still refuses to empower black families with the option to send their children to schools they choose. Instead, poverty and failing schools plague the African American community, which is still largely segregated in a corner of Omaha.
We are members of a policy and communications fellowship program for young adults. Of 20 people in the program, two of us are from the Cornhusker State. We fight for families who desperately want better for their children’s education. As beneficiaries of scholarship programs, we know that, without educational opportunity, our own stories would be vastly different. We have friends and relatives who must live the consequences of being denied that same opportunity.
The work we do intersects with issues of race and class, not only because the majority of the fellows are men and women of color who grew up in lower-income families, but because, by design, public schools have always worked better for white people. Wealthy people have always been able to purchase the best schools through tuition or ZIP code.
In February, we testified at a hearing for a bill that would provide options beyond failing schools for children in Nebraska, one of only three states in the country without a school choice program. We were nervous, but we were determined. Then, the beast of political hypocrisy reared its special-interest backed, white-privileged packed head when a member of the committee dismissed us, and numerous Nebraskan parents and students, with ridicule. State Sen. John McCollister, who accepted an endorsement from the Nebraska State Education Association teachers union to secure his seat of power, erroneously implied we would not be there unless we were being paid. It was the type of microaggression recognized instantly by some, and hopefully, more now. It must be called out.
McCollister resides in, and sent his children to, Westside Community Schools, a district birthed by redlining and white flight. His father was a member of Congress. It’s unlikely he, his parents, or his children could relate to the mom who must send her kids to a failing school each day, or a school where they don’t feel safe, or a school that refuses to recognize their potential.
That’s why McCollister’s recent tweets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement fall offensively flat. Did our lives not matter when we urged him to address the massive achievement gaps between black and white children in his state? Did our voices not matter when we testified about the transformative power of educational opportunity in our own lives? At what point do both black lives and black minds matter?
Tragically, McCollister is just one example of a white politician standing in the way of educational freedom for black and brown children. While we grapple with centuries of violence and discrimination and engage now in this urgent national conversation, we do not need to lock arms with the ones who hold us down by denying yet another generation with the liberation that comes from a high-quality education. To the McCollisters of this world: We urge you to redirect your efforts toward truly listening to those fighting for a better and more just future.
With all due respect, if you can’t do that, get out of our way.
Walter Blanks Jr. and Nyarok Tot are both members of the American Federation for Children Future Leaders Fellowship program. Nyarok attended Omaha-area Gross Catholic High School on a scholarship and is currently a rising sophomore at the University of Nebraska Lincoln studying journalism. Walter participated in Ohio’s Ed Choice voucher program and now works full time in educational choice advocacy for the American Federation for Children.
