Sheldon Eakins:

Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. Let me tell you something, I have a very special guest with me today, someone that I aspire to be like when I grow up. I tell him this all the time, "I want to be like you when I grow up." This man is always working. He's always pushing out a book. It seems like every other month, a new book comes out and I just admire the work that he's doing. So without further ado, I have Principal Kafele is here with me today. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Baruti Kafele:

Thanks for having me. Much appreciated.

Sheldon Eakins:

And the pleasure is all mine. It's always great to be able to chop it up with you. You have a new book out, and we'll get to it. But for those who don't know who you are, could you share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do?

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. I'm a long-time educator. I go back to 1988. I was a teacher starting in Brooklyn, New York City. I'm a Jerseyite, so went on back home to Jersey after that first year and taught there for about seven years, and then became an AP for a year and then a principal. And always this equity minded, social justice education minded teacher, principal. And now, I'm full-time consulting and speaking as a self-employed independent consultant. And still that same guy. Still walking in the same why? So in a nutshell, that's who I am. That's what I do.

Sheldon Eakins:

All right. Let's get into it because I always have enjoyed listening to you define social justice education. I want to start there. What is your definition of social justice education? And then we're going to piggy back from there on how that relates to our black students.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. I've got the informal where I just talked to you, but I've also got the formal, this comprehensive. And I think I want to give you the formal. I want to read that because I want to make sure every word is in there. Social justice education is the ongoing student-centered, and I'm putting emphasis on that first, exploration, examination and assessment of the world upon which your students exist through their own lens. That's critical. We'll talk about that in a minute. It's an interdisciplinary critical analysis of the world around them with respect to their relationship with it, and how they fit in it via their own self expression relative to issues of social justice, social injustice and overall systemic institutional and individual racism, whether that be implicit or explicit. So that's my formal definition.

               But when I talk about it in the informal side, that through their own lens is where my emphasis is. I'm saying we see January 6th on television all the time. We see it on the internet. I think about it from time to time. Anytime I think of white mob violence as it relates to black people, I can't help but think about January 6th, because that gave a visual of what that looked like over the centuries. So I think about, I say, "Man, there were probably teachers in that group on January 6th." There had to have been at least one, but there were probably more than that that we just don't know about yet. So imagine that teacher goes back to a classroom and they're talking about patriotism, and literally indoctrinating young people with the fact that we were being patriots or being patriotic.

               So as I had crafted this definition prior, well prior, years prior to the January 6th, for me it said, "I'm glad I did it that way," because I would hate for this book or any workshop I do lecture, keynote, whatever it is, and I'm talking about social justice and I didn't mention through their own lens or student-centered, because if I don't have that language or if any social justice education definition doesn't have that language, now one could empower the teacher to indoctrinate, right? I think about myself. Of course, I want my students to embrace my views. But I also want them to be critical thinkers. So I want to be able to give them the content, give them the information, have the conversation or the discussion, but I want to create a vehicle where they can think it through, where they can think the process through and still hopefully reach the conclusion that I would want them to reach.

               But if on the other hand, I've got somebody in there and they're thinking, "Well social justice according to me," and want to impose that on young people, then we're not talking about social justice education anymore. We're talking about teacher driven indoctrination, and that would be something very different. So I want to make sure that teachers, educators shy away from feeling I've got to impose mine, even if politically... Well social consciously within your community, et cetera, it sounds like the right stuff. I don't think that I've ever misled young people, but I still got to make sure that it's something that they can think it through, and we reach a conclusion with me playing the role of facilitator. So I have a role. Teacher has a role. But I want to make it all about the young people.

Sheldon Eakins:

For those who are not familiar, especially my folks that are outside of the United States, back in January 6th of this year, there was the Capital riots where there was an insurrection on our U.S. Capitol building in which there was... For those who believe that white supremacy does not exist or that white privilege does not exist, that was on full display. And so that's what we're referring to. And I'm glad that we're starting a conversation there. And a piece that you mentioned that I didn't even think about was, yeah, there were probably some teachers that were in that building that were part of that protest. Those same teachers are the same teachers that are in front of a lot of our black kids.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah.

Sheldon Eakins:

So what I'm hearing from you is that indoctrination of what patriotism is, and I mean that even relates to me with critical race theory and how that has been a hot topic these days in regards to what is education and what we are supposed to be able to teach to our students. So I want to get your thoughts on how an individual who might have participated in those protests back in January, who are in our classrooms in front of our students, how critical race theory relates to the ideology of what we are supposed to teach our students.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah, I love it. I'm glad you asked the question. Critical race theory is on my mind, that's at the forefront of my mind every day. And I probably have discussions, conversations, or even just talks here about it. And here's my perspective. I wrote extensively about it on social media, probably do a blog post on it soon. But here's where I'm at. I've been talking race in schools from day one and I don't think there was ever a day that I didn't talk race. But the thing is it wasn't race in isolation, I'm talking history, right? So let's take, for example, the two major events that were in this season that we're in right now was first Black Wall Street with the 100th anniversary. So let's say, for example, that I want to discuss Black Wall Street. And I don't mean the massacre just yet, I want to talk about the economics. I want to talk about the businesses. I want to talk about the neighborhoods, et cetera.

               I can't talk about Black Wall Street without talking about race. I can't talk about the inception of Black Wall Street without talking about race, because when Booker T. Washington was here, he created the Negro Business League. And that was an organization of entrepreneurs from all over the country. So a lot of those people were from Oklahoma or the surrounding areas. So with that organization that he developed that a lot of people don't talk about, they usually talk about Tuskegee with Booker T. Washington and other things, but they don't necessarily... Some probably don't know about the Negro business League. It's a league. So now, they go back in Oklahoma and begin to build businesses, right? But see, when you talk about going back to Oklahoma, or just folks within their own vicinities, building business, black folks, you got to talk about, "But why?" Why was there a need to build independent black businesses?

               So now, we're talking about systemic racism on the heels of enslavement. So now, they're building these businesses to the extent in Oklahoma in Tulsa that they're flourishing. Well you have to talk about race in that regard, because we're talking about people who just a minute ago were enslaved. And now, all of a sudden, they've built a community where it's self-sustaining, where the dollar never needs to leave because everything is there. You can't do justice to that conversation without talking about race. So now, you fast forward to the incident on the elevator and the young man was captured. But yet and still, you're going to destroy an entire community. Well you can't talk about the destruction of an entire community because of an incident of two people which has never been proven that this even happened. And now, we don't talk race, including roofs of buildings burning before the bottom of the building, meaning something was dropping from the sky from airplanes, right? So in terms of bombs.

               So now, you talk about critical race theory. First of all, this is not theory. That's number one. Secondly, it's not a race discussion. It's the part of American history that did not make the American history textbook. So all I'm saying to folks is, "Look, whatever your discussion is on critical race theory, have that discussion. But let me go into the classroom and teach history," right? But as a result of me teaching history, race is going to come up. But that shouldn't be an issue because all I'm doing is teaching facts which I can document improve. For example, I said, Black Wall Street and I was going to use that as a bridge to get to Juneteenth. But before I go there, let's go backwards. I'm growing up as an elementary school student and I'm learning about the Revolutionary War. And the way it's being presented to me without saying is white men in the colonies fighting white men from England.

               And then black folks are enslaved. So that war had no relevance to me culturally speaking. It's like, "Okay, all right. What's next?" But then at the age of 23, when I immersed myself into African-American history, when I say immerse, I mean it was my life, I'm reading thousands of books. So I discover through J. A. Rogers and others, in terms of the scholar, author, researcher, I discover that on the continental side, the Continental Army, anywhere from five to 9,000 of those troops are black men who were fighting two fronts, fighting for their own freedom, the promise of freedom when they went in the war, but fighting also for America's independence. And then I learned on the British side, upwards of 20,000 of those troops are black men. So I'm like, "Wait a minute. I'm 23-years-old and I'm discovering now that black people fought for either America's independence or [inaudible 00:12:53] sustaining their colonization over the colonies, and no one bothered to tell me this?"

               That's not a critical race theory conversation. That's an American history conversation. That's taking us out of the margins and putting us in the main text, not distorting it, not characterizing, but just giving us the truth in terms of who we are as a people, but not just giving it to black children, because the white children, the Latinx children, the Native American children, the Asian children, the whomever children need to be exposed to the exact same information. So when I hear critical race theory, in terms of the banning, I look at that as a ruse. For me, I say, "Okay, it's not so much critical race theory that you want to ban, you want to ban these hard truths coming out because when Black Wall Street came to the surface, that blew your mind," right? And there's so much more that accompanies that. So I mean as you know, there's just so much, the story is vast. 400, two years is vast. So folks got together and said, "Yo, we can't let that cat out of the bag. Black Wall Street was enough."

               And then they come with Juneteenth that says that two and a half years later, 250,000 people in your state of Texas did not know they were emancipated? No. Look, ban this so that everything is white. So again, my argument with anybody... Critical race theory is not my language. My argument is teach this story truthfully, accurately, honestly. I don't care who it pains. Sometimes pain is good, right? But you've got to teach it.

Sheldon Eakins:

You've got to teach it. I learned about Black Wall Street a few years ago, maybe about six years ago is when I learned about it. And then with the 100 year anniversary, I learned just now, a few months ago, Black Wall Street wasn't the only place. Tulsa's not even the only place that dealt with this issue. I want to say they said it was a couple dozen.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah.

Sheldon Eakins:

Various riots and maskers and bombings that destroyed communities, the black communities that were thriving. And it was such an issue. I mean they each have their own story. But see, even still, Black Wall Street is that one example. But there's so many more instances that occurred during a few years' span. And I'm just blown because again, as a grown man, I'm 37-years-old, how come I'm just now learning about these things? And that's stuff that I have to actively be looking for. I'm looking for this information as opposed to being taught this information. I know a lot of our kids aren't getting this information now as kids.

Baruti Kafele:

That's right. And when you think about all those other Black Wall Streets across America, a lot of them spawned out of Booker T. Washington, Negro Business League. See? So even that's a story. And then when you look at the interconnection, you think about a Marcus Garvey who had the largest movement of black people in the history of America. But Garvey came here to learn from Booker T. Washington who had died the year he was coming in 1915. So he's inspired by Up from Slavery in Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica, and he wants to come here. But then you think about Malcolm X's mother and father. A lot of times, people talk about Malcolm's father as a Garveyite, but they don't talk about his mother, right? They were both Garveyites. So you look at the interconnection, Garvey, Booker T. Washington, Malcolm, we can go on and on in terms of how all of this is connected. So there's roots here in that Booker T. Washington Negro Business League.

               But if the story's not told, we don't know, right? And think about the teacher. I can't teach what I don't know. See, the master teacher is always going to breathe life into a curriculum regardless of what's there, what's not there because they know. They know far more than what's in the curriculum. But those are few and far between. You've got a lot of teachers out here who are dependent upon that curriculum. So if that curriculum is not inclusive, I can't teach what I don't know. I can't teach what I can't conceptualize. Think about all the people in Tulsa. Last summer, when 45 was going to speak in Tulsa and the outrage from the black community, but the volume of teachers who wrote to me in that period last year, last May and June, who said to me, "Principal Kafele, I am born and raised in Tulsa and I've never heard of Black Wall Street until very recently." There's a lot of them out there. I mean think about the 300 bodies that still haven't been located.

Sheldon Eakins:

Yeah.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. There's a lot there. That's not a side conversation talking about race, that's talking about history and the unavoidance of race in the conversation, because the black existence in America is an existence of race. You cannot circumvent the race conversation when you talk about black people in this country under any genre. You name a genre and you've got to talk about race.

Sheldon Eakins:

You're darn right. You've got to. How are you going to have a conversation? Okay. All right. Let's do this, because you mentioned Juneteenth a couple of times. And so President Biden just passed the law saying that Juneteenth is a national holiday.

Baruti Kafele:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sheldon Eakins:

Is that progress or is there more work that needs to be done?

Baruti Kafele:

I was outraged. I went right to Facebook immediately. I was on the road all week and didn't know what was going on because I don't watch the news. I'm on the road. My head's got to be a certain way.

Sheldon Eakins:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Baruti Kafele:

So I was on the phone with my mother, I think. And she told me. And I didn't even know how to react when she first told me. I was like, "Oh, okay." And then I went right to the web and read about it, then I went right to my social media and I said, "Look, certain things are sacred unto us." I don't want federal government to ever touch Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa's sacred for me. So Juneteenth, whom I've known about for just about all my adult life, and that's ours. I don't want things that are ours to become everybody's. Everything doesn't have to become a holiday, right? I wouldn't want Malcolm's birthday to become a holiday, right? I lived with King because King was embraced by so many in terms of that being a holiday, but I don't want everything to be a... So Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday, this is Baruti Kafele speaking now, I'm not speaking for black people, but for me, it's a step backwards.

               It's not progress because when you look at all the things, all the bills that could be passed, right? And you're moving to make Juneteenth a federal holiday? And these crime bills, lynch bills, and I can go on and on, ain't no movement there. Then what you gave us was a ruse, right? I don't think any of us were asking for that. And then some people on my threads saying, "But Kafele, it gave it more exposure." I mean hang on a second. I'm reluctant to say this name on this broadcast because I don't want this guy coming after me, but I'm saying I'm solely in the context of numbers. A month ago, nobody was talking about Kwame Brown.

Sheldon Eakins:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Baruti Kafele:

Now, a quarter of a million watch every video he makes, right? So it tells me something about knowing how to use the internet, right? So when people came to me, "Well it gave it more exposure." No, if you know how to use the internet properly, we can get exposure for pretty much anything. I mean nobody was thinking about Kwame Brown. And now, all of a sudden, this guy's on here doing five videos a day, a million views collectively in a day. He figured out how to use it, why can't we in terms of the exposure for Juneteenth?

Sheldon Eakins:

And my thing is okay, do we really want that exposure? It's just another holiday of oppression, and we're celebrating. Okay, we found out two and a half years later that we were free in Texas. Do we really want to celebrate that? Some folks will say, "Well it's a day off." And that's how some people will look at it. I mean I'm looking at my social media too and some of the comments that are coming in, I'm just like I don't know how to feel right now. Should I be mad or should I be surprised? Or should I just be like, "Yeah, that's expected, this is the language that I would expect to see when it comes to something like Juneteenth? Because it was a mixture between, "Wait, what is Juneteenth again? What is this?" And then a mixture of, "Why the heck are we celebrating this?"

               And I think like you said, at the end of the day, there's so much more, so many bills out there to address police brutality, to address anti-black hate and all these things. To me, I would love to see some sustainability when it comes to laws being passed as opposed to recognition of, again, oppression. And then we had to couple that with a lot of our local states that are banning critical race theory. So we have Juneteenth coming up and then we can't even tell our kids why we're celebrating Juneteenth in the first place.

Baruti Kafele:

That's right. What a contradiction, because once again, having a discussion about Juneteenth, you've got to talk about race.

Sheldon Eakins:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Baruti Kafele:

You've got to talk about why folks didn't want the enslaved to know that they were emancipated in relationship to free labor, right? So yeah, you've got to talk about it.

Sheldon Eakins:

Well you have a new book, The Equity & Social Justice Education 50. And for those who are familiar with a Principal Kafele's work, you know he has those 50s. This one is Critical Questions for Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for Black Students. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the book if we're potential readers?

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. I wrote this book just as a result of learning of the murder of our brother, George Floyd, and our sister, Breonna Taylor. I would not have written this book at this juncture of my life because I had just written a book and I was going to take some time to just promote my most recent books. But I felt compelled because it was interesting, white educators who I guess have faith in me were writing me on a regular basis. I mean flooding me with requests for recommendations of what to read in order to understand the rage that they were seeing on their television set, so in their community from people which obviously went beyond black people, it was folks of all races and ethnicities out there with these banners that read Black Lives Matter. And so I'm recommending these books and to be quite frank with you, I wasn't recommending what they were asking for. They were using the language that went like this.

               They said, "We want to understand systemic racism. We want to understand white privilege. We want to understand white supremacy. What books can you recommend?" But the teacher in me said, "No." I know what they want to know what kind of books they want. I probably have them most here. But I said, "I want them to understand history." So instead of me recommending those books, I said, "I want them to understand the existence and the experience of black people in this country for the past 400 plus years." So I started recommending books such as Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett Jr., From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin, Introduction to African Civilizations, because I wanted them to know black people before they came here from the perspective of science, and technology, and mathematics, and agriculture, and engineering, and medicine, et cetera, scholarship. So I want them to understand black people and dispel the myths and stereotypes of who we were before coming here.

               So that, and then I threw in The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. So I'm recommending these books that I said, "Read these." And then they would post on social media as they were reading them that they felt like they'd been lied to all their lives. I mean so many of them were posting that. They would put the covers of the books I've recommended and say, "Look, I've been lied to and I've been lying to the students that I teach for all these years." I said, "Well that's the conclusion I was hoping that you would reach," right? So I went on, I said, "But there's some things I want to express, I want to articulate," to these same individuals, not just the white educators, but just educators. So went on and took things that I was presenting anyway and put it into a book that was focused on equity and social justice education in terms of not just what it is, but what is it that I do? How do I become an equity mindset teacher? How do I become an equity mindset leader?

               What is social justice education? And what's the difference between it and racial justice education? How do I make this work in my classroom? If I'm a leader, how do I bring myself to where we can have these uncomfortable, complicated, difficult conversations as a staff, right? So all this information written in a very basic way that one could easily digest and understand and begin implementation immediately. So that's the crux of the book.

Sheldon Eakins:

And that primarily focuses on supporting black students as well.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. I said the motivation behind writing it, as I said, I can't be inspired by the police murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and then write a generic book, right? I didn't want to do that. I said, "This book is specifically written for educators of black children."

Sheldon Eakins:

Nice, nice. And I'll leave a link in the show notes so that folks can get their hands on it. And that book is out right now, right?

Baruti Kafele:

It's out right now. And it's really moving. It's doing very well and that was the intent.

Sheldon Eakins:

Okay. Well I'll say this, it's always a pleasure to be able to reach out with you and be able just to chat and talk to you about what your thoughts are when it comes to just the things that are happening within our educational realm. I definitely consider you as providing a voice in leading equity. Is there one final word of advice that you can provide to our listeners?

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. The one word of advice for me would be we're in a world, an equity world and an education world where we talk about equitable practices in a classroom. So being that equitable practitioner. But where I am just based on my experience of being around equitable practitioners who weren't really passionate about equity, I reached the conclusion that equity, it cannot be solely something that you do, but equity must be who you are. I say that equity is a reflection of the teacher's humanity toward the students that he or she serves this. So I have a PD schedule for example, and it's like, "Oh boy, I've got to go to another PD. I've got to go listen to another speaker." So now, you're being exposed to these equity practices, but you don't really want to be there.

               And I'm saying as a leader, you've got to be able to bring your staff together and craft these discussions in a way that over time teachers are willing to embrace it as their own that this is me, this is who I am. I walk in equity. I am equity. So that last word is just to say to folks, don't just look at it as something that you do in the classroom as if there was a switch that you turn on and off, look at it as this is who I am. It's a reflection of who I am in relationship to the students that I service.

Sheldon Eakins:

And if we've got some folks that want to connect with you and reach out, what's the best way to connect with you online?

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. Just go to principalkafele, K-A-F-E-L-E, .com, and you'll see all my information, the email address. But you can go to Twitter @PrincipalKafele, you can go to Facebook, two words, at Principal Kafele. Or if you're so inclined, I have a Virtual AP Leadership Academy every Saturday morning at 11 Eastern, and you can go to my Facebook page that talks about it at Virtual AP Leadership Academy. And if you want to catch up on all of the videos, go to my YouTube channel at Virtual AP Leadership Academy.

Sheldon Eakins:

So you're still doing the AP Academy? I didn't know that was still going on.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. We just finished week 60.

Sheldon Eakins:

Sheesh.

Baruti Kafele:

Yeah. We're going all the way to 100. And I'll decide which way I'm going to go from there. But I never stopped and I haven't missed a week. Even when I'm on the road, I do it in a hotel room.

Sheldon Eakins:

Like I said, I want to be like you when I grow up, man. I don't know how you find the time, man.

Baruti Kafele:

[inaudible 00:31:26].

Sheldon Eakins:

All right. Well again, it's always a pleasure for your time. Thank you so much. And like I said, I'll link everything in the show notes so folks that want to find out more information, will be there. Principal Kafele, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Baruti Kafele:

I appreciate you.

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