by Dr. Pandwe Gibson

Yesterday, New York City celebrated the opening of Capital Prepatory Harlem Charter School, funded by entrepreneurs Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and Dr. Steve Harvey.

“Great schools and great education make a big difference,” Combs told the Daily News at the new school’s ribbon cutting ceremony, “Unfortunately, too many people don’t get the opportunity to succeed, no matter how hard they try. This is leveling the playing field here at Capital Prep.”

But, for the vast majority of Black children in America, the social and economic ills of inequality cannot be cured with schools and textbooks alone.

As a 30-year-old Black woman who spent years as a teacher and started the first charter management organization in the South, which was responsible for opening 17 successful charter schools in low-income, minority communities, I witnessed the many ways the charter school movement has failed minority children and communities all across America. I was also forced to acknowledge the limitations of promoting education-focused agendas alone in economically stifled or underdeveloped communities.



The charter school-era in America was ushered in by advocates who thought education would be the cure-all for the disease of inequality. That narrative has begun to fall apart as the system battles failure in many states, and has even had a negative impact on local economies, sometimes eroding the social fabric of an entire community by displacing both children and teachers.

Among the numerous examples of charter school systems (including, but not limited to, those in Chicago, Cleveland, and Minnesota) failing their communities, the New Orleans, Louisiana experiment offers a unique case study because the city faces a number of social, economic and environmental strains which may become particularly commonplace as global warming continues to impact weather patterns and strengthen storms that can affect coastal areas.

After Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in American history which claimed over a thousand lives, the city implemented an all-charter school system (the first of its kind in American history) that was at first heralded as a success. City officials boasted a substantial decline in students attending failing schools-- from 62% to 7% post Katrina. However, deeper investigations revealed that the school system was displacing many of the city’s most vulnerable and underperforming children.

And children were not the only ones displaced by the charter school system. Black and minority teachers (and by extension parents and family members) were as well. According to the Schools and Staffing Survey, from 2004-05 to 2013-14, the percent of black teachers in New Orleans dropped from 71% to 49%. About half of this change occurred in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane when many teachers were dismissed and not rehired, followed by a steady reduction in proportion of Black teachers and an increase in the proportion of white teachers. There was also a significant decrease of hired teachers who were from or had roots in Louisiana, from 60% in 2005 to 34% in 2014.

In an effort to promote a viable charter school system, Louisiana negatively impacted the social and economic viability of the entire city. Students were kicked out of schools and parents found themselves without access to economic opportunities as teachers—who comprised much of the city’s middle class.  Education-only focused agendas may be ineffective at addressing inequality, and may exacerbate preexisting problems.

If this nation cares to level out the playing field and combat inequality on a large scale, it is important that we implement a sustainability model that affords both parents and children access to more economic opportunities. Even if education-focused programs are successfully implemented, what sense is there in teaching children the periodic table in a service-oriented economy? That is what we are seeing in cities like New Orleans where federal employment data reveal a local economy increasingly skewed to low-wage jobs, especially restaurant work, one of the few sectors now employing more people than before Katrina. No wonder the economic divide between White and Black families has grown larger than ever in the city.

Currently, there is a 1 million worker shortage in tech sector that can provide tremendous opportunities for struggling minority communities. These communities need coding training, solar panel training, more opportunities for adults to go from blue collar to green collar workers. When parents are armed with economic resources, they will be able to advocate for the culture and the knowledge that they want transmitted to their children. Economic justice is about creating an economic playing field where parents can decide what the education of their children should look like. It is not merely presenting a single, simple “schooling” solution to the complex problems of vast economic and social inequality.

It is commendable that many Americans with resources like Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and Steve Harvey continue to try to combat inequality by affording more Black children with (what they perceive to be) better education. However, the schooling-only focused method has already failed any Black communities nationwide. It is time we begin to envision better alternative. A focus on transitioning Black and minority communities from reliance on the blue-collar economy to participation in the green-collar economy may be one of them.

Dr. Pandwe Gibson is making going green cool, practical and profitable. After founding and scaling a network of highliy successful schools, she dove into the business world where she started over 20 successful companies. Through EcoTech Visions, she is guiding entrepreneurs to grow green manufacturing and combat inequality.

There are many reasons to be skeptical of white allies. While the people of marginalized groups fight to live and thrive, allies often fight for kudos and spotlight. Those who need the most care have repeatedly been burned by the good intentions of people who claim they are here to help. Because of this, the marginalized become tasked with an additional burden of weeding out the self-interested.

We are not only battling apathy but entitlement. Too many well-meaning white folks think that their acknowledgement of a struggle against injustice gives them a right to co-opt it as they wish. They believe their mere presence so valuable that they go on to take up all of the space.
Hungarian journalist Boglarka Balogh called herself bringing attention to the plight of African tribes by having someone photoshop her into their traditional looks including hairstyles, tribal markings, coverings, and jewelry.

The photo series is shocking in its disregard for the significance of these cultural aesthetics. Balogh committed the most fundamental appropriation taboos and claims she is raising awareness of the endangered. That may be her genuine intention, but the project only manages to center whiteness, yet again, in a critical discussion of Black people and Black cultures. She has literally erased the women she claims to serve. This is objectification masked as admiration.

Her feeble attempt to utilize white privilege for good underscores that many white allies have yet to fully grasp the weight of their unearned social position. In typical colonizer fashion, Balogh believes that her white body elevates the cultures—that she can communicate more in the traditional garb of these tribes than the women to whom the heritage belongs.
Herein lies the hollowness of “raising awareness.” If that’s where it ends, it amounts to nothing more than exploitation because, ultimately, Balogh gets to return to the safety of whiteness.

We do not need white people to use their privilege to fuel their own narcissism. Privilege is best used as a bridge between those who have it and those who do not. Laying down is white people’s work.

Cede the floor. Usher those in who are rarely seen and heard. Allow the people who experience marginalization to tell their own stories. These are the first steps in preserving the dignity of a people who are continually overlooked. Our allies should not use the racial empathy gap as an excuse to be the face of oppression.
Marginalized people are skeptical of the privileged when they offer help because we would rather not be pawns in their fits of self-indulgence. And, truthfully, we have got to be better at screening those who desire to do this work before allowing them access to our spaces. Eagerness does not amount to competence. There’s no use in accepting aid and reproducing oppressive dynamics in the process.

In white supremacy, we are socialized to believe that Black bodies need co-signers, but the people of these tribes do not need a savior. Balogh with her resources and whiteness could just as easily have put together a photo series that features the authentic voices and likenesses of the women of these tribes. But she’s used them as props and further stripped them of their humanity.

If you really want to help, remember that your vanity projects are not activism.

Photo Courtesy Boglarka Balogh

Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor-in-chief of For Harriet. Email or Follow @KimberlyNFoster

by Altheria Gaston

In a more equitable world, 19 year-old Christian Taylor of Arlington, Texas would be preparing for his fall semester at Angelo State University. After spending the night in jail for [allegedly] breaking and entering and destruction of property/vandalism at a car dealership on August 7, 2015, his parents might have bailed him out and perhaps scolded him for his seemingly erratic actions. In a few years, after graduating from college, Christian might have looked back on this incident as a stupid episode performed by an immature, reckless teen. But this world is far from equitable, and instead of this hypothetical situation, Christian’s family gathered with hundreds of loved ones a couple days ago for his funeral.

by Jaimee A. Swift

The term “post-racial” became a common fixture in American society with the election of President Barack Hussein Obama as the first African-American president. Though President Obama’s election was thought to represent a milestone in race-relations, the idealism of race-transcendence has become an ingrained fallacy in the minds of many. With this mindset, some representatives of the American political spectrum believe race-hostilities are less blatant and a kind-of, sort-of socio-economic and political playing field has been provided to the historically disenfranchised and perpetually marginalized.

by Matlaleng Babatunde

When does a Black female victim of violence become worthy of empathy? Is it after she has been "humanized" by the mentioning of a family and by the realization that she could've been you, or is the fact that she is a person-- a Black woman, enough. For many on social media it seems to be the former. Thursday morning, as I scrolled through my Tumblr, I was overwhelmed with the lingering wave of anger, grief, and pain that I've become accustomed to this summer. Another hashtag, followed by the name of yet another Black person violated and killed at the hands of state sanctioned violence.

by Rachel Cantave

I’ve been going to yoga classes since my sophomore year of college. I go about twice a week and I love it. It is a part of my mental health and self-care regimen; but don’t get it twisted… I may go, but I never drink the Kool-Aid.

by Anna Gibson

According to a recent article in the New Yorker, Kalief Browder’s mother was sitting in her living room last Saturday at around 12:30pm when she heard a loud thump on the side of the house. She had no idea where the sound came from, until she saw the body of her son hanging from a second story window outside their home.

by Candace Simpson


Please stop sharing videos and photos of dead Black bodies.

It is making us sick, triggering anxiety attacks, sending us into depression, and causing us to question the point of it all.

We waited twelve hours for the Darren Wilson verdict and it was all I could think of, the entire day stretched out into a thin film of anxiety. I wanted my mother. I wanted a hug. I wanted to not know what was happening. I sat in the same seat for those 12 hours and wrote poems and did homework as the world awaited the statement we knew was coming: Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the murder of Michael Brown.

by Diana Veiga

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest.”

Two weeks ago, I was at my parents’ house as County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch spent more than enough time than was necessary to announce that the grand jury had decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson. I was in one room, my mother in another, my grandmother in another and we were all watching. We were all mad. We were all sad beyond words. It was a pain that had nowhere to go, one that seemed to just settle in our bones, in our spirit, in our very beings. The pain has not left, and yet it seems that our pain is invisible, because we seem to be invisible. But still not invisible to be protected from being viewed as immediate threats. Still not invisible enough to prevent us from being killed.

by Aph Ko

While discussions about racism, white supremacy, and civil rights are currently dominating public discourse, I find that it’s relevant, more than ever, to discuss the importance of black independent media. As a 25-year-old young black media producer and content creator, I’ve found that digital media can be an awesome space for merging entertainment and social justice.

by Brittany Dawson

“Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.” —Audre Lorde

On December 3rd, a grand jury found “no reasonable cause” to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the July killing of Eric Garner. Adding more coal to my perpetual and internal blaze, I sat in my apartment, benumbed and embittered, warmed by the fire that swelled beneath my skin. I channeled my irrepressible revulsion for yet another unjust and disturbing incident by writing, a coping strategy I’m sure naysayers of “rioting” and “protesting” would be pleased to see (please note, I am being very facetious!). Tears remained tucked away in their respective ducts and my voice failed to quiver. Silence. Pain. Grief.

by Queen Muse

Black people already know that white privilege exists. We know this because we observe it every day on our jobs, in our schools, and sometimes even while simply trying to get a good table at a restaurant. We also know that police brutality and discrimination are real issues that disproportionately affect people of color. We know this because research data says so, but more importantly because we serve as first hand witnesses when we live through these unjust experiences, every single day.

Hi, my name is Randie Henderson and I am “one of those black people” but I often find myself wondering “why am I doing this?” I also find myself praying and trying to understand why God did not give me a passion for dolphins, trees, or cars, but instead gave me a passion for justice, education, and resistance—in short, people. This passion is hard, difficult, and personal. I literally internalize every failure, every turned head, and every apathetic shrug from black people who believe I am out of my mind. In exhaustion I try to explain that I do not know how to love them or myself silently and because of this, I do not know how to passively address racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression and terrorism that directly affect me and them daily.

by Julia Jordan-Zachery of Sapphire Unbound

I looked at the face of Lucia McBath, Jordan Davis's mother, and I see the legacy of pain. Etched deep in her face is the pain born of mourning her child and countless other children from generations before her and from generations to come. I look at her face and I see a resolve to find a way to "carry" on while "carrying" on the burden, the fatigue of this war we endure on a day-to-day basis.

by Rev. Dominique C. Atchison of The Mad Preacher
I perform with a group that recreates the Ring Shout in a contemporary context. (Shout out to Dance Diaspora Collective!) The Ring Shout was a dance done by enslaved Africans in the Americas, specifically in the Sea Islands off of the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas. I would invite anyone reading this to look up the Ring Shout for more detail. But today I mention the Ring Shout not simply as a Black History Month factoid. I mention it because I believe its origins and history are relevant to the death of 17 year old Jordan Davis.

by Marissa Jackson

On the morning after the Morning After, the racial tension in this country could be popped with a needle. If the prevailing narrative is to be believed, Black America is furious, outraged and depressed about George Zimmerman’s acquittal while White America is, through the mouthpiece that is Ann Coulter, screaming “Hallelujah” in jubilant celebration that white supremacy in America has won one more battle.

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

This afternoon I took a walk down our block in Los Angeles and a white man yelled, "Go back to Inglewood or Ima shoot you like they did that Trayvon Martin!”

I was going to say something, but I had my son. And I didn't know if the white man really had a gun. And I want my son to stay alive. So I left and came home. Then I read the text my sister had just sent me that Zimmerman had been acquitted of murdering Trayvon, and I understood why that man felt he could run out after us and say what he said. This verdict has set a precedent giving racists the carte blanche to kill people of color and get away with it. And I am terrified.