To say that this year’s Day of Racial Reform and Solidarity (DoRRS) was contentious would be an understatement. Parents, other Brookline residents and even a Newton resident called on the school to prevent a certain student from speaking and even to cancel DoRRS altogether. Notably, this year’s DoRRS was hosted entirely online and featured pre-recorded student speeches rather than the live, in-person speeches that have been the norm for at least as long as I’ve been at the high school. Many were upset about this change and accused school administrators of censorship.
While I was initially skeptical of the new format, I thought this year’s DoRRS played out pretty well, as far as the Days Of go. I was glad the one contentious speaker got to speak, apparently free of censorship, and that other students had the opportunity to share their stories. However, I think DoRRS itself misses the point of DoRRS.
In the past, I’ve written about the importance of shifting activism away from individual education and towards more systemic change. I think the same principle applies to DoRRS. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a powerful day, and I’m proud of and glad for the students who had that opportunity to speak. I spoke at the Day of Dialogue my sophomore year and felt very empowered by it. But I feel like all the time and energy that goes into planning and executing the day could be used to pursue racial justice more effectively.
Year after year at DoRRS, I hear students and teachers speak about the need for broad systemic change, but the call to action is always: Educate yourself! Call out microaggressions! After DoRRS my freshman year, I reached out to one of the student speakers, inspired by her speech. I told her I had already worked on school committee policies and local bylaws. I asked her what I could do to help advance racial justice at the high school. She wrote back to me and told me to educate myself. That I shouldn’t worry about taking on too much, and that I should start with baby steps. But in her speech, I remember she had said that small actions weren’t enough: system change was what we needed. It can’t be both of these things.
To make successful change on a large scale—for racial justice and for any other issue—we need to emphasize tactics that hit at the systemic roots of an issue, not at people’s personal opinions. Even if DoRRS gets people to change their behavior, ending microaggressions won’t close achievement gaps.
There are so many students and teachers who put so many hours into organizing the day each year, and I have so much respect and appreciation for them. But what if all that time and energy went into expanding the Calculus Project or fundraising to tutor students falling behind grade-level standards? What if all that time and energy went into creating more affordable housing in Brookline so that we’d have a more diverse student body in the first place and making Brookline’s educational resources available to more kids? What if all that time and energy went into searching for and attracting more teachers of color—something many teachers and students have expressed a desire for in their DoRRS speeches over the years.
I guess what I’m trying to say is we should do less talk and more walk. The students who need to hear the lessons we learned from our fellow students and teachers this week are probably the ones who were listening the least anyway.
Rather than continuing to talk about racial issues, I say tackle the issues head-on. When students of every race and every color are represented proportionally in advanced and AP classes, people’s preconceived notions will change. But changing people’s minds will not get more Black and Brown students into those classes.
It’s not that outreach and education is an inherently bad thing. It’s that students have a relatively small capacity to participate in activism during the school year, especially if they’re engaged in extracurricular activities. It’s that the school is so close to so many systemic racial issues including racial disparities across course levels and achievement gaps on standardized tests. It’s that so many of the school’s most passionate racial justice advocates spend so much time and energy on DoRRS. With all of these things taken together, the impact DoRRS has is pretty small compared to the amount of energy put into running it, and compared to what it could be.
If there’s one thing conservatives want, it’s for liberals to get too caught up with infighting that they can’t get anything done for their cause. We need to stop preaching to the choir. We need to stop arguing about the best way to talk to each other about race. Let’s avoid the controversy of speeches altogether. Let’s get more done by doing less talking and more walking.
