Silence is the Leader when Equity is a ‘Maintenance Function’
I asked the question: Why are we sending almost 100 8th graders to a secondary school where only 15 of the 750+ students showed up on the MCAs?
(Data from Minnesota School Report Card)
By Don Allen (Journal of A Black Teacher) 2025
Twin Cities, MN...One of my original dissertation titles was blunt, maybe even provocative: Do School Children in Minnesota Need to Be at the Bottom of Every List? I kept it just beneath my official title, like a private protest, a reminder of the question I was asking behind the academic language. Because the data doesn’t lie: Black Minnesotans are often last, last in educational outcomes, last in wealth-building opportunities, last in housing equity, and last in entrepreneurial advancement. We are, in many ways, systematically positioned at the margins. Yet, we still hear lofty promises about equity, as if it were a product ready for delivery instead of a long, brutal journey that most of us are still undertaking.
The gap between equity and reality is not just wide, it feels generational. The “opportunity” to flip this narrative isn't just an educational one. It extends to employment, real estate access, small business development, global trade, and, yes, space. While private tech giants are testing rockets and claiming new frontiers, our communities are still trying to get consistent access to functioning Wi-Fi and quality textbooks.
Recently, I ran into an old friend, someone I’d known since fourth grade at Bancroft Elementary in Minneapolis. Our paths crossed at Bryant Junior High, then Ramsey for ninth grade, and eventually diverged as some of us attended Central, Washburn, or South High. This was more than a stroll down memory lane; it was a checkpoint. He’d gone on to serve as a principal and assistant principal in the very same district. I asked him a question that I’m sure many Black Minnesotans silently carry: “What happened? Why didn’t the needle move under your leadership?”
His answer stopped me cold.
He said, “Don, I’ll be real with you. If I had talked like you talk, used the data you use, I would’ve lost my job.”
That wasn’t hypothetical. It was the truth from a Black administrator who had to survive inside a system built to neutralize voices like his. This is the lived reality of many leaders of color across the country. They walk a tightrope between advocacy and self-preservation, between truth and diplomacy, between feeding their families and challenging institutional racism.
This is not just about one administrator. It’s a warning shot. We must reckon with a system that demands Black professionals censor themselves in the name of career security. We often discuss DEI, but it’s often superficial in many spaces, a few slides in a training deck, a line in a mission statement. Meanwhile, those who dare to tell the truth risk professional exile.
We have created an education system that rewards silence and punishes authenticity, particularly when that authenticity comes from Black leadership that insists on change grounded in data, history, and unapologetic cultural truth. And for those of us who choose to speak boldly, to root our leadership in evidence and experience, the cost is often invisibility, or worse, erasure.
The phrase “equity work” is frequently used in our districts and boardrooms, but the outcomes remain predictably devastating. In Minnesota, we don’t just have an achievement gap; we have a credibility gap. School systems and institutions continue to issue promises they know they can’t keep because the structure is designed to protect itself, not transform.
What’s most sobering is this: the systems are working exactly as designed. The lack of movement is not a failure of strategy; it’s a maintenance function. We aren’t stalled because of incompetence; we’re stuck because disruption costs more than most are willing to pay. And let’s be clear, when we talk about disruption, we’re not asking for charity. We’re demanding justice. We’re asking that our children no longer be left behind in classrooms that grade compliance over creativity and where parents are seen as problems instead of partners.
It should not require a miracle for Black families in Minnesota to access quality education, stable housing, or sustainable employment. It should not need silence to be a leader. It should not take another decade of reports, audits, and racial equity toolkits to prove what we’ve known since desegregation: proximity to whiteness increases access to opportunity; distance from it increases your odds of being forgotten.
The truth is, equity cannot be performed. It must be practiced, lived, and enforced. However, in too many places, we’re still making progress while reality remains stagnant. And in that space between equity and reality is where too many dreams of Black prosperity die quietly, often in plain sight.
We’re no longer asking for miracles. We’re demanding measurable movement. Until then, let’s stop calling it “equity” and call it what it is: a long way from where we stand now.
Twin Cities, MN...One of my original dissertation titles was blunt, maybe even provocative: Do School Children in Minnesota Need to Be at the Bottom of Every List? I kept it just beneath my official title, like a private protest, a reminder of the question I was asking behind the academic language. Because the data doesn’t lie: Black Minnesotans are often last, last in educational outcomes, last in wealth-building opportunities, last in housing equity, and last in entrepreneurial advancement. We are, in many ways, systematically positioned at the margins. Yet, we still hear lofty promises about equity, as if it were a product ready for delivery instead of a long, brutal journey that most of us are still undertaking.
The gap between equity and reality is not just wide, it feels generational. The “opportunity” to flip this narrative isn't just an educational one. It extends to employment, real estate access, small business development, global trade, and, yes, space. While private tech giants are testing rockets and claiming new frontiers, our communities are still trying to get consistent access to functioning Wi-Fi and quality textbooks.
Recently, I ran into an old friend, someone I’d known since fourth grade at Bancroft Elementary in Minneapolis. Our paths crossed at Bryant Junior High, then Ramsey for ninth grade, and eventually diverged as some of us attended Central, Washburn, or South High. This was more than a stroll down memory lane; it was a checkpoint. He’d gone on to serve as a principal and assistant principal in the very same district. I asked him a question that I’m sure many Black Minnesotans silently carry: “What happened? Why didn’t the needle move under your leadership?”
His answer stopped me cold.
He said, “Don, I’ll be real with you. If I had talked like you talk, used the data you use, I would’ve lost my job.”
That wasn’t hypothetical. It was the truth from a Black administrator who had to survive inside a system built to neutralize voices like his. This is the lived reality of many leaders of color across the country. They walk a tightrope between advocacy and self-preservation, between truth and diplomacy, between feeding their families and challenging institutional racism.
This is not just about one administrator. It’s a warning shot. We must reckon with a system that demands Black professionals censor themselves in the name of career security. We often discuss DEI, but it’s often superficial in many spaces, a few slides in a training deck, a line in a mission statement. Meanwhile, those who dare to tell the truth risk professional exile.
We have created an education system that rewards silence and punishes authenticity, particularly when that authenticity comes from Black leadership that insists on change grounded in data, history, and unapologetic cultural truth. And for those of us who choose to speak boldly, to root our leadership in evidence and experience, the cost is often invisibility, or worse, erasure.
The phrase “equity work” is frequently used in our districts and boardrooms, but the outcomes remain predictably devastating. In Minnesota, we don’t just have an achievement gap; we have a credibility gap. School systems and institutions continue to issue promises they know they can’t keep because the structure is designed to protect itself, not transform.
What’s most sobering is this: the systems are working exactly as designed. The lack of movement is not a failure of strategy; it’s a maintenance function. We aren’t stalled because of incompetence; we’re stuck because disruption costs more than most are willing to pay. And let’s be clear, when we talk about disruption, we’re not asking for charity. We’re demanding justice. We’re asking that our children no longer be left behind in classrooms that grade compliance over creativity and where parents are seen as problems instead of partners.
It should not require a miracle for Black families in Minnesota to access quality education, stable housing, or sustainable employment. It should not need silence to be a leader. It should not take another decade of reports, audits, and racial equity toolkits to prove what we’ve known since desegregation: proximity to whiteness increases access to opportunity; distance from it increases your odds of being forgotten.
The truth is, equity cannot be performed. It must be practiced, lived, and enforced. However, in too many places, we’re still making progress while reality remains stagnant. And in that space between equity and reality is where too many dreams of Black prosperity die quietly, often in plain sight.
We’re no longer asking for miracles. We’re demanding measurable movement. Until then, let’s stop calling it “equity” and call it what it is: a long way from where we stand now.
Comments
Post a Comment