#systemsofoppression — Blog — Co-Creating Inclusion

Functioning systems can surprisingly contribute to inclusion and accessibility

We are only seven days into my oldest child’s first year in high school so it’s early days but so far the experience of going from both my kids only ever being at schools with no more than a few hundred kids, my oldest child’s middle school having only 60 students, to a school with several thousand kids has been really fascinating.

My assumption was that it would be impersonal, overwhelming, and bureaucratic. I assumed my child would get lost in the system. How would he learn to navigate coming from a middle school that pretty much required no executive functioning skills?

Fast forward a year and yes I know we are only seven days in but so far I have been really impressed with the school for reasons I was not expecting at all.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickSeptember 17, 2023#systemsofoppression, #systems, #schools, #operations

Willful negligence

We’re down to the wire in this dystopian process known as the NYC public high school admissions process.

It’s hard to explain exactly how complex and overwhelming this process is, from uncertainty as to whether we would be returning to the pre-covid schedule or the more delayed covid schedule (it’s the earlier pre-covid schedule - but this was only announced two weeks before applications opened!) to the undecipherable hexadecimal “lottery” number that each student is assigned that is a) very hard to find and b) once you find it, impossible to understand what it means based solely off information shared by the DOE.

And that is barely the tip of the iceberg of what is confusing about this process. In fact, I don’t think you could make the process more confusing or stressful if you tried.

Dismantling oppressionAlethea FitzpatrickDecember 4, 2022#education, #schools, #systemsofoppression

Getting up close and personal with the system

NYC high school admissions season has begun. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, it’s a unique and “interesting” opportunity to get up close and personal with one of the most segregated school systems in the country - I’m talking about the public school system but of course, the way it interfaces with the private school system is part of what makes it so segregated.

Dismantling oppressionAlethea FitzpatrickOctober 16, 2022#schools, #education, #systemsofoppression

It’s not about love

Something that struck me this week is that it is a common belief amongst white people and an underlying default assumption that racism is about hate.

When they say they “don’t have a racist bone in their body” they mean what they also sometimes say which is that their “heart is full of love.” When asked why racism should be eradicated, they say it’s because “everyone deserves to be loved.”

Do white people really think that people of color don’t experience love? That we don’t feel loved? That we experience love less than white people do?

Do you need to transcend your role in order to do your job?

We've seen it this year more than ever before - how demoralizing it can be to be hired to do a job and then punished for doing it, and to be "consistently thwarted in your ability to enact the values that brought you into your profession."

This has always been the case, but for some, the circumstances of the pandemic have exacerbated the challenges and obstacles of systems and roles that were never in alignment with the mission and values they were purportedly in support of.

What is the justice you are fighting for?

By Malaika Aaron-Bishop

The thing about rage is that it leaves in its wake a kind of emptiness. For me, this emptiness is in some ways more debilitating than all the swirling, vengeful chaos that came before. Sometimes, all I can manage is to crawl into the darkness and hold on.

Outside, there is a hush, but even in the quiet there is evidence of broken trust, generations of social contracts violated. Shards of glass in shades of green and red and brown; bits of rubber, burnt and frayed; a mangled barricade hapless, and cast aside; bits of cloth lost among fallen leaves and branches; we all mingle among dust and debris. Where once there were people risking their lives and livelihoods to demand justice for themselves and their communities, there are only warped canisters, used and discarded, laying forlorn among the gutters. Some still dribble faint pools, stinging with shame, while the children and elders accosted and demonized for performing their civic duties go home to wash their eyes.

Individual accountability is not the same as systemic justice

Almost a year after the murder of George Floyd, and less than a week ago, although it already feels a lot longer than that, Derek Chauvin was found guilty on three counts: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. I happened to be picking my son up from near the Barclay Center at 4.15pm while so many held their breath to hear the verdict. As we walked home we could hear helicopters hovering overhead in preparation for the verdict, and although we didn't talk to anyone, it seemed like people were on edge.

I was on edge, knowing that no matter how guilty he was found, it would be a mere drop in the bucket of centuries of systemic violence against Black and Indigenous folks, as well as other people of color.

Who would you cry out for?

By Malaika Aaron-Bishop

Today I woke up with fury lighting my fingertips and a pain in my core so deep that relief seems a comic, desperate apparition. It’s a pain that erases my past and kidnaps my future. Every hug, or walk, or daydream session with my mother, every Malta or metemgee served with a side of life-advice from my aunties, every chuckle with my sisters, every note learned from my father, every laughing gift from my brothers. Gone. Every smile that ever was, and every adventure I ever embraced. Undone. An Easter-time kite flown on the Sea Wall? Lost. A library book, and sweet colourful popcorn on Grand Anse beach? Vanished. Hunting for jamun in dense Plymouth greenery? Gone. Oddly shaped clouds set against clear Mullet Bay skies? Snuffed. Crisp, fragrant winds atop Table Mountain? Incinerated. All remnants of a life I thought mine, all the best parts of me that ever was and that ever will be, stolen, held hostage, beaten. Lynched. Today, I am strange fruit.

On the "woke wave" and how I don't have the inside track on the right way to do things

How I'm shoring up my boundaries so I don't get drowned by the "woke wave' and how I have to remind myself that I don't have the inside track on the right way to do things.

Unconscious bias and systems of oppression (Outside the Bubble podcast episode)

It was an honor to chat with Joanna Bull of the Outside the Bubble podcast for teachers. We talked about unconscious bias and systems of oppression, delving into equity, racism, bullying, white privilege, systems of oppression, intent and impact, and more.

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