A Speckle of Pepper in A Sea of Salt
Danielle Moodie
The DAM Digest
Thursday 3 April, 2025
Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, aside from the consistency of chaos, another theme is readily present—the desire to re-whiten America. Since the beginning of the 21st Century, the Census Bureau and others has indicated that America’s demographics were shifting; and that by the year 2045 the non-Hispanic white population of America would become the minority. While some hailed these predictions as good news the opposition got to work constructing their plan—Project 2025; which would not only upend racial progress in America; but criminalize various ethnicities and races to the point that the rise of the Hispanic population would cease under draconian deportation policies.
While the Trump regime has been busy dismantling every bit of the 20th century from health advancements to environmental protections to bodily autonomy, the latest move to dismember the Department of Education strikes at the heart of what many believed to be the biggest advancement for Civil Rights— integrated public education. The 'Brown vs. Board of Education' decision of 1954 set in motion a form of racial equity in this country. Thurgood Marshall successfully argued that the “separate but equal” doctrine established through 'Plessy v. Ferguson' was not present in public education, where Black children were resigned to under funded schools in dilapidated structures.
Over the last 70 years however arguments have arose questioning whether Brown was the best decision. You see, rather than strengthen Black schools; which in many ways were the center of the Black community, the 'Brown' decision, some argue centered whiteness as the ultimate goal—sprinkling specks of pepper into a sea of salt and calling it integration.
As a former educator and education lobbyist I’ve been wondering for quite sometime whether integration in the haphazard way it has been applied was the right way to create a robust education system, and with it a robust multiracial democracy. The reality is as Noliwe Rooks, Africana Studies professor at Brown University argues in her new book, 'Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children', that there is a “murdering of the soul” which takes place inside of white institutions. She argues that in these white environments, where just a few Black students are accepted, can in fact have devastating results. In her book and an article at 'The Atlantic' she discusses her own father’s experience with integration:
“Milton’s experience reflected the trauma Black students suffered as they desegregated public schools in states above the Mason-Dixon Line, where displays of racism were often mocking, disdainful, pitying, and sword sharp in their ability to cut the unsuspecting into tiny bits. It destroyed confidence, shook will, sowed doubt, murdered souls—quietly, sure, but still as completely as could a mob of white racists setting their cowardice, rage, and anger loose upon the defenseless.”
This quote hung like smoke in the air for me. It made me realize that my own educational experience was indeed the product of lopsided integration. I attended a 96% white school district for my K-12 education. When I asked my mother why she chose to move so far out on Long Island, NY she replied, “ I chose the best school district I could afford to live in.” This meant that while I received a great education, I could legit count the Black kids in my school—the largest in New York at the time—on two hands. While the education was indeed good—the micro-aggressions I’d experience throughout my schooling would abound. I’d work overtime throughout my life to “teach” myself about Black America and Civil Rights as my family were immigrants and the information on this subject in my school district was wholly lacking.
My entire schooling experience can be summed up as me being “a speckle of pepper in a sea of salt”. I’d unpack my feelings around this through my graduate school program that was focused on creating a “unified transformative early education model”—UTEEM, which focused on centering racially diverse children and their needs at the heart of learning as well as their families rather than just plopping them into white institutions and hoping they didn’t drown. The reality is that we have never truly addressed the very obvious disparities that persist in our public education system.
Consequently, over the last several decades we have just nibbled around the edges of progress telling ourselves that the sloth-like progress that has been made was enough. While I absolutely disagree with what Donald Trump is doing to our education system and the country at that—we’re here now, and maybe with the destruction there is an opportunity to design something better. As many Black intellectuals and education experts say post Brown, the decision did a great deal to advance racial equity throughout society; but did so by making whiteness the stick from which we measure success. The goal should have never been to expose Black children to whiteness as a point or goal of success but rather to strengthen and fortify the Black community.