Those Kids, Our Schools

Those Kids, Our Schools examines patterns of racial interaction among students, teachers, and administrators in a large, integrated public high school. Griffin's perceptive analysis illuminates the persistent influence of race in our schools and classrooms. She shows how teachers and students can develop the capacity to address racial dynamics in schools in a frank and constructive way, and highlights the disservice being done to all students when educators fail to critically interrogate issues of race. "In Those Kids, Our Schools, Shayla Griffin makes a vital contribution to our understanding of race. As her examination of one high school shows, race does not exist as a quantifiable, tangible reality; it is made and remade following familiar precepts and patterns but combined in ways specific to the present." -- From the foreword by William Jelani Cobb "Shayla Griffin has written an acutely insightful text on the ways race shapes the lived experiences of all young people. Through her careful ethnography of social spaces in a diverse high school, she meticulously peels back the layers of racial denialism and silence to show why what is left unsaid or unacknowledged about race is harmful. This book should be read by anyone wishing to understand if race still matters in the lives of young people and provides grounded advice on what can be done to improve our schools for all our kids." -- R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy, associate professor, sociology and black studies, The City College of New York Shayla Reese Griffin is the diversity and school culture consultant for the Washtenaw (Michigan) Intermediate School District and director of Creating Culturally Proficient Communities, a five-year initiative to improve racial and economic justice in Ypsilanti Community Schools. William Jelani Cobb is an associate professor of history and the director of the African Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut.