Conversation and Civil Unrest
For my final “Margin Notes” of this school year, I had planned on congratulating the Class of 2020, wishing a good summer to our boys, and thanking our friend and colleague Laurie Gruhn for 22 years of leadership in our School. But as has so often been the case this spring, plans have been made irrelevant by the events of the day.
Ten days ago, I would not have imagined that our nation would have a more acute crisis than the COVID-19 pandemic. But as I write in the early days of June, American communities have experienced more than a week of deep civil unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Clashes between protestors and law enforcement have become more frequent and more intense, and the National Guard has been deployed in at least 21 states.
As we have witnessed this reaction, you may wonder how our boys are interpreting the vandalism and destruction that has sometimes accompanied these mass demonstrations. As faculty and staff, we are here to listen to our students, to validate their hurt and their frustration and their uncertainty, and to help refine constructive ideas out of inchoate impressions. Boys and adults have had thoughtful, patient dialogue about the form of the protests, and understand that successful community action will come from those who translate their righteous indignation into lasting political reform and not from opportunists uninterested in a broader cause. While students are rightly drawing their own conclusions about the protests, in conversation with Browning adults these conclusions are neither blithe nor shallow, but careful and considered.
Like all of us, though, I worry less about our boys becoming accepting of looting than I do about any of them failing to appreciate the source of the anger that has fueled the demonstrations. We cannot really know the value of community—our local Browning one and our larger civic one—when we are alienated from one another’s experiences. For us to be the school of compassion, curiosity, and honesty that our mission intends, as a collective we must understand that many Black Americans are aching with pain and frustration because of threats, degradations, and attacks, both past and present. Those of us who have been largely shielded from such traumatic personal encounters have a responsibility to educate ourselves, to listen when trusted with stories, and to interrupt structures in our own communities that stand in the way of equality for all people. This is the price that we must pay for our nation to truly belong to us all.
A Browning education is not only intended to prepare its students for college study, which it does quite well; it also aims to take its boys to a place of greater humanity, awareness, integrity, and imagination. This allows boys to contextualize the dissonance between our constitutional ideals and the lived experience of too many of our fellow citizens, friends, and neighbors. It is then that we will take seriously the voices that have too often gone unheard, and act upon the stories that they share.
Conversation without action will not heal a fractured society, but conversation can begin to close the gap between those of us who were shocked at the killing of George Floyd and those of us who were not, and it can provide the emotional and intellectual solidarity needed for restorative action in our country. This is the work that our School community has undertaken. If we are to produce men of intellect and integrity, of courage and compassion, who contribute meaningfully to our world—a world more just and equitable, a world less fearful and isolated—this work must remain central to who we are, and what we need both our community and our nation to be.