James Huguley grew up in a racially diverse community, and got into programs for gifted students, but remembers being socially isolated in school.
“I did not get invited to birthday parties in middle school, and didn’t have many good friends in my program,” said Mr. Huguley, assistant professor at the Center on Race and Social Problems at the University of Pittsburgh. “It was a strange space for me to be in. From there [middle school] to high school, what I faced the most was not an overt racism, but a set of lower expectations from teachers.”
Mr. Huguley will speak Wednesday on “Race and Parenting: How To Raise Children Who Understand and Promote Justice For All” at the Community Day School in Squirrel Hill, and will elaborate on work he and his partner Ming-Te Wang have worked on at the Center on Race and Social Problems. His talk, free and open to the public, is from 7 to 9 p.m. at 6424 Forward Ave., Squirrel Hill.
The Community Day School decided to take a deliberate approach to the issue in January, when it made Martin Luther King Day a “day on” instead of a “day off.” Students Pre-K through 8 went through programs that centered on black history, and discussed what the Rev. King would have to say about Pittsburgh in 2016. Afterward, parents at the school were abuzz with a desire for opportunities to talk about social justice and race, said Whitney Philipps, the librarian at the school.
“In the U.S., it’s easy not to talk about race with children if you don’t have to,” said Ms. Philipps. “Parents know how important these conversations are, and they don’t want to mess up, so I think the topic can feel daunting when anybody realizes the limitations of their own experience. . . . Sometimes you just have to start.”
Mr. Huguley’s lecture is the first of a series, and he will draw on his personal and academic experience to help parents get started.
Mr. Huguley, 39, recalled the lack of connection between teachers and minority students in schools he attended in Rhode Island.
“There were large groups of Latino students, African-American students and Southeast Asian students,” he said. “What’s very interesting about my public school district growing up is that looking back on it, to get into the talented and gifted programs that I was fortunate enough to get into, there were only four or five ethnic minorities in the program, out of around 75 in my class in middle school.”
Mr. Huguley received a bachelor’s degree in English and secondary education from Providence College, a master’s in risk and prevention and a doctorate in human development and psychology, both from Harvard University. In 2013, he came to the University of Pittsburgh on a postdoctoral fellowship and became a professor at the university in 2015.
His Just Discipline Project examines school discipline locally and national. “Nationally we are moving toward discipline practices that are more restorative, and away from practices that are strictly punitive. We’re hoping to assist local schools to bring those best practices to our region in manageable ways,” he said.
“I got involved in education because from what I experienced in school, there was no effort to really have relationships with kids. I think the schools I attended, and I went to ‘the best schools’ in the city, those teachers were not invested in me at all personally,” he said. “The vast majority of my students say they never learned context about the history of race — true context. They say they never learned about the rich histories of people of color, and the structures that were intentionally put in place to suppress them in the U.S.”
The many racial disparities in the U.S. are something young people notice whether we think they do or not, he said. That’s why conversations about race and justice are so important.
Lacretia Wimbley: lwimbley@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1898.
First Published: November 15, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
