Alumni of Color Conference to Kick Off on Friday

The sixth annual Alumni of Color Conference, Raising Our Voices: (Re)Framing Conversations About Race and Education, on February 22 and 23 will challenge some of the main education frameworks, widespread rhetoric, and narratives used to think and talk about the education of people of color.

“In general, we are not able to move to a new place or to make progress with race and education,” says Keith Catone, tri-chair of AOCC, a group that celebrates the work of HGSE alumni of color and all alumni, students, and community members who share a common commitment to understanding and addressing the issues of race in education. “What we hope to do is reframe this race conversation. We pushed for presenters and panelists who would take up the challenge to talk about these things in a more nuanced way.”

More than 250 people are expected to attend this year’s conference, which features some of the top speakers about race and education including Ed School Professor John Diamond; Kennedy School Professor Ronald Ferguson; and HGSE alums Kira Orange-Jones, Ed.M’07, director of Teach For America in Greater New Orleans, and Natalia Ortiz, Ed.M’06, who teaches in a Brooklyn high school for students formerly in the juvenile justice system. Sessions will focus on new ways to talk about race, what it’s like being a professor of color working in a higher education institution, and challenging the various labels placed on people and communities of color.

Keynote speaker Theresa Perry, Ed.D.’82, a professor at Simmons College, will explore the possibilities of discourse on African American student achievement after including their history and the inherent diversity within the culture. Her groundbreaking book, Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students, addressed the achievement gap of African American students and discussed how the widespread misbelief that black children are not as intelligent as white children has become “institutionalized in polices and practices” of the public school system.

“Theresa Perry was a natural choice as keynote speaker for this year’s conference,” Catone said. “This conference highlights voices that push the boundaries of thinking about race and education.  Dr. Perry’s work concerning the achievement gap is a prominent and important example of such a ‘reframing.’  We are thrilled to welcome her back to campus, and to give the larger HGSE community an opportunity to learn from her.”

The achievement gap will be a major topic of discussion at the conference. AOCC will reframe the conversation by taking an issue like the achievement gap, which traditionally focuses on the deficit among students of color, and shifting the focus to circumstances that create the gap and what these students are already doing that is working, Catone says. “We are hoping to encourage and challenge participants to step out of their normal ways of thinking about race and find more effective ways to talk,” he says. “If we talk differently, then we might think of more innovative things to do.”