Head Start’s Role in Disrupting Generations of Systemic Racism

By: Damon Carson, Board Chair, and Yasmina Vinci, Executive Director, of the National Head Start Association

Across the Head Start community and around the world, we are dealing with a health pandemic and struggling daily to find some sense of balance in our lives. Add to that, the brutal and unjust killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta by police. Events that make society question, even more, where we are today and how far we have to go.

For Black people in this country, the range of emotions expressed over this latest chapter in our country’s history of bigotry and subjugation are the most raw. As people who have dedicated our lives and careers to pursuing a more just and equitable society for our nation’s children, we acknowledge the tiredness, frustration, and sadness. We acknowledge the weariness over the racist narrative about Black, indigenous, and people of color that is perpetuated by the media, pop culture, and even by well-meaning if ignorant friends.

We acknowledge the frustration because, more than five decades after the civil rights movement, America still hasn’t achieved social or racial justice. And we acknowledge the sadness, most importantly in the Head Start community, because children of color especially — innocent, inquisitive, and bright as they are — are developing in a society that persists in limiting their opportunities due to generations of systemic racism.

But the Head Start community — one million children and families, 270,000 teachers and staff, and more than 37 million alumni — is also hopeful. We remember that Head Start was born during another turbulent era of fighting for equal justice, an era envisioned by its activists to be the end of racism, discrimination, and oppression. Head Start is rooted in the search for equitable opportunities for children in both school and life. Today, Head Start continues to be a catalyst for hope in communities that are tired, frustrated, and sad with the status quo, and deserve a hopeful future where their lives are valued unequivocally.

We also know that Head Start will lead, in our communities and in our nation, as we work to heal our communities. In urban centers, rural towns, and everywhere in between, Head Start is made up of people who come together under the common belief that every child, regardless of circumstances, deserves the opportunity to succeed in school and in life. We teach our children that every person has value and that each one of them has endless potential contained within them. We also teach them to have empathy for each other. To listen carefully, and to speak to each other with kindness and respect. These are values we must strive to model as adults — whether or not children’s eyes are upon us.

For 55 years, Head Start has been the model for how to survive and even thrive through different challenges and threats. At the core of that model is strength through diversity, equity, and inclusion. But as a community, we can no longer be cautiously optimistic about the future of our society — the future that our children will have — without fundamental change. We must not be passive and hope that things work out for the best. We must not stand by and ignore acts of inequality, acts of racism, acts of injustice.

As individuals and as a Head Start community, we must take responsibility for pointing out the wrongdoings we see around us and shine a light on our own shortfalls. That onus does not end after a certain date, after protests quiet down, or after we have adopted a certain reform. We must commit to never choosing to be silent, to never accepting bigotry, no matter how subtle or unintentional. We must commit to the never-ceasing work of making our voices heard in our demand for universal justice, and sustain that chorus until it becomes our nation’s anthem. We have a responsibility to be role models, not only to our children but to our fellow Americans.

Because that is what Head Start is all about.