From “Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice” By Terrence Lester, PhD
The interplay of poverty and racial injustice introduces an additional layer of complexity to the struggle of someone navigating all this, often placing them at a significant disadvantage when it comes to educational achievement. It creates the type of barriers that uphold what I would call educational injustice. When I say educational injustice, I am talking about systemic barriers and inequities that disproportionately hinder Black children and children of color from historically marginalized communities, making it harder for them to flourish in school (K-12) and blocking their path to quality education and higher learning. These barriers make it harder for them to succeed and thrive like their peers who do not have to deal with systemic and social ills. Children raised with trauma and in poverty start from behind, long after the race has begun, and must navigate through fraught social and emotional landscapes. This burden is deeply rooted in a broader historical and systemic context that demands more understanding as we look at why access to higher education (that is, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD programs) is harder for children of color, particularly children who are Black.
Poverty, trauma, and their effects can be long lasting for any child or adult trying to overcome them and can set a person up for failure – whether in getting a jobe, navigating a healthy family life, or pursuing academic achievement. Even if a person never plans to seek higher education, it is still important to feel safe enough to pursue whatever they want – to have equity meet them. That so many people never feel that kind of safety is due to systemic barriers, meticulously constructed over generations, that create what some scholars identify as transgenerational or multigenerational trauma: a phenomenon I discuss in depth in chapter two and give real life examples of throughout the book.
I define systemic barriers as a set of hindrances, embedded obstacles, social challenges, and designed limitations that are socially constructed to hold back, oppress, or marginalize a vulnerable group of people from the resources and opportunities that might give them access to upward mobility.