Daring to Discuss Race in a Segregated School District.
What transpired when a northern Michigan superintendent raised the topic of institutional racism?
On a map of Michigan, the Leelanau Peninsula resembles a thick pinky with a crooked tip. It is located in the northern portion of the state between Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay. There are cherry and plum orchards, extensive sections of road backed by forests and farms, and enormous, surreal sand dunes in this region.
The peninsula and nearby mainland could hardly be more demographically homogeneous; almost 90 percent of the population is white. Politically, though, the region is fiercely split. Conservatives are concerned that their territory is becoming “as blue as Ann Arbor,” as one moderate Republican described it, while liberals observe Trump 2024 banners draped over the fronts of their neighbors’ homes and, on a few houses and trucks, Confederate flags. The peninsula, whose economy is comprised of agriculture, tourism, and a recent influx of people with the luxury of remote work, and whose housing ranges from grand estates by the water to mobile homes just inland, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, while the surrounding counties voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and slightly less so in the most recent election. Some members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia will shortly be tried in Traverse City, at the base of the peninsula, on state charges of plotting to abduct the Democratic governor of Michigan from her nearby vacation residence.
A bit past the midpoint of the peninsula is the modest Leland Public School District, which educates 476 pupils. Its solitary structure is situated on a hill next to a Lutheran church, above the town center of Leland, on a land spit between Lake Michigan and Lake Leelanau. Five weeks after the assassination of George Floyd by police, Stephanie Long’s first day on the job as superintendent was July 1, 2020. She decided to write to her students’ families after being haunted by visions of the murder. She asked herself, “Why be in a position of leadership and not lead?”
Long typed, “All people of color require us to unite with them to oppose acts of systematic and systemic racism and intolerance.” Long, who is 56 years old, is a Lebanese-American with olive-toned skin, a mane of dark hair, and the sturdy frame of a lady who competed in the discus and javelin in college several decades ago. Although she does not identify as white, she wrote as though she did. Since the 1990s, she has lived and worked on the peninsula as a teacher and school administrator while passing for white. She keeps her ethnicity largely private.
Long urged her audience to evaluate “the discrepancy in our experiences and the underlying causes that have generated the advantage that white people enjoy.” She wrote, “We adults must and will improve, and we will improve.” And, “every significant social reform movement began with youth.” Then she provided proposals for how to initiate the process of creating a “fair world”: Donate to or become engaged with the NAACP or the ACLU. Read books such as “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi. Join a chapter of Black Lives Matter.
Long is married to a former police officer who is now an attorney and a somewhat conservative political conservative; their political views have always been divergent. She was not going to be hindered by his opinions. She envisioned substantial pedagogical changes in her school; she envisioned sparking enlightening classroom debates and inquisitive, transforming community conversations. She pressed the send button.
In response, some support was offered. A peninsula newspaper published a letter of gratitude signed by two hundred Leland alumni. Rosie Vasquez, a Hispanic mother who settled on the peninsula after moving there as a child in the 1990s with one of the migrant families that harvest the farmland’s cherries, strawberries, and asparagus, sent an email to the Leland school board praising Long for confronting the racism that lurked among the area’s natural beauty. “Over the years,” wrote Vasquez, an administrator who works with individuals with disabilities, “both of my sons were subjected to racial insults on the basketball court, soccer field, in the corridor, and in our neighborhood. My husband and I have also experienced it in our lifetimes. We like our Leland school and community, but we are all experiencing genuine anguish and suffering.”
