This commentary is by Joe Patrissi of South Burlington, a former Vermont commissioner of corrections who received a Restorative Justice Leadership Award in 2016 from the Community Justice Network of Vermont.
A long time ago, when I was 11 years old, on a Sunday morning, I was playing on the floor in our living room while my father was on the couch reading the paper. We lived in the upper apartment of a two-story duplex in West Hartford, Conn. You had to make the climb up the stairs to get to the entrance.
There was a knock on the door and I said I would get it. As I opened it, I saw a man, small in stature, dressed in a minister’s suit, holding a Bible, looking just like Desmond Tutu. His skin was black as coal.
As he began to speak, I saw the massive arm of my father reach over the back of my shoulder and slam the door shut in this man’s face. I was stunned. When I came to my senses, I turned and asked, “Why did you do that, Dad?” He looked at me with a sneer and said something foul about this Black man that still rings in my ears.
My father didn’t know this man. He was a total stranger.
I’ll never know whether he wanted to preach to us, introduce us to religion or ask for money. Whatever he was there for, it was not for the humiliation and degradation that he got from my father. I can’t imagine what that felt like. To be treated with such contempt simply because your skin is black appalled me, shamed me because of my father. I had no way to make good with this man for the bad my father had done to him.
Fast-forward and later on in my life I worked as a corrections officer in St. Johnsbury for six years. From the first day I worked there, I decided that, in order to be effective in my job, I could not judge or be afraid of the inmates. This helped me establish rapport with many of them so I could be in a better place to understand and work with them.
Then one day, a Black inmate was lodged in a cellblock of only white men. It wasn’t long before they openly taunted him by calling him “Coon” and other much more colorful racist insults. My response to them in a loud voice was: Seriously! Do you want to be known as racists as well as criminals?
It doesn’t take a criminal to be a racist. It can be a father. It can be a president. It can be a teacher. It can come from anyone, anyplace, at any time.
I’m a white man. I can try to put myself in the shoes of a Black man to feel what it’s like in this country to be black and treated like I’m the lesser species. But I can’t really experience what it’s like. I can only imagine what it’s like to have a heritage of being black.
What comes to mind is Tulsa, Oklahoma, where an entire Black community was burned to the ground while no help came from local, state or federal law enforcement. This was in 1921, after World War I, in the early 20th century.
What comes to mind is 400 years of being enslaved where your white fellow human beings treated you like cattle, sold you at auction, bred you, and disposed of your humanity at the door as well as your worn-out body at the end when it didn’t serve anymore.
What comes to mind is another 100-plus years where you can’t sit at the table with your white fellow human beings. In the back of the bus you went. And into the colored-only bathrooms where you were allowed.
I’m always amazed at how racists can cheer for almost all-Black pro football teams but on the street, it’s another story altogether.
The meaning of a noose
Given this, it’s not hard to imagine how you might feel if you were Black and a student in a classroom in South Burlington, Vermont, when your teacher suggested that an object resembling a noose be hung from a Black Lives Matter flag. You would become hyper-reactive. You would become traumatized by this act from a long-term, well-known teacher in your school.
And when you got home and told your mother, who had been recently elected to the school board, wouldn’t you want her to do something about it? To make it better? To hope she could help influence her fellow board members and school administrators that this is sooo not OK and please help provide a remedy, a just remedy to send a message that zero tolerance is warranted on this one, especially given the connotation of what a noose means for people who are Black.
And over time, you the student begin to understand that your mother is by definition the victim too. You see that the spotlight has descended upon her. And that she must carry the burden of making things right for what happened here. And if she fails, it’s just one more message to you about the injustice that the mere color of your skin can bring the world down on you. Not even your mother can protect you.
Especially given a historical context that a noose means hanging from a tree as a spectacle for all to see to instill fear from the ones to hold the noose.
The incident occurred in March. What was the response by the teacher and the school to this incident? The teacher apologized to the class involved. The school put the teacher on paid leave during a brief investigation, gave the teacher a slap on the wrist, let him go back to class and teach for the rest of the year. The teacher put in for his retirement. It’s not clear whether he can go back to teach as a substitute.
The victims wanted the teacher fired. There was no meeting between the teacher and the student and his mother to see if there could be something done to make amends beyond a verbal apology.
The victims sued. The student filed a grievance seeking that the school create a more zero-tolerance-based disciplinary policy for such racist behaviors by staff, as well as compensatory damages for the trauma experienced from the outcome of the incident.
According to an article in Seven Days, the school’s insurance company advised there was no basis for a lawsuit and added that it declined to give the money voluntarily for damages or compensation it was being asked for in regards to the trauma and injustice the victims said they experienced.
In addition, the insurance company spokesperson wished the student good luck in his future endeavors.
Restorative justice?
To the credit of the school, it embraces Restorative Justice as an alternative to mere punition for accountability and, hence, social justice.
Punitive justice tries to do something TO the offender. Restorative justice tries to give the opportunity to the offender to DO something for the victim.
Restorative justice seeks to have the offender make meaningful amends to the victim. The victim in this process needs to be heard directly by the offender. The offender in turn can help rectify his offense by taking action in response to what the victim needs from him to be made whole.
In an early November school board meeting, the school superintendent was on the hot seat, trying to explain why he couldn’t go further with disciplining the teacher. He tried to close out the matter and apologized for what happened, even going so far as to say he wished he could have done more to hold the offender accountable but felt he couldn’t due to the contract with the union and the fear of losing in arbitration.
What has resulted is not restorative justice. While the school wants to move on, the student and his mother are left in a state of unresolved limbo. The victims feel violated, alienated and unfulfilled by the school’s actions and lack of actions.
The school must do more to restore faith in itself to not just the immediate victims of racist behavior by a staff member. but also to members of the community who pay taxes to support the school in South Burlington, as well as the greater community that reviles racism and sees the school’s response as inadequate.
The school leadership must find the courage and the will to engage with the victims and find a way to make them whole. This is crucial because the school needs to be the moral standard-bearer, the role model for our children, reflective of how we would like them to be.
Within the historical context of how we have treated people who are Black and the current context where there seem to be too many times when we have two justice systems, one for Blacks and one for whites, it is imperative to make amends as an example to the community.
Restorative justice is about seeking agreement to show each other fairness, respect, dignity, empathy and compassion, giving back when something is taken. Exemplifying meaningful accountability means having the victims give a “yes” to the result of the process.
If the teacher in question didn’t transform himself to become an advocate, a teacher for racial equity as a way to make amends, then the school must become The Teacher, held up as a model for the community. It can become The Advocate as well, and show the children and the community it has transformed from excuses to action.
One way to take action is through mediation.
Note: I have posted this in several South Burlington media groups on Facebook and to the Other Paper in South Burlington, with hardly any reaction save a few comments. I was hoping that community members would overwhelmingly reach out to the school leadership and school board to urge further steps in the restorative justice process for Travia Childs and her son Jeremiah. The response had been underwhelming.
I’m hoping that putting this out in VTDigger will change that, due to its larger audience, and awaken the voices who feel as strongly as I do about the victims of racist behavior that occurred in a South Burlington school.
