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Born Into a Segregated America, Now Leading Equity and Justice: Meet Caroline Blackwell, the Advocate Reshaping Education and Human Rights
Caroline Blackwell is the Vice President of Equity and Justice at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). As an education leader and advocate for policies and practices that promote civil and human rights, dignity, and belonging, she has dedicated her career to fostering equity in education and beyond.
What is your personal and professional story?
There is a very real way that my journey toward a career in education, human relations, and justice began at birth. Not just because I was a Black child born in America before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but because I was abandoned at birth, left in a hospital to be cared for by strangers, and taken in by families who loved me unconditionally and never took a dime for my care. From the unknown nurses and doctors who tended to me years ago in Northampton, Massachusetts, to my late mother who demanded nothing but excellence in all my endeavors, I learned early that the outcomes of our hopes and hesitations are linked to flawed and fabulous human beings, like each of us, and those to the right and left of you right now. My career includes serving as Executive Director of the Metro Human Relations Commission in Nashville, Tennessee, and spending 17 years as a senior administrator at University School of Nashville.
I hold an undergraduate degree in Journalism, a master’s degree in Clinical Social Work, and multiple certifications, including in Gracious Space, the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory (ICS), and Points of YouTM. I'm a contributor to the NAIS Principles of Good Practice, and the annual NAIS TrendBook, and the consulting editor of Diversity Work in Independent Schools: The Practice and the Practitioner. In my personal life, I am a wife, mother, sister, daughter, Gigi, auntie, and friend to all those in the neighborhood of my heart. And like dear friends and family, my faith is an enduring source of power and strength for the work that I do.
What Pivotal Experiences Shaped Your Current Path?
Three incidents come immediately to mind. The first is a time I was in a grocery store and walked by a white mother pushing her daughter in a cart. The little girl said, "Mommy she’s brown.” The mother’s response was to hush the child.
A second incident occurred when I was an Assistant Head of School, co-leading a fifth grade assembly in preparation for for the group's annual trip to Memphis. The outing was part of the social studies unit on civil rights. During the program, a white student raised his hand and said earnestly, “Ms. Blackwell, diversity doesn’t apply to me.”
Some might consider these incidents inconsequential. For me, they were still more examples of a pattern of how generations of white children were—and, I submit, still are—trained to "un-notice" and deny the complexities of race in their lives. Far too many are taught that white racial identity is the norm and that “difference” applies only to those who are not like them.
Reckoning with the kind of playground interactions and harm that even "innocent" racial and cultural ignorance can produce, I made a pivotal decision: to move from working with children and youth to working with adults.
What Are the Most Valuable Lessons You’ve Learned About Yourself Through Your Life and Career?
That I am not alone.
When I was young and teased for my differences, like many children, I thought I was “the only one” in multiple identity domains. Children and adults feel safer—and more capable of taking healthy, life-sustaining risks—when they know they are part of a community.
That I am enough.
Not surprisingly, my sex and gender socialization positioned me below all men and all white women. I did not fit normalized standards for attractiveness or beauty, and early on I taught by example to be subservient to men, no matter how abusive they might be.
Fortunately, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement generally, and the womanist movement, particularly created other liberating paradigms for what girls could grow up to be. Recognizing my academic talent and nascent interest in righting societal wrongs, my parents began reinforcing the notion that I could be and do anything I wanted in this world.
I came of age during times of empowering for women and BIPOC. And I honor the leaders whose freedom dreams made possible that epoch in our nation’s history.
What Drives Your Desire to Contribute and Make a Difference?
In addition to the motivations described above, today I am driven by the massive retrenchment from civil and human rights taking place in this country. Our democracy is at risk. My daughter and granddaughters have fewer rights than I had, and that is true for many of you and your family members as well.
What some are callin a return to the “good old days” is for people like me and many others, the stuff of nightmares. So, I am obliged to make a positive difference in my spheres of influence and circles of concern. I am called to take action that is restorative for those who are othered, just for those whose rights are being curtailed, safer for those subjected to hatred and violence for simply living and being who they are, and enlightening for the children, youth, and adults being indoctrinated with a “whitewashed” version of our nation’s history.
Our populace is being gaslighted by banned books, watered-down curricula, the defunding of public schools, and the denial of the racial hierarchy constructed to dehumanize and enslave my ancestors, annihilate and dispossess the indigenous peoples of this land, render all other People of Color second-class status or worse when they came here in search of the American dream.
How Can GlobalMindED Support Leaders Like Yourself in Achieving Your Goals and Advancing Your Aspirations?
GlobalMindED’s mission and work are inspiring. Carol Carter’s vision to reduce the social and educational distances to success for first-generation students is a resource I wish had existed when I entered college.
As an educator now, GlobalMindED provides an opportunity for me to connect both independent schools and students to a network of resources that can help them reach their goals. Our first generation students now have access to vast cadre of global mentors and role models who understand their circumstances, challenges and opportunnites.
Research shows that these kinds of resources can mean the difference between loneliness and discouragement and community bonds and joy for students in pursuit of their dreams, miles and continents from home.
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