Not All 4.0s Are Created Equal

August 17, 2018

In addition to being the Director of Social Justice Education, one of the additional roles that I’m starting this year at my current institution is to lead a program called Brothers: Black Male Scholars. It’s a program that is designed to support the academic, cultural, and emotional well-being of Black male students on campus with the ultimate goal of improving their academic success, retention, and graduation rates.

In my own efforts to build community, and garner support as I take on this task, I met with a few other Black men who were implementing similar initiatives on their campuses. An anecdote that one program lead shared with me reinforced the need for educators to move beyond equality and focus on equity.

Not all 4.0s are created equal

The program lead wanted to make it extra clear that even though there were students who participated in the program who would achieve 4.0 GPAs by the end of the semester, some of them were navigating food insecurity, homelessness, stereotype threat as a result of low-expectations from faculty and administrators, and very real educational inequities that persist as a result of a legacy of government-sanctioned policies that created the conditions for inequity to thrive. He wanted to make it extra clear that, although it might look the same on paper, their 4.0 was very different from a 4.0 obtained by students who did not and do not have to navigate the same challenges, and did his very best to communicate that to high-level decisionmakers at his institution when asking for support for the program, including funding.

I’ve been known to replicate this exercise early on in some of the classes I have taught as a way to address the differences between equity and equality, privilege and oppression, as well as to intentionally challenge the idea of meritocracy.

I often hear folks say that we have the same 24 hours in every day. However, that time can be experienced differently depending on who we are and how we are situated. Just because the “rules” may appear to be “fair”, doesn’t mean the game is.

Not all 4.0s are created equal.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones

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Relando Thompkins-Jones

I'm a macro social worker, social justice educator, and consultant who uses media and education to advance equity and social justice within people, organizations, and communities. I am also the Founder, Host, Editor and Producer of Social Justice Origin Stories, a storytelling project that highlights the personal stories and defining moments that have inspired individuals and organizations to labor for equity and social justice. I started Social Justice Origin Stories because I believe in the power of storytelling and making our experiences accessible to others, because I believe in the liberatory effects of social justice education, to support justice-seekers in finding community and feeling less alone given the relentlessness of oppressive systems, and hopefully to be a resource of support and reflection for those who are thinking through how they could best contribute to the work. We need all who can, to do what they can.