#BlackInSchool: Habiba Cooper Diallo’s teenage diary speaks truth to power. Will we listen?

March 18, 2022April 6, 2022 Arpita Ghosal

Photo of Habiba Cooper Diallo by Photos Unlimited

#BlackInSchool, the debut book by author and women’s health advocate Habiba Cooper Diallo (published by University of Regina Press), is a damning account of the systemic anti-Black racism she experienced and observed during three years as a student at a Halifax high school claiming to be Canada’s “most diverse school east of Montreal.”

Diallo is Black, with African and Caribbean ancestry. In 2011, 15 years old and grieving the death of her father a year earlier, she relocated from Toronto to Halifax with her mother. The loss of a parent and a community were deeply traumatic. But her grief was soon multiplied by the reality of this city, where racism was a routine part of life.

And so she wrote.

Diallo poured her anger, resentment, frustration and pain into her journal. An adult now, she has published a curated collection of journal entries from grades 11 and 12, the entries preserved and presented as they were written by her teenage self. Barring a few grammatical corrections for the purpose of clarity, additions she has made as an adult are presented as footnotes or within nonstandard parentheses.

The result is a vivid, raw account of her lived experiences of racism at a place – her high school – that should have protected her from it.

“I felt compelled to share my experiences with the world,” Diallo explains of her decision to publish her personal diary. “As much as I hesitated, I thought much good would come from it. Other racialized students would see themselves reflected in my story, and would therefore feel that they, too, have a voice and that their experiences are valid.” Diallo’s real-time entries detail the pervasive “microaggressions of racism” – ranging from “curricular racism” to “teacher-student harassment” – that plagued Diallo her up to her graduation.

“As a Black person in the world, we often wonder if we should speak up, or just maintain the status quo. Speaking up is hard,” she affirms. And as #BlackInSchool also makes clear, speaking up is demoralizing and exhausting. Because racism is rooted in a system of white supremacy, it is pervasive and prevalent. It wears you down. Yet Diallo persisted. Fortunately for her, she was an exemplary pupil. An International Baccalaureate diploma student, she was well-versed in non-Eurocentric literature and culture, fluently bilingual, and a budding activist (qualities and traits that laid the foundation for her current vocational path: the founder of the Women’s Health Organization International).

The book’s success is its no-holds-barred approach to “speaking out”. It rips away all pretense about the mental health crisis of Canada’s Black youth, who are routinely and consistently failed by school administrators, staff, teachers, and peers. Because of (or perhaps despite) this uncompromising stance, the response to #BlackInCanada so far, especially from young people, has been “great”. Diallo has received countless emails and Instagram messages from young people congratulating and thanking her, and expressing how eye-opening her book has been for them.

Of course, many Canadian school boards have an anti-Black racism policy. The Toronto District School Board even has a newly-established Centre for Black Excellence, and specific protocols for countering racism. Even so . . .year after year, the student data shows that Black students continue to be underserved and marginalized. What would Diallo like young people to realize about how racism operates in schools, which should be a safe and nurturing place? The bluntness of her reply betrays a tragic realism: “I would hope these young people develop good coping mechanisms, for that is what is required until racism in these spaces is completely eliminated. I don’t think there is another way. A broken door will remain broken, in spite of how much refurbishing is done to it. What’s needed is a new door.”

Habiba Cooper Diallo. Photo by Photos Unlimited

Until a new door is installed, all students can do is be wary and self-protective when trying to pass that threshold. That new door will require re-thinking, re-education, and a genuine, equally systemic desire for change. Once again, Diallo is direct in asserting that teachers, administrators and school staff must “level up their understanding. Go to training. There are resources everywhere. Be humble and learn. Excuses are not acceptable anymore.”

Indeed, her goal is for #BlackInSchool to be one such resource, “adopted as classroom reading material by school boards across Canada”. And #BlackInSchool has the substance and the style to make such a leap. Within the intimacy of the diary format, Diallo’s lucid, succinct writing distills raw emotion and visceral pain in prose that is both urgent and analytical. Entries like the anaphoric #HighSchoolandtheBlackBody and the staccato #OnRacismAgain wrap themselves in words colliding with each other, like hail on a windowpane. They land like a gut punch: readers will remember her words long after the final page, liable to feel changed by the questions they evoke:

How can racist ideas and violence be banished, if society has been built on white supremacy?
If most people in a society do not experience or question systemic racism, is it even possible to end it?
Do schools instill in students the ideals of equality and tolerance . . . yet contribute to the “othering” of BIPOC children by reinforcing differences and stereotypes?

This transformative, challenging and sobering work provokes critical consciousness with its experience-based case for change. In #BlackInSchool, Diallo offers both a searing social indictment and an urgent call to action to dismantle our system of oppression.

Everyone should read it.

Quick Takes with Habiba Cooper Diallo

1. If you could give some advice to your teenage self, what would you tell her?

HCD: Take it easy.

2. How do you think she might react to knowing her diary will be published one day?

HCD: I think she would be nervous at the thought of it, but her mind would quickly move to something else.

3. What are you working on that you would like us to know about?

HCD: Promoting my book and listening to spirit in 2022.

4. What song or music got you through the pandemic?

HCD: Miss Maawa – An ka wo wassoulou

5. What’s something you can’t live without?

HCD: Tea

6. What’s a pleasant surprise you’ve had recently?

HCD: This bitterly cold weather.

7. Tell us something about you that might surprise us.

HCD: I love Malian music.

Cover image courtesy of University of Regina Press

BLACK STUDENTS: AN ECONOMY OVERLOOKED

15 APRIL 2014

The school “culture”—as discussed in a previous chapter—is not conducive to the personal growth of Black students. If teachers and administrators were to truly assume this responsibility for all students, they would critically analyze their ideologies about Blackness and the way they deliver every subject, from maths to history. Teachers would begin to ask themselves questions such as the following:

What does it mean to have Black students share classroom space with white students in light of racist legacies—like the murders of Renisha and Trayvon Martin—which still persist today?
What does it mean to teach Black students who carry heavy burdens linked to their culture, identity, and loss thereof? Students who are continually omitted and erased in textbooks and curricula, students who seldom see themselves represented in visually and politically important spaces in society, spaces like television commercials, films, billboards, and even the parliament?
What kind of responsibility do I have for Black students in a world where powerful media images stigmatizing Black youth are so pervasive?
What kind of responsibility do I have for Black students who, as a group, are more likely to drop out of high school than any other race?

I do wonder who cares about Black students. Why are our educational needs and human rights—our right to dignity, our right to be innocent until proven guilty—placed significantly below those of white students’ rights?

Where is the accountability? Who is accountable to Black students? Who is accountable to my brother, my sister, and myself for the thirteen (combined) years we spent in high school? It has been thirteen years of having our bodies hurt, stigmatized, hindered, and nullified in “democratic” institutions of learning. As a Black high school student, I am a stakeholder in my education and in my school, and so are my teachers, so is my principal, my vice principal, my guidance counsellor, and my program coordinator. Do they not have a responsibility towards me? A responsibility towards my human rights, my dignity, and my security of person? A responsibility to ensure that I walk into school every morning feeling that I belong, trusting that I will receive a curriculum that will suit my educational needs and contribute to my self-actualization? Why are my basic human rights eroded by the very institution that is meant to build my confidence, educate me, and provide me with a quality education?