by Crystal Martin, PhD 

It is Black History Month.

Which feels like the right time to talk about color.
And credit.
And who is granted authority in this country.

Last week, my daughter’s prosthetic shell slipped out at school. It is cosmetic. It does not affect her functional vision. It does not require emergency response. It is, quite literally, the equivalent of a contact lens.

The school social worker emailed to say they needed an action plan for when it happens again. She wrote (three separate times within the same email) that the plan would need to come from the doctor.

Not from me.

From the doctor.

So I responded.
Not vaguely. Not apologetically. Not defensively.

I wrote that accommodations concern her seeing eye, not her blind one. That the prosthetic shell does not require an action plan. That she can independently secure it and bring it home. That I do not consent to school personnel attempting reinsertion. That I am the medical decision-maker.  I had already communicated this during a meeting regarding her 504 renewal. This time, I put it in writing.

I signed it,
Crystal Martin, PhD. The matter was resolved.

Now, let me be clear: I am my child’s legal guardian. I make her medical decisions. I am a researcher, professor, and policy writer in education. I understand institutional protocol because I have studied it, written it, worked inside it, and helped shape conversations about it. 

My authority as her mother should have been sufficient.

But credentials speak the language of bureaucracy.

I do not believe the individual social worker intended harm.

But institutions do not operate only through intention. They operate through patterns.

I do not know the intent.

I do know the history.  And history shapes how moments are interpreted.

It makes me think about the parents whose cultural orientation toward institutions or whose prior experiences with state power might shape whether they recognize these moments as negotiable.  For Black parents, moments like this exist within a history of institutional skepticism toward our authority. Requests for documentation do not occur in a historical vacuum. They sit alongside generations of surveillance, verification, and second-guessing from schooling to healthcare to child welfare systems.

This is how anti-Blackness often operates in institutions — not through spectacle, but through skepticism and credibility gaps. Through small escalations. Through extra verification. Through the subtle redistribution of trust.

Color acknowledged.
Credit withheld.

The Credibility Gap Is Historical

Philosopher Miranda Fricker describes “epistemic injustice” as the harm that occurs when someone’s knowledge is unfairly discredited because of who they are. Long before the term existed, Black Americans were living it.

As W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, Black Americans developed a double consciousness—an awareness of how we are perceived within a nation that questions our legitimacy. That awareness becomes strategic.

Legal scholar Derrick Bell argued that racism is not an anomaly in American life but an ordinary feature of it. If racism is ordinary, then credibility gaps are not exceptional. They are structural.

Foundational Black Americans—descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States—were formed inside American institutions. Our relationship to schools, courts, housing systems, and healthcare systems has been shaped by exclusion, surveillance, harm—and resistance.

Over generations, we learned that documentation often protects systems before it protects children. That neutrality can mask hierarchy. That authority is sometimes credentialed selectively.

We did not learn this from theory.

We learned it from experience.

My response to that email did not begin with my doctorate.

It began with lineage.

With Black women who sat across from principals, doctors, and caseworkers and insisted their children would not be misnamed or misplaced.  With Black men who challenged discriminatory policies, who demanded fair treatment in school board meetings, who modeled dignity in rooms that questioned it.

Fathers. Grandfathers. Uncles. Pastors. Mentors.

Black History Month is not only about celebration.

It is about procedural memory.

Black history is not archival.

It is operational.

When I said no, I was drawing on an inheritance of institutional literacy — knowledge forged under pressure.

Institutional Trust and Different Points of Entry

Many immigrant families enter the United States with varied relationships to state power. Some arrive deeply skeptical, shaped by state violence in their countries of origin. Others view American institutions as comparatively stable and opportunity-rich. Both orientations are understandable.

Sociologists Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou (1993) remind us that assimilation is segmented; race and reception context shape incorporation. Not all groups encounter the same America.

Foundational Black Americans have encountered an America where skepticism has often been necessary for survival. We have documented disparities in discipline, healthcare access, housing, and funding long before these patterns became mainstream policy conversations (Ladson-Billings, 2006).

This is not a hierarchy of suffering.

It is a recognition that proximity to American anti-Blackness produces particular knowledge.

Knowledge about when to comply.
When to negotiate.
And when to refuse.

There is room here for cross-community learning — not competition.

On Color and Credit

Recent debates about who “gave America its color,” sparked by comments from Shaboozey, reveal how sensitive questions of historical credit remain.

Immigration has undeniably shaped this country.

But America’s racial order predates contemporary migration. Black labor built its economy. Black culture shaped its global identity. Black struggle expanded its democracy.

Honoring foundational Black contributions does not diminish immigrant ones.

But erasing foundation fractures trust.

Color is often celebrated.
Credit— for labor, for knowledge, for authority — is more carefully rationed.

And while my work sits at the intersection of research, policy, and practice, my institutional home is healing and belonging in schools.  

Belonging is not simply about representation.

It is about recognition.

It is about whether families experience institutions as places where their authority is presumed or places where it must be proven.

Healing cannot occur in environments where credibility is unevenly distributed. A child’s sense of safety is tethered to how their caregivers are treated. When parental authority is quietly questioned, belonging becomes conditional.

We often talk about culturally responsive pedagogy, restorative practices, and trauma-informed care. But institutional healing also requires something less visible: recalibrating how trust is extended.

Belonging means a Black parent does not have to escalate to be believed.

Belonging means credibility is not mediated through credentials.

Belonging means authority is recognized without translation.

And healing begins there.

A Call to Educators

If you work inside schools, this is not an indictment.

It is an invitation.

Examine how credibility circulates in your building.

Ask yourself:

• When do we require documentation — and from whom?
• Whose authority is presumed sufficient?
• When does “liability” eclipse relational trust?
• Do our procedures protect children — or primarily protect us?

Anti-Blackness in institutions is rarely theatrical. It is procedural. It appears in small escalations, in extra verification, in the subtle redistribution of trust.

Equity is not only about access to resources.

It is about access to credibility.

This Black History Month, honor legacy not only through celebration — but through recalibration.

Design systems where Black parental authority is not something to be proven.

Design systems where color is not divorced from credit.

Because sometimes justice begins with believing a parent the first time.