A few weeks ago, we hosted Shirley Campbell Barr at Lincoln School Costa Rica. Ms. Campbell Barr is a published poet and social justice advocate from Costa Rica who has used her position to speak out on issues of gender and racial equity across the country and region. As an Afro-Caribbean woman, she is able to speak first-hand about gender and racial divides and about the advances seen in the past decade to bring about more social, political, and economic equity.
Ms. Campbell Barr’s visit began with her answering questions, reading her poetry, and speaking with our tenth-grade students in our theater. She shared a poem she wrote that spoke to the very nature of existence and identity, and answered students’ questions regarding her experiences with gender and racial inequalities and her work in both areas. Ms. Campbell Barr was honest and frank in her answers to students and helped them to see both the struggles and successes that have occurred in her life as an advocate for societal change. At the heart of her message was the simple but powerful theme that each of us is responsible for making the change we want to see in the world.
After Ms. Campbell Barr’s presentation to our tenth-grade, we hosted a lunch with Ms. Campbell Barr and members of our faculty to talk further about her experiences as a writer and social justice advocate. Again, Ms. Campbell Barr was honest and transparent in her answers to our questions. I started with a question regarding our school and the role we can play as a recognized and influential educational institution in Costa Rica. Ms. Campbell Barr spoke at length about our responsibility to provide opportunities to students, families, and faculty from diverse backgrounds and to include different voices in our curriculum. She tied this to the importance of being intentional in our recruiting of faculty so that students have an opportunity to see people who look and sound like them and the people they’re learning to serve. She also spoke at length about the indigenous peoples of Costa Rica and the lack of representation or opportunity that they’ve suffered throughout their history.
Ms. Campbell Barr was passionate in her speech about racial and gender equity, but she was also thoughtful in the actions she suggested. She talked about “building bridges, not barriers,” and that we need to approach disenfranchised and oppressed groups from a place “not as colonizers but as brothers and sisters” in order to “learn and not impose.” She talked further about the mistake people make when they assume someone from a particular racial or ethnic group is also from a certain economic strata or that a person or persons are violent or tolerant of violence based solely on how they look or where they are from.
Listening to and meeting with Ms. Campbell Barr shed light on issues of equity that are occurring in real-time here in Costa Rica, the United States, and the rest of the world. While we have seen significant advances in the legal protections offered to women and people of color, there is significant work to be done to make the spirit of those legal protections a reality in people’s social and economic lives. Both identity groups (along with others) suffer significantly increased levels of discrimination and oppression, both in the form of social ostracisation and in the form of domestic violence. Additionally, generations of discrimination have led to significant educational and economic gaps between the cisgender male population and others. As an educational institution, it is important that we help our students understand the need for the legal protections currently offered, additional legal protections to create equitable systems, and active advocacy to realize the intention of those legal protections in the everyday educational, economic, and social realities of all people.
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