BY DANIELLE LEGARE

Richard Williams, a University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education doctoral student, is on a mission to spark systemic change. Through his new book, scholarly collaboration and feature in The New York Times, Williams is amplifying critical conversations about the intersection of race, mental health and education.

His work highlights systemic inequities and challenges educators, policymakers and advocates to rethink how they approach these issues and provides actionable paths forward.

Published in Nov. 2024, Williams’ latest book, “The Narrative of the Black Incarcerated Man: Mass Incarceration, Prison Reform, and Rehabilitation,” examines the school-to-prison pipeline and the broader systems that disproportionately criminalize Black men. April J. Lisbon and Charemi A. Jones co-authored the publication.

“This book follows the story of a black veteran who grew up in the D.C. area, struggled with mental health and was labeled as ‘bad’ in school,” said Williams. “That became a pipeline to prison. Once you leave school, your reputation follows you… When you're bad in school, law enforcement already knows who you are.”

“That reputation becomes a lifelong pipeline to incarceration—whether in the criminal justice system or in the mental health system,” he continued.

Williams’ two chapters, “The History of the School-to-Prison Pipeline in Education” and “Imprisoned to Be Imprisoned,” examine these issues in detail. He highlights how zero-tolerance policies in schools mirror the punitive practices of the criminal justice system and perpetuate cycles of fugitivity and exclusion for Black and minoritized youth.

Williams also explores the intersection of mental health and carcerality, urging educators to reconsider how they diagnose and label students.

“When we give a child diagnosis of a mental illness, whether it be for school or it's from a psychiatrist, it sets them up for a particular kind of life. We have to be aware of the implications and repercussions of labeling kids ‘oppositional defiant’ or ‘conduct disorder’ because they’re ‘bad’ and then not providing them with care,” Williams said. “We have to think about how the experiences a child has in school sets them up in life in terms of trauma.”

He argues that students—especially immigrant and first-generation students—are often punished instead of supported. “Imagine a student trying to acclimate to American culture or struggling with language barriers. They have an emotional meltdown in class. Instead of support, they get suspended. That moment of distress could define their entire educational experience.”

Williams calls for a trauma-informed education system that prioritizes compassion and understanding over punitive discipline.

“With the pandemic, wars around the world and at home, all of the school shootings, a lot of people are either vicariously traumatized or traumatized directly by this point. Trauma is very impactful on your day-to-day life. It impacts your ability to learn, to connect with others, to connect with yourself,” Williams said. “And I think that we're so focused on our students being top-tier academics that we are forgetting that they have emotions. They need to be guided, they need to be taught, they need to be nurtured. They need to be allowed to make mistakes and not be thrown away to the prison system because they made a couple of mistakes in their childhood.”

“It's so normalized to just kick a kid out of a learning space because they did something the teacher didn't like… When are we going to invite our children home to the learning space where they should be safe and able to grow? I feel like we've forgotten that they're a child. A child is a beginner for 18 years,” he said.

Williams, who is enrolled in GSE’s curriculum, instruction and the science of learning PhD program, also recently collaborated with LaGarrett King, GSE professor of learning and instruction, on a chapter in “The Future of Civic Education: Rebuilding a Democracy in Ruins.”

Their chapter, “Revealing is Healing: Toward the Development of a History Education Reconciliation Commission,” published September 2024, critiques the systemic erasure of Black histories and calls for a national effort to address this silence.

“We’re discussing the idea of a reconciliation committee. Basically, we don't really know a lot of Black history because it was erased, and it was verbal,” Williams said. “And so, we asked the question, ‘What if we come together and we figure out, as an academic body or just a kind of mixed group, what our history is?’ And we organize it and classify it—because we need an organized history in order to teach it.”

Williams emphasized the importance of creating connections through this process. “What we're doing is we're connecting our community back and re-plugging in each other, thread by thread,” he said.

“Defining our history and getting clearer about who did what, when, where, how—all the rich things in Black history—would help us really move forward in working through the trauma that comes with Black history and also sitting with the joy that comes with it,” Williams said.

Recently, Williams was featured in The New York Times in an article titled “America’s Hidden Racial Divide: A Mysterious Gap in Psychosis Rates.”

While he was initially hesitant about stepping into the spotlight, the experience proved to be validating while also serving as an outlet to bring national attention to his research on racial trauma and mental health.

The article was both an opportunity to foster a broader understanding of these issues and to share his own experiences. “I’m very aware that I’m close to six feet tall, and it can be somewhat intimidating to certain white people. I have to act a certain way and keep a certain demeanor about myself.”

Looking ahead, Williams remains focused on expanding his impact. With a new book chapter on celebratory inclusion and a new mental health certification in hand, he is poised to continue reshaping the narrative on education and equity.

“I really want people to know that, yes, bad things may have happened, and a bad day may come. Challenges with my own mental health have offered me an opportunity to overcome—from suicide to psychosis to all sorts of things. You can get through it, and we can do it together. We don't have to do it alone. And I think my research urges everyone to connect back to each other.”