The Anti-Progress: Education in a Settler Society

• In Event: Words We Never Said

Abstract

Education holds a beloved place in the imaginary of uplift: individual uplift, racial uplift, national uplift. In this paper, I show how uplift and progress have been crucial settler narratives for backwards justifying the seizure, containment, and damage done to Black Indigenous, and migrant children. As others have argued (Baldwin, 1963; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2015; Perry, 2012), the use of lofty, sweeping narratives or morality and mission are crucial to sustain a society marked stratification and harm. Using primary sources of educational policy, teacher recruitment materials, journalism on education and teacher education curriculum, I provide examples of the narrative of educational uplift and contrast these narratives with the material realities of whiteness as property (Harris, 1992). I also provide examples of the narratives of education used by the liberatory organizations of the Black Panther Party and The Young Lords to juxtapose narratives with liberation practices. I close with questions for what narratives education might tell about itself to better contend with its potential for liberation.

Author

• Leigh Patel, University of California - Riverside