Apocalyptic (Educational) Possibilities: A Black Youths' Guide on How to Dismantle Education and Destroy the World

• In Event: 28.090 - MTCC Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: 28.090-2 - Black and Latinx Youth Identities in Action: Activism, Affirmation, and Exclusion Within Community-Based Spaces

Abstract

Overview: For centuries, there has been an incessant and polarizing dialectic regarding how to approach and address Black education (Anderson, 1988; Bell, 2006; Biondi, 2012; Edmonds, 2014; Fultz, 2014; Goluboff, 2010; Hale, 2016; Joseph, 2006; Marable, 2007; Murch, 2010; Newton, 2010; Perlstein, 2005; Rickford, 2016; Sanders, 2016; Williams; 2005).The voices and perspectives of Black (youth) organizers have been suppressed or outright ignored in the sociopolitical milieus of these discourses. There is a growing body of literature that intentionally centers the experiences, realities, and voices of Black youth particularly in community-based contexts (Baldridge, 2016; Ginwright; 2010; Ginwright; Noguera & Cammarota, 2006; Stovall; 2005), but there is less said about radical Black youth organizers and their insights and actions around what they perceive as educational “justice”. The data which stems from a larger qualitative study on education in the contexts of a contemporary community-based Black Liberation Organization (BLO) (referred to as Assata’s Children) unveils how Black youth organizers and their adult allies make sense of and address educational issues affecting Black youth in their local contexts and Movement for Black Lives.

Theoretical/Conceptual Frameworks: The frameworks that guide this study are mainly influenced by an Afropessimist conception of antiblackness. Therefore, it is accepted that conventional American schools (public, private, charter, etc.) are inherently antiblack and can never be healthy learning spaces for Black youth in the current structure of the world (Dumas; 2014; Dumas and ross, 2016; Hartman; 1997; Sharpe; Sojoyner; 2016; 2016 Sexton, 2008; Wilderson; 2010; Wun, 2016). The insights of Black youth that are at the center of this study allow us to grapple with Sharpe’s (2016) conception of “wake work”. If the world and thereby schools are inherently antiblack, what does it mean to work in the context of a space and place (schools) that are designed to destroy Black youth and families? This project grapples with how to live and educated in a world that necessitates Black death. Ultimately, the above theories of Blackness push us to reckon with the fact that there is no solution to antiblackness outside of destroying the world.

Methods: This qualitative study utilizes ethnographic research methods which included: 20 semi-structured interviews; collection of field notes; journaling; participant-observation/observation, direct-actions, political-education, etc., at Assata’s Children; document collection and analysis; analysis of archived records and physical artifacts such as protest signs.

Findings/Implications: When analyzing their “racist,” “queerphobic” or “classist” (antiblack) experiences in schools the youth organizers persistently mentioned: a lack of resources that is inherent to their schooling experience; hyper-discipline of themselves and peers; epistemological violence via curriculum and pedagogy; and how (anti)Blackness ruptures the possibility of education. In terms of addressing antiblackness, Black youth organizers employed: escapism such as skipping or listening to music; pushback through correcting teachers, organizing, or standing up for a classmate; and engaging in Black Radical (educational) Imaginations which includes hiring more Black teachers and even the total abolishment of schools.

Author

• Michael A. Davis, University of Wisconsin - Madison