"Our Time Is Now": Education for Humanization and the Fight for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Lives

• In Event: Addressing Social Trauma in and Through Education: Humanization, Critical Race Technology, and Critically Holistic Approaches

Abstract

Schools fall short of providing critical spaces where of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) can deconstruct intersecting social identities and make critical sense of historically oppressive relationships. This social toxicity in schools is reproduced through miseducation that contributes to institutionally imposed dehumanization of student self-hate, divide-and-conquer practices, and suboppression on BIPOC students and their communities. Self-hate happens when people question their self-worth, cultural identities, ways of knowing, language practices, and worldview. Divide and conquer takes place when people distrust others in social groups they should most identify, displacing their social discontent onto members of their own community and communities also vulnerable to these intersecting systems of oppression. According to Freire (1970/2000), suboppression occurs when oppressed com- munities act in the oppressor’s interests as a result of having, “internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines” (p. 46). This crisis in US schools is seen when Black students (a) do not see themselves reflected in the curriculum, (b) are taught to see themselves, one another, and their communities from an oppressive point of view, and (c) are offered conformity and assimilation as the supposedly most legitimate form of success for their learning outcomes.

This paper attempts to name this tension for educators and illustrate how an education for humanization helps remedy State in schools when students are provided spaces and opportunities for them to read, write, and speak in their own image, in their own voice, and in their own interests Only by recognizing the consequences of this state-sanctioned violence on the life of BIPOC communities can teachers create learning conditions for students to engage in an education for humanization. Humanization disrupts dehumanization by teaching students’ knowledge and love of self, solidarity, and self-determination. In this paper, I examine the impact of an education for humanization on students’ critical literacy and voice from the perspective of a teacher-researcher and educational activist in an urban classroom serving the needs of BIPOC. This paper offers a concrete example of praxis that positioned BIPOC students to examine state-sanctioned oppression and radically imagine the possibilities of socially transformative resistance in society and schools. This paper concludes with pedagogical implications for participating in the fight for BIPOC life as teachers and humanizing the learning experiences of BIPOC students as a result.

Author

• Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco
  Presenting Author