Education Policies, Market-Based Discourses, and the Black Radical Imagination: Why Envisioning Matters for Race, Place, and Justice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The Black radical imagination has taken shape amid dominant discourses and policies rooted in white supremacy. Part of our role as scholar-activists committed to dismantling racial injustice is to critically assess the limitations/possibilities of competing visions. The purpose of this symposium is to highlight how and why envisioning matters for racial justice. Heeding Tyrone Howard’s caveat on the dangers of illusory, uncritical, and ahistorical imagination, papers assess the stakes and possibilities of visions articulated in specific places, including Memphis, New Orleans, and a subset of urban school districts. A defining aspect of the race-space nexus is the privatization of public assets in urban communities of color, often imagined as deficient. In this session, we challenge this vision through liberating epistemologies.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 4: Policies, Mattering, and Praxis

Chair

• Kristen L. Buras, Urban South Grassroots Research Collective

Participants

• Rachel E. Williams, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• DeMarcus A Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

• Kristen L. Buras, Urban South Grassroots Research Collective

Papers

• Reimagining a Southern City: Peeling Back and Pushing Beyond Layers of History in the Memphis Education Market - Rachel E. Williams, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Neoliberal Discourses, Anti-Blackness, and School Police Abolition: Visions of Race, Safety, and Belonging Across Urban School Districts - DeMarcus A Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

• A Legacy That Can’t Be Chartered: What We Stand to Lose in Closing Historic Schools - Kristen L. Buras, Urban South Grassroots Research Collective