Black Lives Matter at School and the Ongoing Pursuit of Educational Justice for Black Lives

• In Event: Activists, Advocates, and Agitators: Teacher Unions and Grassroots Organizations as Remedies and Repair

Abstract

Although framed as the Great Equalizer (Johnson, 2006), the American institution of schooling has also served as a tool for American colonization (Spring, 2016) and the site of anti-Black violence (Boutte & Bryan, 2019). Recognizing how schooling is used to enforce deculturalization, this chapter exposes historical and contemporary examples of various types of anti-Black violence. Given the history of separate and unequal education and the current legislative attacks banning teaching about race and racism, we must acknowledge the relationship between schooling and oppression if we are to understand how the Black Lives Matter at School (BLMAS) movement was born.
Often missing from the history of education, is how the practice of deculturalization is tethered to the institution of schooling. As the birth of a nation was fueled by white supremacy, schools sought to replace the culture and language of those deemed inferior with one believed to be superior, and schools were the primary delivery system. When combined with multiple forms of anti-Black violence, it becomes clear that through deculturalization schooling was used as a tool to erase Black humanity.
Givens (2021) uses the concept of fugitivity and fugitive pedagogy to retell the narrative of the history of Black education. Through the lens of fugitive educational practices we make sense of the various strategies Black American educators and activists used to resist deculturalization and center educational practices that affirmed and humanized Black lives. By creating what Givens coined “new scripts of knowledge” (2021, p. 126), fugitive pedagogy served as a form of race vindication to counter the curricular and pedagogical violence inflicted by an institution of schooling that degraded Black people in history and in the present. Utilizing three themes of race vindication evidenced in Black history textbooks authored by pioneers of Black fugitive pedagogy, this chapter analyzes the 13 guiding principles (13GPs) of the Black Lives Matter at School (BLMAS) movement as a model of contemporary Black fugitive pedagogy.
As the global rallying cry #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) spread in response to an increase of Black death at the hands of police and white vigilantes, BLMAS was created by educators who embraced their anti-racist identity and pedagogical responsibility to be in solidarity with #BLM. Now a national movement, BLMAS provides curriculum resources and support to local groups of educators who seek to disrupt the anti-Black violence perpetuated by the institution of schooling. Originally crafted by the Global Black Lives Matter movement, the 13GPs serve as the foundation for both the BLMAS Week of Action and Year of Purpose. As new scripts of knowledge, the 13GPS are analyzed in relation to Givens’ race vindication narratives.
As a contemporary movement furthering the ongoing demands for racial justice in education, BLMAS emerges as contemporary Black fugitive pedagogy that provides contemporary Black cultural knowledge to reclaim Black humanity, teach Black ways of being and knowing, and center Black joy. Thus, BLMAS is offered as a new tool to resist schooling colonization and continue the pursuit of educational justice.

Author

• Denisha Jones, Defending the Early Years