After the Locusts: Just Education Renewal for Black Communities After Racial-Capitalist Predation and State Dissolution

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores community-based and culturally sustainable responses to the racial-capitalist predation of predominately Black school districts in Michigan. With a particular focus on just education renewal for the families of Inkster, a predominately Black community whose school district was dissolved in its entirety with no community input, the presenters move beyond documenting the state’s anti-Black regime of terror in order to imagine and materialize an agenda of reparation. Approaching a restorative agenda through various pedagogical, financial, curricular, philosophical, and culturally rooted policy lenses, the presenters explore how educational scholars and activists might join together with terrorized communities to resurrect and reconstruct the educational birthright of Black children.

Sub Unit

• Division A - Administration / Division A - Section 4: School Contexts and Communities

Chair

• Thomas C. Pedroni, Wayne State University

Papers

• Rising From Ashes: Visions Toward the Rebirth of a School District - Paulette White, Wayne State University

• Reconstruction: 40 Acres and a School - Dana Hart, University of Detroit Mercy

• Pathways to Equity: Addressing Educational Injustices and Simplifying School Choice for Black Parents - Damiana LaShea Sorrell, Wayne State University

• Culturally Responsive School Leadership: A Remedy for Communities of Color - James A Hearn, Wayne State University

• Wake Up Everybody!: Operationalizing Love as an Innovative and Accessible Solution - Antwuan Williams, Wayne State University

• CTE: The Repair, the Remedy and the Revitalization of a District - Donald Walker, Wayne State University

Discussant

• Thomas C. Pedroni, Wayne State University