Understanding Restorative Justice and the Reproduction of Antiblackness in Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Black Teachers and Students Historicity, Wake Work and the Struggle Against Erasure

Abstract

Scholars in education have investigated the implementation of restorative justice in schools to determine whether restorative justice programming reduces the overrepresentation of Black students in suspension and expulsion rates (Kline, 2016). Although this programming can reduce a school’s overall use of exclusionary discipline (Samimi et al., 2023), the literature reveals a concerning issue: restorative justice does not consistently remedy the overrepresentation of Black students in exclusionary discipline rates (Davison et al., 2020; Fallo & Larwin, 2024; Hashim et al., 2018). Scholars typically attribute this issue to educators’ implementational errors; however, this paper employs Savannah Shange’s (2019) concept of carceral progressivism to assert that restorative justice theory perpetuates antiblack violence despite its appearance as a humane alternative to punitive discipline.

Author

• Kai Butterfield, University of Toronto - OISE