Education Week - June 17, 2020 - 24

OPINION

INSIDE

I Need More From Schools Than Lip
Service About Racism

School Closures Always Hurt.
They Hurt Even More Now

For Teachers Who Understand
Racism Is Real

Reform is not enough. Oppression must be uprooted

his essay is not to enumerate the recent
murders of Black people by police, justify
why protest and uprising are important
for social change, or remind us why NFL
player Colin Kaepernick took a knee. If you
have missed those points, blamed victims,
or proclaimed "All Lives Matter," this
article is not for you, and you may want to ask yourself whether
you should be teaching any children, especially Black children.
This article is for teachers who understand that racism is real,
anti-Blackness is real, and state-sanctioned violence, which
allows police to kill Black people with impunity, is real. It is for
teachers who know change is necessary and want to understand
exactly what kind of change we need as a country.
Politicians who know the words "justice" and "equity" only
when they want peace in the streets are going to try to persuade
us that they are capable of reforming centuries of oppression by
changing policies, adding more accountability measures, and
removing the "bad apples"
from among police.
By Bettina L. Love
These actions will sound
LOVE is a professor of
comprehensive and, with
educational theory and
time, a solution to injustice.
practice at the University
These reforms may even
of Georgia. She is writing a
reduce police killings or
series of essays about race in
school suspensions of Black
America for Education Week. students, but as civil rights
activist Ella Baker said, a
"reduction of injustice is not the same as freedom." Reformists
want incremental change, but Black lives are being lost with
every day we wait. And to be Black is to live in a constant state of
exhaustion.
Centuries of Black resistance and protest have had a profound
impact on the nation. As Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of
"The 1619 Project," points out, "We have helped the country
to live up to its founding ideals. ... Without the idealistic,
strenuous, and patriotic efforts of Black Americans, our
democracy today would most likely look very different-it might
not be a democracy at all." Those civil rights achievements were
critical, including the reformist ones.
But reform is no longer enough. Too often, reform is rooted
in Whiteness because it appeases White liberals who need
to see change but want to maintain their status, power, and
supremacy.
Abolition of oppression is needed because reform still did not
stop a police officer from putting his knee on George Floyd's neck
in broad daylight for 8 minutes and 46 seconds; it did not stop
police from killing Breonna Taylor in her own home. Also that:
Largely non-White school districts get $23 billion less in state and
local funding than predominantly White ones; Black people make
up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 26 percent of
the deaths from COVID-19; and with only 5 percent of the world's
population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world's
prison population. We need to be honest: We cannot reform
something this monstrous; we have to abolish it.
Abolitionists want to eliminate what is oppressive, not reform it,
not reimagine it, but remove oppression by its roots. Abolitionists
want to understand the conditions that normalize oppression and
uproot those conditions, too. Abolitionists, in the words of scholar
and activist Bill Ayers, "demand the impossible" and work to
build a world rooted in the possibilities of justice. Abolitionists are
not anarchists because, as we eliminate these systems, we want
to build conditions that create institutions that are just, loving,
equitable, and center Black lives.

DigitalVisionVectors

Abolitionism is not a social-justice trend. It is a way of life
defined by commitment to working toward a humanity where
no one is disposable, prisons no longer exist, being Black is not
a crime, teachers have high expectations for Black and Brown
children, and joy is seen as a foundation of learning.
Abolitionists strive for that reality by fighting for a divestment
of law enforcement to redistribute funds to education, housing,
jobs, and health care; elimination of high-stakes testing;
replacement of watered-down and Eurocentric materials
from educational publishers like Pearson, McGraw Hill,
and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with community-created
standards and curriculum; the end of police presence in schools;
employment of Black teachers en masse; hiring of therapists
and counselors who believe Black lives matter in schools;
destruction of inner-city schools that resemble prisons; and
elimination of suspension in favor of restorative justice.
Abolitionist work is hard and demands an indomitable
spirit of resistance. As a nation, we saw this spirit in Harriet
Tubman and Frederick Douglass. We also see it in 21st-century
abolitionists like Angela Davis, Charlene Carruthers, Erica
Meiners, Derecka Purnell, David Stovall, and Farima PourKhorshid.
For non-Black people, abolitionism requires giving up the idea
of being an "ally" to become a "co-conspirator." Many socialjustice groups have shifted the language to "co-conspirator"
because allies work toward something that is mutually
beneficial and supportive to all parties. Co-conspirators, in
contrast, understand how Whiteness and privilege work in
our society and leverage their power, privilege, and resources
in solidarity with justice movements to dismantle White
supremacy. Co-conspirators function as verbs, not as nouns.
The journey for abolitionists and our co-conspirators
is arduous, but we fight for a future that will never need
to be reformed again because it was built as just from the
beginning. n

24 | EDUCATION WEEK | June 17, 2020 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion

Abolitionist Resources
From Bettina L. Love
Organizations
*Free Minds, Free People
*Critical Resistance
*Black Youth Project 100
*Quetzal Education Consulting
Reading

*"Reading Towards Abolition: A

Reading List on Policing, Rebellion,
and the Criminalization of
Blackness" from The Abusable Past

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Education Week - June 17, 2020

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