Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools

 "Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools," is a video put on by Haymarket Books discussing abolitionist teaching and antiracist education. Hosted by Brian Jones, the conversation asks questions to three educators, Bettina Love, Gholdy Muhammad and Dena Simmons. These three women discuss how they are working to help create more abolitionist teachers and antiracist education systems. 

A major topic of this conversation is white supremacy and white privilege and how this shows up in schools. Some of the ways that were discussed were tone policing, curriculum and state standards, hiring protocols and a lack of hiring black educators. Throughout this conversation, many specific examples were brought up about how white supremacy shows up in schools, but one that really stuck out to me was from Bettina Love. She talks about an award in Georgia called "beat the odds." This award is given to schools based on class, low income and race. It awards the school for having minority students and "beating the odds" by having their students succeed in the classroom. She goes on to say, "you have all these things that you know are barriers and instead of removing the barriers, you'd rather measure me against the barriers." This really stuck out to me because it made me think about how there are probably schools that are excited and honored to earn this award, but they are not thinking about how it is affecting the mindset of its minority students. It is eye opening to realize that white supremacy is very prevalent in schools, and in ways that I had never thought of before. 

The discussion about schools made me think about last week's video, "I Am Not Your Negro," and how schools were discussed. While the segregation that was occurring prior to 1954 has ended, in "Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools," there were some discussions about how students have been segregated due to their background, such as their race and where they grew up. At the beginning of the video, Bettina Love talked about how she was forced to take classes and follow a track that she did not want to follow when she first went to college. When she tried to defer from this track, she was turned away because of the neighborhood she grew up in. In a way, this is a form of segregation. She was forced to take courses that she was not interested in and did not want to take because she lived and went to an inner cit school. How was it okay for the school to make these choices for her and force her to be apart of a program just because of where she grew up? This story was shocking to me because I realized that while segregation of schools, as we usually learn about, is over, there is still segregation happening under the radar. 

During their conversation, Gholdy Muhammad brings up that many white people will ask "what can I do with my white privilege?" While this seems like they are trying to find a way to help people who are experiencing oppression, Dena Simmons helps us realize that they are actually doing the opposite by asking this. "The question in and of itself is offensive because it means that you want to keep your white privilege. There's a power that you don't want to give up by asking that question." In many instances, when people realize the oppression that minorities are going through, they want to help. They want to find a way to do what they can to ensure that all people are viewed as human and receive the same rights. By asking how they can use their white privilege, they are still trying to hold power over the minorities. Whether they realize or not, they are saying that they have this power and they want to use it in a way that is beneficial for everyone, but in reality, it is detrimental to them. Equality for all cannot be reached if white privilege still exists. 

Towards the end of the conversation, Brian Jones asked for resources and ways for all of us to learn more about being abolitionists and supporters of antiracist teaching and put these learnings into motion in our schools. One of the resources that stuck out to me was the Black Lives Matter at School movement. There are four main goals for this movement in order to better our schools for the black community. One: counselors, not cops, Two: hire black teachers, Three: teach black history, and Four: end zero tolerance discipline policies. Each of these goals helps to make school a more safe and inclusive environment for students of color to feel like they belong. To watch videos, read articles and find ways to get involved in the movement, the website is linked here.