We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

by Bettina L. Love

These school attacks are more than just racist acts by misguided school officials, youth, and community members; put into a historical context, these attacks “draw, secure, police, and legitimize the parameters of Whiteness and non-Whiteness.”54 These school attacks also spirit-murder dark children. Legal scholar Patricia Williams argued that racism is more than just physical pain; racism robs dark people of their humanity and dignity and leaves personal, psychological, and spiritual injuries.55 Racism literally murders your spirit. Racism is traumatic because it is a loss of protection, safety, nurturance, and acceptance—all things children need to be educated.56 The White rage in our schools murders dark students’ spirits. Physical survival is not enough. Spirit-murder is not only about race and racism; dark people’s other identity categories, such as gender, citizenship, religion, language, class, ethnicity, nationality, and queerness, are additional, distinct factors driving discrimination, bigotry, and violence.57 This state of affairs underlines the importance of intersectionality: “Ordinary people can draw upon intersectionality as an analytic tool when they recognize that they need better frameworks to grapple with complex discrimination that they face.”58 We must use all the analytic tools available to understand how our children are spirit-murdered and educated in a state of perpetual survival mode for the benefit of the educational survival complex.