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

by Bettina L. Love

This is why homeplace is needed, because it is a place that honors the emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial struggle of living under what hooks calls “the brutal reality of racial apartheid” in the US and finding one’s humanity within the struggle against it.

For dark folx, thriving cannot happen without a community that is deeply invested in racial uplift, human and workers’ rights, affordable housing, food and environmental justice, land rights, free or affordable healthcare, healing, joy, cooperative economic strategies, and high political participation that is free of heteropatriarchy, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, sexism, ageism, and the politics of respectability. These structural ideologies police who is worthy of dignity within our communities.

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, author Barbara Ransby

Baker approached all her work through participatory democracy, which rejected top-down, hierarchal, male-centered leadership. Participatory democracy uplifts voices that have been deliberately placed in the margins and seeks to organize, strategize, and mobilize through consensus building.

We cannot pursue educational freedom or any type of justice without a model of democracy that empowers all. We all thrive when everyday people resist, when everyday people find their voice, when everyday people demand schools that are students’ homeplaces, and when everyday people understand that loving darkness is our path to humanity.

Taking the lead from Baker, abolitionist teaching is built on the cultural wealth of students’ communities and creating classrooms in parallel with those communities aimed at facilitating interactions where people matter to each other, fight together in the pursuit of creating a homeplace that represents their hopes and dreams, and resist oppression all while building a new future.

They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances. –MICHELLE OBAMA, Becoming

Character education has been around since the development of education in America; the founding fathers of public education (Horace Mann, William McGuffey, and Benjamin Franklin) wanted to teach morality in schools.

At face value, character education seems harmless, and I am sure we can all agree that children need good qualities to be successful in life, regardless of how you define success, but character education is anti-Black and it has replaced civics education in our schools. Students no longer learn how to be informed and active citizens, which is key to democracy; instead, they learn now how to comply and recite affirmations about their grit.

A robust civics education should include discussions focused on current events, opportunities for students to participate in school governance, media literacy, and classroom instruction on government, history, law, economics, and geography.

We are now living with the repercussions of our citizens having low media literacy (everything is “fake news”) and not being able to solve problems that impact us all collectively (e.g., climate change, living wages, and food scarcity). Civics education scholar Meira Levinson calls our current and intentional lack of educating our youth with the skills and the knowledge to be a part of democracy, the “civic empowerment gap.”6 There is a civic empowerment gap because the rich have all the political influence and civics education is no longer a space that teaches youth how to petition, protest, speak in public, solve social issues with groups of people from diverse backgrounds, and commit to acts of civil disobedience.

The Character Lab, a nonprofit organization cofounded in 2016 by psychologist Angela Duckworth, who popularized the term “grit”; Dave Levin, the cofounder of KIPP public charter schools; and Dominic Randolph, head of Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, define social and emotional intelligence as the ability “to understand your own and others’ feelings and emotions and then to use this understanding to inform your decisions and actions.”8 They go on to add that people with high social and emotional intelligence find solutions when they are in conflict with someone, can quickly adapt to social situations, can show respect for others’ feelings, and are less likely to engage in violence.

I take issue with this line of research focused on dark children’s behavior by way of examining their character “strengths” and “weaknesses” because we live in a racist, sexist, Islamophobic, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic world where grit is not enough to fight these systems. Yes, it is needed, but to insist that dark children need, do not have, and can function on those characteristics alone is misleading, naïve, and dangerous.

Specifically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, research has shown that children who experience high levels of toxic stress display impaired social and emotional understanding, along with learning disabilities and potential early death.13 Researchers believe that, because toxic stress creates neurobiological transformation in children, it should be seen and treated as a national health crisis.

They need culturally relevant therapy that teaches age-appropriate stress-reduction practices and they need mentors who understand what being a critical mentor means (see

If education is going to deal with trauma, we must recognize the trauma of our teachers. Educators need trauma sensitive training and free or affordable therapy for themselves. Schools of educational psychology should create degrees that help school counselors understand the human development needed to be a teacher. Teachers need to be taught how to question Whiteness and White supremacy, how to check and deal with their White emotions of guilt and anger, and how these all impact their classrooms. Only after unpacking and interrogating Whiteness, White teachers—and, really, all teachers—must unpack how Whiteness functions in their lives; then they can stand in solidarity with their students’ communities for social change. Teachers must demand the end of high-stakes testing and the yelling of slogans at dark children, such as “knowledge is power,” “work hard,” “be nice,” and “no excuses” because all you need is grit. And, lastly, teachers need to mobilize to fight systemic inequities and the educational survival complex.

scientists now know that trauma is passed down. For some of us, trauma is in our DNA. The scientific phenomenon is known as “epigenetic inheritance.”

Guo argues that the success of Asian Americans is not solely due to educational achievements but also to the fact that White Americans stopped being so explicitly racist toward them because they believed the model-minority trope.19 America bought into the character scorecard of Asian Americans years ago. In 1974, writer Frank Chin said, regarding the model-minority image, “Whites love us because we’re not Black.”20 It is important to note that Asian Americans who do not fit within the model-minority stereotype are discriminated against and face racism daily. The character scoring never stops, and it is also an element of anti-Blackness.

In the world of grit, the ideas of love, kindness, thoughtfulness, courage, honesty, integrity, and justice are rarely discussed, nor is the idea of epigenetic inheritance. In her book Grit, Angela Duckworth reconciles the points that someone can be a “gritty villain” and that “altruistic purpose is not an absolute requirement of grit.”22 Therefore, she concludes that interest, purpose, and hope are needed for gritty people to do good in the world. She argues that grit depends largely on hope: Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.23 This statement does not reflect and is out of touch with the real world and what it means to be dark, poor, and surviving.

Redirecting power and resources is a primary focus of abolitionist teaching and the goal of educators and individuals concerned about educational justice, rather than measuring grit or appraising dark children’s characters in toxic environments or while they’re living with the stress of being young and dark. Our focus must shift instead to protecting our students’ potential.

My protectors were not just people who volunteered once a year with children from low-income neighborhoods or donated canned goods to the local food bank for a community service project; they were committed to building a relationship with me, my family, and my community in ways that were authentic and honored my knowledge of growing up Black and a woman in America. They respected my family; they also respected my community and saw the value in both. Even though my home and community were broken, they saw me beyond my trauma. They asked about my mother and father and knew how much I needed them to do well so that I could do well. They lived in my community or understood me, so I did not have to explain my community’s shortcomings as a young adult. I remember Coach Nally, who is White, explaining how he had grown up in Rochester and how the city had changed over the years and how racism impacted the city. He never ran from hard conversations about racism, and he always discussed and confronted the imbalance of power and privilege within our relationship.

These individuals were not only benevolent, but they also recognized the intersections of our relationships. These men knew they had to protect me. Fat-Daddy would tell all the boys that if they messed with me or picked on me, they would have to deal with him. White folx in my life used their position, power, and privilege to negotiate space and opportunities for me. My senior year of high school, I needed to raise my GPA and retake a shop class that I had failed as a freshman. Mrs. Knight made a few calls and enrolled me in night classes and an additional English class.

I share these details of my life not to echo a cheesy movie like The Blind Side with a White savior, because there are no saviors. There is only a village, a community, and a goal: protecting children’s potential. My homeplace. This work is hard, frustrating, and sometimes seemingly depressing. One person cannot do all the heavy lifting. I needed critical mentors, math tutors, SAT tutors, coaches, bodyguards, rides home, a job, financial literacy, college prep, therapy, and folx to make calls, schedule meetings, run interference, and leverage their power and privilege on my behalf. These folx knew I was a good kid in a mad city. I was not just a kid who could play basketball; my multiple identities made me vulnerable and I needed to be protected, mentored, and employed.

Atlanta is known as a “City Too Busy to Hate” and the “Black mecca.” However, 80 percent of Atlanta’s Black children, 43 percent of Latinx children, and 29 percent of Asian children live in communities with a high concentration of poverty.

When communities sink into despair, girls and women are the most vulnerable. Because of sexism, misogyny, violence, and patriarchy, all women are vulnerable; however, dark girls are the most vulnerable, especially Black and Latinx girls, because they are criminalized both in the schools and in the streets.

schools are pushing Black girls out of school into communities that are more equipped to harm them than to protect, nourish, and feed their gifts and potential. Atlanta’s major sex trafficking industry preys on girls from toxic homes with high levels of poverty and brings in $290 million a year, more than illegal drug and gun trade combined.32 Dark communities are ill-equipped to protect girls of color.

There is no amount of grit that can fight off the intersections of living in poverty, being pushed out of school, facing a world full of patriarchy and racism, and suffering toxic stress. It is not that dark children do not have grit and zest, but they need educators and their communities to protect it, not measure it.

Children of color attending schools that do not help them interpret the racist, sexist, Islamophobic, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic world in which they live is not only maintaining the status quo but also ensuring that Whiteness, patriarchy, and hate are never disrupted and challenged. Thus, White supremacy stays on track.

Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. . . . To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible—and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people—must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen. —JAMES BALDWIN1

Abolitionist teaching is as much about tearing down old structures and ways of thinking as it is about forming new ideas, new forms of social interactions, new ways to be inclusive, new ways to discuss inequality and distribute wealth and resources, new ways to resist, new ways to agitate, new ways to maintain order and safety that abolishes prisons, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and mass incarceration, new ways to reach children trying to recover from the educational survival complex, new ways to show dark children they are loved in this world, and new ways to establish an educational system that works for everyone, especially those who are put at the edges of the classroom and society. Abolitionist teaching is teachers taking back their schools, classroom by classroom, student by student, parent by parent, and school community by school community. The work is hard and filled with struggle and setbacks, which is why Ella Baker’s model of grassroots organizing rooted in creativity, imagination, healing, ingenuity, joy, and freedom dreaming is vital to the undoing of the educational survival complex and to all justice work. Abolitionist teaching is not a teaching approach: It is a way of life, a way of seeing the world, and a way of taking action against injustice.

Currently we are tweaking the system, knowing that these adjustments are what we need for the here and now, but we are always keeping our eyes on the root causes of dark children’s suffering.

Ella Baker once said that the “reduction of injustice is not the same as freedom.”2 The ultimate goal of abolitionist teaching is freedom. Freedom to create your reality, where uplifting humanity is at the center of all decisions. And, yes, concessions will be made along the way, battles will be lost, and sometimes teachers, parents, and community members will feel like they are not doing enough, but the fight is fought with the indomitable spirit of an abolitionist who engages in taking small and sometimes big risks in the fight for equal rights, liberties, and citizenship for dark children, their families, and their communities—this is fighting for freedom.

Some teachers will create a homeplace for their students while teaching them with the highest expectations;

This is what i try to do every day!

some will do a combination of all of these.

My goal!

Abolitionist teaching is welcoming struggles, setbacks, and disagreements, because one understands the complexity of uprooting injustice but finds beauty in the struggle. Abolitionist teachers fight for children they will never meet or see, because they are visionaries. They fight for a world that has yet to be created and for children’s dreams that have yet to be crushed by anti-Blackness.

Folx who fight for prison abolition, such as Angela Y. Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, understand that they are trying to tear down the prison-industrial complex while simultaneously building up radically revolutionary and sustainably empowering new systems of justice.