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

by Bettina L. Love

African writer and Afrofuturist Lindokuhle Nkosi proclaims that “imagining yourself in the future is not revolutionary, it’s survival.”14 I would add that creating from your imagination is not revolutionary or survival; it is moving toward thriving.

The educational survival complex has become so rationalized and normalized that we are forced to believe, against our common sense, that inadequate school funding is normal, that there is nothing that can be done about school shootings, that racist teachers in the classrooms are better than no teachers in the classrooms.

So true

We have come to believe that police officers in our schools physically assaulting students is standard practice, and that the only way to measure a child’s knowledge is through prepackaged high-stakes state tests, the results of which undermine teachers’ autotomy, de-professionalize the teaching field, and leave dark children in the crosshairs of projected inferiority.

Ugh PREACH

After all the billions spent in test materials and meaningful teaching hours lost to test prep, dark children are held accountable for the failures of the public school system.

The great education philosopher and educator Maxine Greene once said, “To commit to imagining is to commit to looking beyond the given, beyond what appears to be unchangeable.

where students are encouraged to give this world hell.

While I understand the idea and heart behind this phrase, I'm not so sure "give the world hell" is the right sentiment we should be teaching our children in attempt to offset racism.

We cannot create a new educational system for all with a lack of understanding of what cripples our current system.

Tyson was not an ally; he was a coconspirator who understood how Whiteness works in our society. He was willing to use his intersections of privilege, leverage his power, and support Newsome to stand in solidarity and confront anti-Blackness. A coconspirator functions as a verb, not a noun.

Whitney Dow, creator of the Whiteness Project, captured the work best when he said, “Until you can recognize that you are living a racialized life and you’re having racialized experiences every moment of every day, you can’t actually engage people of other races around the idea of justice.”

any pedagogy that does not challenge injustice is useless because survival is not the goal.

Students knowing so little about dark people is not an accident; racism erases dark bodies from historical records of importance and distorts their everyday reality.

Without examining culture, educators will turn to stereotypes instead of rich examples that explain dark life and provide context to their lived realities.

I have experienced teachers blaming students—blaming eight-year-olds for falling behind—and not the educational survival complex. If we do not know who or what is responsible, then how do we abolish it—how and where do we fight?

Theory consistently explains patterns of injustice when sound bites, flamboyant yet hollow teaching practices, and myths about dark people block ideas of humanity, justice, and dignity. Theory is a “location for healing,” like the North Star.

theory helps us understand that our job is not to move mountains but to outmaneuver them.

settler colonialism “is a structure, not an event,” meaning that settler colonialism is a theory that helps to frame how destroying, then taking, Indigenous land is a ceaseless, ongoing project.8

Cultural genocide through education is also another tactic for land invasion.

Dysconscious racism is practiced by teachers who want to celebrate diversity with holidays, food, and cultural artifacts but never challenge their assumptions about dark people and how Whiteness is reproduced for their advantage.

know from experience, from years of fighting, that school officials often feel the need to control Black bodies (students, staff, and parents) and schools can never be well under those circumstances.