Abolitionist teaching asks educators to acknowledge and accept America and its policies as anti-Black, racist, discriminatory, and unjust and to be in solidarity with dark folx and poor folx fighting for their humanity and fighting to move beyond surviving. To learn the sociopolitical landscape of their students’ communities through a historical, intersectional justice lens. To abandon teaching gimmicks like “grit” that present the experiences of dark youth as ahistorical and further pathologize them and evoke collective freedom dreaming.
