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

by Bettina L. Love

Between 2014 and 2015, six counties in the state of California spent $37.5 million to jail people whose cases were dismissed or never filed.

these spaces were abolitionist spaces in that they protected my humanity, my dignity, and not only told me I was powerful but taught me how to be powerful. These abolitionist spaces loved Blackness and understood that, to be dark, you must give this world hell to survive.

each tripled funding for character education during their administrations.2 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.

Our students are now taught with the world crumbling around them to pay their taxes, vote, volunteer, and have good character, which is code for comply, comply, comply.

nothing can ever measure how dark people fight injustice, find ways to love, and build community, which makes simply being a dark person a civics project.

On the night of his death, Trayvon’s grit was tested and measured, not in a lab but by White rage—and not many pass this test. The character education he received by virtue of being a Black boy in America informed him that he would need to fight to stay alive. This is the character education and grit that researchers cannot measure in a lab and do not understand.

So, the state acknowledges that there are barriers that hinder students’ educational growth, but instead of eliminating English-only testing or funding education fully, it tests dark children specifically against odds they and their families did not create, knowing they cannot win.

Dark students being gritty, full of excitement and energy, reciting self-improvement statements, and displaying social and emotional intelligence does not stop them from being killed in the streets or spirit-murdered in the classroom; these are their odds.

Measuring students’ grit and zest, and reminding them that there are “no excuses,” sounds like an easy fix for oppression, but telling dark children that they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve on their own merit is not a new approach; it is short-sighted and, in actuality, racist thinking.

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.

I am now thriving because my grit and zest were protected, nurtured, and cherished not only by teachers and coaches but also by my community. The grit and zest that I was born with, that my ancestors passed down to me, and that Black culture embodies were never taken away from me as a child, or depleted to a point where I did not want to fight this world any longer.

there are no saviors. There is only a village, a community, and a goal: protecting children’s potential.

My story is the kind that makes people feel good, the story people use to claim that the system works. But beyond such sadly rare so-called feel-good stories, we need to focus on the little dark girls and boys whom no one protects because they cannot put a ball through a hoop, lay someone out on the football field, or become a successful rapper or singer.

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.

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 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.

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery unless as a punishment for a crime. This deliberate, racist loophole forced free Black folx to become slaves all over again, as they were imprisoned for petty crimes such as vagrancy or were falsely arrested.

In 2016, over half a million people were in jail because they could not afford bail.3 In the same year, eight hundred people died awaiting trial or serving short stints in jail for minor offenses.

History tells them, and us, that if we just change, adjust, or even eradicate one piece of the oppressive hydra, such as the prison-industrial complex or educational survival complex, another piece will grow in its place.

It is one of the fallacies of justice to know that the achievement gap is due to race and class and yet never proclaim racism and White rage as the source of the achievement gap.

This is why deep study and personal reflection on the history of the US is so important to abolitionist teaching. When an educator deeply understands why meaningful, long-term, and sustainable change is so hard to achieve in education because of all the forces antithetical to justice, love, and equity—such as racism, sexism, housing discrimination, state-sanctioned violence toward dark people, police brutality, segregation, hate-filled immigration policies, Islamophobia, school closings, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the prison-industrial complex—that is when freedom dreaming begins.

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

Freedom dreaming is imagining worlds that are just, representing people’s full humanity, centering people left on the edges, thriving in solidarity with folx from different identities who have struggled together for justice, and knowing that dreams are just around the corner with the might of people power.

Students in the Mexican American studies classes recited the poem “In Lak’ech: You Are My Other Me,” by playwright Luis Valdez, the father of Chicano theater. The poem is based on the philosophical teachings of the ancient Mayans concerning empathy and integrity: Si te amo y respeto, If I love and respect you, Me amo y respeto yo. I love and respect myself. This poem is an example of using students’ culture to show them how they matter to themselves, their community, and the world.

the language is shifting from needing allies to coconspirators. Ally-ship is working toward something that is mutually beneficial and supportive to all parties involved. Allies do not have to love dark people, question their privilege, decenter their voice, build meaningful relationships with folx working in the struggle, take risks, or be in solidarity with others. They just have to show up and mark the box present; thus, ally-ship is performative or self-glorifying.

The backbone of abolitionist teaching is solidarity with courageous coconspirators.

Molly Tansey, coauthor of Teaching While White and a former student of mine, says that early on in her teaching career she was “driven by the self-satisfaction” of making it visible to her peers that she was not racist.45 But the real work for Molly began when she started having conversations acknowledging her White privilege with other White people; when she began to name Whiteness and its privileges with her White friends, family members, and colleagues. This is the work of challenging Whiteness in your community so you can challenge it at school. The work is not a onetime conversation; it is who you must become in and outside the classroom.

Finding joy in the midst of pain and trauma is the fight to be fully human.

Black joy is to embrace your full humanity, as the world tells you that you are disposable and that you do not matter.

Black joy is understanding and recognizing that as a dark person you come with grit and zest because you come from survivors who pushed their bodies and minds to the limits for you to one day thrive.

Schools must support the fullness of dark life as a way to justice. Abolitionist teaching is searching for spaces of understanding and affirming.

Teachers who understand Black joy enter the classroom knowing that dark students knowing their history, falling in love with their history, and finding their voice are more important than grades. Good grades do not equal joy. Black joy is knowing that you are more than your trauma while understanding that healing from trauma is a process.

Recognizing and acknowledging White privilege is cute, but what does it mean without action? Dismantling White privilege is giving something up so Black folx can win.

By winning, I mean White folx ensuring that people of color are being paid equally or more than their White peers. White teachers demanding that schools hire more teachers of color. Silencing your White voice so dark folx’ voices can be heard. White folx bringing dark folx in on all decision-making and dark folx having equal or more weight, and not just on issues about injustice or education but on issues that impact all of us, regardless of the color of our skin. White folx embracing Black joy is loving seeing dark people win, thrive, honor their history, and be fully human.

Abolitionist teaching asks us to be accountable for the pain we have caused others, to restore justice, and call into question our liberal politics.

Abolitionist teaching asks us to question the piece of the oppressor that lives in all of us.

Abolitionist teachers have to hold themselves and their colleagues to a level of accountability that focuses on justice, love, healing, and restoring humanity. Educators, and especially those with privilege, must be responsible for making sure dark children and their families

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

If some teachers believe that the system is just, that racism and sexism are only individually distributed and not systemic (if they exist at all), and that hard work is the only key ingredient to becoming whatever you want to be in life, then how do teachers make sense of poverty (e.g., intergenerational racial wealth disparities), failing schools, crime, violence, the prison-industrial complex, and health disparities?

The sad truth is that White people can spend their entire lives ignoring, dismissing, and forgetting dark peoples’ existence and still be successful in life. The latter is not the same for us.

many education programs have one diversity course in which White students learn about all the ills that plague dark communities without any context of how Whiteness reproduces poverty, failing schools, high unemployment, school closings, and trauma for people of color.

studies, American studies, and/or Native American studies. Teachers of all backgrounds walk into classrooms never studying the history or the culture of the children they are going to teach. So, how can teachers be culturally relevant when they have not studied culture?

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

People say that racism will die out when all the old racist White men are dead. I guess old racist White men are vampires because racism is alive and well.

Simply put, “interest convergence” argues that White people will support civil rights legislation only when it’s in their interest to do so.

politics.”25 Black feminism is concerned about the lives of those deemed most disposable by society: dark children, dark queer and trans folx, and women all along the gender spectrum. Black feminism organizes and creates community from a space of Black joy. Black Lives Matter, an organization founded by three Black queer women, demonstrates the power, influence, and real-life outcomes of Black feminism.

White emotionality goes a step further than White fragility by arguing that when race and racism raise up emotions of guilt, shame, anger, denial, sadness, dissonance, and disconcert, those feelings need to be deeply investigated to understand how racialized emotions perpetuate racism.

Before we try to teach White people how to work to undo their privilege, we must start with the emotions of that process—understanding that the emotional process is step one. White folx cannot be coconspirators until they deal with the emotionality of being White.

Of course, Patty is not superhuman; she is a Black mother, which the world has decided means a superwoman. Patty was told as a little girl, and it was reinforced when she became a mother, that she could never crack, could never show pain, hurt, or vulnerability; it is her birthright to carry America’s racism, sexism, and inequalities on her shoulders and never stress about it.

To be a Black mother is to be America’s punching bag, as you morph into a shield and take every blow for your family, especially your Black children, that will be thrown by America’s White rage.