by Imani Wilson  

 

Abstract  

The state of public schooling for Black youth in the U.S. context is riddled with persistent inequalities through underfunded schools, teacher bias, tracking, high levels of discipline, and threats to culturally responsive curriculums. Given the structural and organizational anti–Black restraints in education that continue to limit opportunities for Black youth, there remains the question of: what prosperous learning spaces can exist both within and at the margins of the current educational system? Drawing on past and present Black radical traditions, I examine educational spaces, both created and sustained by Black communities, as sites of possibilities for bettering education praxis that centers and uplift Black youth. Also, building on an abolitionist framework, such as creating livable futures, I demonstrate that community based educational spaces serve both as sites of refuge while also imparting Black youth with tools to develop critical consciousness, positive knowledge of intersecting identities, and praxis/activism rooted in the ability to locate and reimagine the world around them. This paper calls attention to the educational debt owed to Black communities to build educational spaces that disrupt, reimagine, and foster growth towards collective freedom. 

  

​​​Introduction 

“I wonder a lot about why the classroom should be safe. It isn’t safe. I am not sure what  

safe learning looks like because the kinds of questions that need to be (and are) asked,  

across a range of disciplines and interdisciplines, necessarily attend to violence and  

sadness and the struggle for life. How could teaching narratives of sadness ever, under  

any circumstances, be safe!?…I am not suggesting that the classroom be a location that  

welcomes violence and hatefulness and ​​racism; I am suggesting that learning and  

teaching and classrooms are, already, sites of pain.”  

– Katherine McKittrick, The Geographies of Blackness and Anti-Blackness, 2013  

 

In the United States public education system, Black middle-and-high school aged youth often face persistent educational inequalities compared to their peers. While schooling environments are framed as a great equalizer in providing students with learning opportunities to achieve social mobility, educational scholars contend that schools are often sites of social reproduction that reify pre-existing social inequalities (Collins, 2009). In fact, Black students are more likely to be concentrated in underfunded schools with less investment per student and inexperienced teachers (Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2012; Orfield & Eaton, 1996). Additionally, Black students experience tracking into lower academic classes while also facing higher rates of discipline and suspension (Anyon et al., 2014; Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Oakes, 2016; Tyson, 2011). Futhermore, Black youth are frequently perceived through a deficit-based lens, leading to lowered expectations, negative impressions and reprimands from school personnel (Carter, 2016). As these schooling inequalities accumulate, many Black students are funneled into the school-to-prison nexus (Hietzeg, 2009). ​​Given the systems of anti-Black racism that uphold such persisting inequalities, critical education scholars put forth a need to acknowledge schools specifically as sites of Black suffering (Dumas, 2014; Dumas & ross, 2016).  

In the epigraph above, Black studies scholar, Katherine McKittrick asserts that classrooms are not a site of safety for Black students. Instead, she posits that this idea of a safe learning space “is a white fantasy that harms” (Hudson & McKittrick, 2013). McKittrick argues that such a fantasy not only replicates but fails to disrupt structures of injustice that Black students are experiencing within classrooms. Therefore, considering the vast research that demonstrates the persisting marginalization that Black students face in schools, it leaves us with the question(s) of: ​​how can we construct educational spaces that do not continue to reproduce anti-Black suffering, but instead work to reimagine and uplift Black youth in their learning experiences? Additionally, what is the historical, and ongoing, Black relationship to constructing viable educational spaces?  

As educational research on inequality traditionally looks for means of closing achievement gaps for Black students, Ladson-Billings (2006) contends that such a focus is misplaced. Ladson-Billings instead recognizes that given the historical, economic, and socio-political wrongdoings enacted towards Black populations, there should be an emphasis on addressing the educational debt that is owed. While such social debts have compounded over time, Fred Moten uplifts that the damages created from these histories are irreparable if there is no intent to tear down current systems and build something new (Harney & Moten, 2013). Therefore, drawing on past and present Black radical traditions, in this paper I intend to locate sites of possibilities for reimagining and rebuilding educational praxis that centers and uplift Black youth. By utilizing theories of fugitivity and abolition, I will argue that educational spaces both created and sustained by Black communities can serve as sites of refuge, impart Black youth with tools to develop a positive racial identity while also inviting an increased awareness and willingness to not only question, but transform circumstances around them. As educators, organizers, and communities work to move beyond means of reform for educational injustice, I suggest that these sites can situate us more deeply in what education as the practice of liberation can look like.  

Abolition and the Black Radical Tradition  

In the process of creating livable futures, the praxis of abolition serves as a means of constructing new institutions, social relations, and ways of living that get us “out of the trap of reformist reform” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 186). In other words, abolition allows us to work to create transformative practices and structures that do not continue to reproduce the same levels of violence, suffering, and injustice present in existing ones. While abolition is typically thought of as an act of eradication — prominent geographer and abolitionist, Ruth Wilson Gilmore highlights how, “Abolition is a theory of change, it’s a theory of social life. It’s about making things” (2022, p. 338). Historically, following the legal disestablishment of chattel slavery, sociologist and race scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of ‘abolition democracy’ made clear the limitations of only riddance. Du Bois argued that despite the abolishment of slavery, ​​during Reconstruction there was a failure in installing democratic institutions that would fundamentally support formerly enslaved Black people in gaining economic, political, educational and social freedoms (Du Bois, 1995; Davis, 2011; Gilmore, 2022). In fact, white supremacist and capitalist enterprises utilized their power to intentionally stifle the construction of Black serving and self-governed institutions through ideological and physical violence (Anderson, 1995). As a result, historical abolitionist movements highlight the necessity to not only destroy structures and ways of living that uphold oppression, but to engage in the practice of liberatory world-building. Therefore, presently, there is a call to reflect on the processes of creatively building places, spaces, and structures that hold firm in addressing historically oppressive structures.  

Although mainstream democratic institutions were not instilled to address the freedoms of Black populations in the U.S., the individual and collective efficacy of Black people continue in a path of refusal. Cedric Robinson (2000) details this process as a history of Black radical tradition. More specifically, Robinson defines the black radical tradition as, “the continuing development of a collective consciousness informed by the historical struggles for liberation and motivated by the shared sense of obligation to preserve the collective being, the ontological totality” (p. 171). The development of this historical collective consciousness has allowed Black radical thinkers across geographical borders to highlight Black experiences at the intersections of racial capitalism and colonialism (Robinson, 2000). Ultimately, the Black radical tradition demonstrates Black people’s dynamic use of agency and efforts to dismantle, resist, and survive in proximity to persisting systems of oppression and dehumanization. ​​While Black histories are dynamic and fluid throughout different times and spaces, these traditions demonstrate the connectedness that is situated amongst them all.  

Similarly, the ​​black radical imagination works to interrogate and deconstruct the facets that make up a society, peoples relationships to one another, and even the politics born out of Black freedom struggles (Kelley, 2002). The black radical imagination deeply explores the “freedom dreaming” visions born out of Black social movements, intellectuals, activists, and artists. More specifically, the Black radical imagination usher us to reflect on past organizing and social movements goals, even those left unrealized, because they can aid us in generating new knowledge, theories, and questions that we must consider more presently (Kelley, 2002). Together, the black radical imagination and the black radical tradition offer frameworks to examine Black pursuits for liberation across space and time. By examining these moments of Black resistance, I am not uplifting them as models in which we should seek to definitively replicate. Instead, I offer that they can serve as important sites of reflection in which we can strengthen our ability to not only imagination but construct more livable futures.  

Histories of ​​​​Black Fugitivity in Education 

As we situate the importance of Black histories and struggles for freedom in a greater context of creating new possibilities, it is important to uplift examples specifically regarding education. Hence, I will now explore how we can look to past and present efforts in creating educational spaces that not only attend to the conditions of Blackness but also function to forge a path beyond it. These examples will look across elements of agency, teaching pedagogy, curriculum, and the importance of dynamic physical space. Together, these instances are not meant to serve as exact models unto which we follow as some recipe. Instead, it is my hope that they offer imaginative insight into the varied ways in which Black educators, organizers, and communities have birthed viable educational spaces that refuse anti-Black logics and practices.  

Seeking Literacy During Enslavement 

The Black relationship to education in the United States, especially during enslavement, is one circumscribed by histories of contestation and even served for many as a fugitive project — meaning the escape from one’s continued subjugation (Givens, 2020; Harney & Moten, 2013). A widely known history of chattel slavery acknowledges that captive Black populations were forbidden to learn to read or write through oppressive, and often, brutal laws and customs (Williams, 2007; Cornelius, 1983). Yet, these popular histories have also largely left out the ongoing agency of enslaved people. Despite such formidable laws, many continued to acquire literacy in both open and secret – learning alongside their captors’ children, in hidden spaces such as wooded areas or trees, and even attending formalized schools (Bly, 2011; Williams, 2007; Cornelius, 1983). Although literacy was oftentimes associated with the strengthened opportunities of the individual to gain their own forms of self-actualization or leadership, it was also a communal responsibility as many helped spread reading and writing skills to their fellow enslaved people (Cornelius, 1983; Bly, 2011). Their pursuit of education in spaces away from the gaze of their enslavers is one of the first means in which fugitivity provided them with a sense of escape and possibility both physically and psychologically. 

While the creation of anti-literacy customs and laws were used as a tactic to subdue the imagination and consciousness of enslaved people, their resistance to these structures “revealed a world beyond bondage in which African Americans could imagine themselves free to think and behave as they chose” (Williams, 2007, p. 17). In seeking and creating physical spaces to acquire literacy, many were able to reimagine a world beyond their current conditions and begin to disrupt power relations with their enslavers even in subtle ways. This history serves as a framework for not only honoring, but also learning from everyday forms of resistance and tactics employed by enslaved peoples to construct their own ways of living outside the conditions of bondage. The relationship between fugitivity, fluid space, and learning during enslavement offers a framework to think about how processes of learning for Black people have often existed at the margins of what we think of as traditional classrooms and schooling spaces. Overall, the violently anti-black history of schooling has often pushed Black populations to not only seek but create their own spaces of learning.  

Black Educator ‘Fugitive Pedagogies’ during Jim Crow 

Even so, during the Jim Crow era, Black educators played an important role in creating space for Black refuge in educational landscapes that intended to exclude Black students (Givens, 2020). Black educators often found a mismatch between their investment in care for Black students and the anti-black educational landscape that systematically stifled the resources they could access (James-Gallaway & Harris, 2021). Consequently, Black teachers’ use of ‘fugitive pedagogies’ within the private space of their classrooms allowed them to integrate praxis that diverged from repressive educational policies and practices (Givens, 2020). Some of these practices often looked like maneuvering policies to introduce new curricula, learning activities and materials that instilled youth not only with academic skills but also lessons on racial pride, service, dignity, and resiliency that connected to their lived experience (Savage, 2001). Many especially incorporated messaging and stories rooted in legacies of Black resistance and knowledge that would allow students to endure life outside their communities (James-Gallaway & Harris, 2021; Givens, 2020). In this time, Black educators often operated their classrooms as a center point of the community with a dedicated praxis that upheld deep care and freedom-seeking despite the call for them to comply with repressive and under-resourced Jim Crow schooling structures (Givens, 2020; Savage, 2001). Thus, Black teachers’ commitment to creating Black fugitivity within educational spaces serves as a model of “what it means to be within, yet against the American school” (Givens, 2020, p. 27).  

The Mississippi Freedom School & ‘Questioning’ as a Tool 

Following the continued fight against de facto segregation and racial antagonism in the South just after the signing of the Civil Right Act of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Schools were created by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Coming out of the organized Freedom Summer Movement in 1964, many Black-led organizations sought to increase the civic and political participation of violently oppressed Black populations in Mississippi (Perlstein, 1990). Thus, education was a stringent focus. At the time, Mississippi schools were deemed the worst in the nation for Black students. Therefore, SNCC fought against Mississippi schools’ absence of academic freedom that especially stifled Black students’ ability to engage in intellectual curiosity. The Freedom School thus became SNCC’s effort to build “our own institutions to replace the old, unjust, decadent ones which make up the existing power structure” (Perlstein, 1990). Their ultimate goal was to prepare young people to undertake solutions to community problems especially systems and institutions in Mississippi that were attempting to maintain a social order based in anti-Black subjugation (Chilcoat & Ligon, 1999). As these alternative learning spaces came into fruition, they established a site for critical learning, Black empowerment, and local organizing for over two thousand students ranging from ages four to twenty-five (Perlstein, 1990).  

In the Spring of 1964, SNCC, chaired by Ella Baker, brought together Black leaders, educators, and organizers to democratically construct a “progressive academic and civic curriculum” (Chilcoat & Ligon, 1999, p. 49). In fact, the curriculum emphasized centering the lives and experiences of Black Mississippian students. “Questioning” was utilized as a vital pedagogical tool to inspire Black students to connect their life experiences with their learning (Chilcoat & Ligon, 1999). The program’s curriculum and pedagogy assured that these elements would not only grow student’s understanding of the oppressive social order but also influence their active participation in transforming forms of repression that surround them (Chilcoat & Ligon, 1999; Perlstein, 1990). ​​The power of physical space coupled with creative expression motivated many Mississippians to move beyond the social and intellectual isolation of their traditional public school system and instead engage in elements of social change.  

Although the original Mississippi Freedom schools were short-lived, there was a push for many older students to keep them going in the form of community centers (Perlstein, 1990). The structure of these alternative, creative, and critical learning spaces highlights a prominent example of Black organizing efforts to move learning beyond the bounds of the traditional classroom. The elements of culturally relevant education (Ladson-Billings, 1995) born out of racially violent and repressive conditions of Mississippi during this time demonstrates the Mississippi Freedom Schools as a radical site of possibility. Therefore, it offers us a means to not only reflect but build upon both its realized and imagined liberatory elements in future educational spaces.  

Black Fugitive Space in the “Afterlife of School Segregation” 

As demonstrated in some of examples above, the construction of physical learning spaces can serve as a key tool in providing a sense of refuge and safety both within, and outside of, traditional educational structures such as schools and classrooms. Additionally, kihana miraya ross’ (2020) concept of black fugitive educational space further interrogates the intersections of Blackness, education, and fugitivity. This concept refers to a social space in which Blackness is safe, affirmed, and serves as a refuge from the anti-Black world. ross puts forth a theory, similarly to Hartman’s (2007) afterlife of slavery, that Black students are currently living in the afterlife of school segregation. ross suggests that while Black students are not subject to the same formalized laws of school segregation instilled during Jim Crow, they continue to be dehumanized and positioned as uneducable in the U.S. education system. Therefore, ross posits that black educational fugitive spaces are sites that are socially produced and constructed in the margins, or in select spaces within schools, by Black students and/or educators (ross, 2020).  

While black educational fugitive spaces can be a physical site such as an all Black classroom, they are also “fluid, embodied, and can travel beyond the places in which participants produce it” (p. 53). ross uplifts how the production of such Black spaces are not limited to their physical origins. Thus, with fluidity in mind, such sites allow the intersections of Blackness and critical learning to transcend boundaries that are often positioned in very rigid and distinct ways in traditional educational spaces. In particular, Black educational fugitive spaces pay attention to Black life because they “spawn the possibilities of rebirth and resistance” (ross, 2020, p. 48). This is especially integral because they center Black students themselves in the reimagination of education. Thus, the conceptualization of black fugitive educational spaces today are important in assessing how Black students can feel empowerment in their Blackness across space whether they are inside, outside, or at the margins of classrooms.  

These situated examples demonstrate the intentional efforts of Black populations in creating possibilities through the construction of their own learning and spaces of refuge. By exploring the lived realities of the past, and their continued impact across space and time, we can gain a deeper grasp of what possibilities are to be imagined. The ability of enslaved peoples to acquire literacy in spaces away from their captors opened up growing imagination of freedom. Black teachers’ use of classroom space to provide refuge and care to students amongst anti-Black schooling structures showcases the importance of non-deficit pedagogies in building youth consciousness of connected realities. Furthermore, the mass organized efforts to provide Freedom schooling to Black students amongst racial isolation demonstrates the process of critical learning that moves youth to act and transform environments around them. These instances are a crucial part of a “critical Black educational memory or heritage” (Givens, 2020, p. 23) which aids in the recollection of the unfolding of Blackness and being in the U.S. context. Consequently, by understanding the historical unfolding of anti-Blackness as well as the intentional acts of Black resistance and creation, we can remain conscious of our own ways of engaging in the black radical tradition and imagination. 

Black Youth Centered Community-Based Educational Spaces  

Building upon the historical context of fugitive education as a site of possibility for Black populations, I will now highlight recent literature that critically explores the impact of community-based educational spaces on Black youth. Community-based educational spaces (CBES) refer to after school programs, out of school settings, and community or youth organizations, that often serve as informal or supplementary learning spaces. More presently, research on CBES mirror long histories of historically marginalized communities seeking out empowering, heterogenous, and culturally relevant ways of learning (Baldridge, Beck, Medina & Reeves, 2017). Given the implications of the traditional public schooling system, and the ways in which structures and practices continue to push Black youth to the margins, these supplementary, community created educational spaces are shown to serve a fruitful role in disrupting forms of inequality (Baldridge, Beck, Medina & Reeves, 2017; Baldridge, 2014). For example, educational research has demonstrated that community based-educational spaces or organizations often provide youth with culturally relevant learning environments, aid the promotion of positive identity development, increase ties to adult allies and peers while also equipping youth with tools to engage socially and politically (Baldridge et al., 2017; Loyd & Williams, 2017; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007). Therefore, I will put forth a call to support community-based educational spaces because they presently serve as strengthened sites of learning for Black youth. 

Foremost, the participation of Black youth in community-based organizations serves as a tool in the development of critical social capital. Critical social capital refers to the “intergenerational ties that cultivate expectations about the capacity for Black youth to transform the conditions that shape their lives” (Ginwright, 2007, p. 416). Ginwright contends that these intergenerational ties are embedded in neighborhood-based networks that shape the collective identities, interest, and mutual trust of people’s ability to reach a common good. In other words, by participating in such community organizations, Black youth can build both connections to community members while also learning elements of communal solidarity. These work together to form a socio-political awareness that can aid youth in addressing issues they find pressing in their communities.  

Additionally, such learning sites can help foster youth connections to adults that are not centered on reprimand and zero tolerance policies. Instead, Black youth can feel supported and uplifted compared to many experiences of dehumanization in traditional schooling spaces (Baldridge et al., 2017). The garnering of deep connections and community comes through recognition of shared identities and experiences by being in space with Black adults who both hold and share long histories of racial struggle and triumph in their communities (Ginwright, 2010). This learning provides Black youth with the ability to connect their individual experiences to those that are fluid, yet shared. Even so, community organizations often hold space for Black youth to engage in socio-political dialogue beyond the confines of [traditionally white spaces] (Douglas & Peck, 2013). Together these elements increase youth opportunities to engage in critical racial identity development alongside peers and adult allies. 

While building strong ties to Black adults and peers in the community can help in developing youths’ sense of racial belonging and empowerment, it can also provide the space for Black youth to develop critical consciousness (Ginwright, 2007; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007). Critical consciousness refers to a deep and analytical awareness of one’s social circumstances and/or oppression (Freire, 1972). However, Freire acknowledges that critical consciousness extends beyond thinking to also encompass the intentional act of transforming repressive environments. Black youth participation in community-based organizations often allows them to critically engage in community organizing and activism regarding problems located in their schools, communities, and beyond (Ginwright, 2007). Therefore, in the context of Black youth, constructing a critical consciousness alongside community members, both peers and adult allies, strengthens their awareness and ability to act on issues located at the intersections of personal and political life (Ginwright, 2010). 

Therefore, in community-based youth organizations, Black youth are often provided tools to facilitate both individual and collective determination. When such spaces foster community-building and critical consciousness, it “restores black students’ full autonomy in decision- making about who or what they might become in the future” (Warren & Coles, 2020). Considering the systemic and institutional modes of subjugation that Black youth experience, the ability for Black youth to hold their own forms of autonomy is crucial in both empowerment and agency. Agency allows “an affordance of youth in redefining and reimagining established norms” (Love, 2017, p. 540). Ultimately, the reparative aspects of agency in community-based spaces allows for Black youth to reclaim elements of humanhood that are lost in anti-Black notions that continuously position them in deficit terms.  

Given the role of community, critical consciousness building, and praxis gained through community-based educational spaces, there lies the aim to understand how Black life can exist despite the spatial, legal, psychic, and material conditions of slavery that created the juxtaposition between Blackness and being (Sharpe, 2016). Community-based educational spaces can attend to Black life by providing Black youth with learning tools that aid in growing a positive racial identity development, critical consciousness, and motivation to engage in world-building that reimagines societal possibilities. Therefore, as we contend with anti-black schooling structures present in the U.S., I offer that these community learning spaces provide important frameworks for the reimagination and reconstruction of education praxis that continues to breathe life into Blackness.  

Threat of Neoliberal Reform on Community Spaces 

Although community-based educational spaces can serve as a tool in disrupting forms of inequality for racially minoritized and low-income youth, they are often threatened because of their reliance on the state and other agencies for financial support (Baldridge et al., 2017; Baldridge, 2014). Growing neoliberal ideals in the United States’ education system has fostered a movement towards privatization, meritocratic, and standardized measures of success (Lipman, 2011). Neoliberal ideology functions on a white notion of race and class (Perez & Cannella, 2011) which creates policies that appear “neutral” but are instead deeply implicated in reifying both race and class-based hierarchies. Considering that funding for youth programs is often contingent upon standardized measures of success, such as test scores and grades, it threatens community-based spaces. In fact, standardization works to homogenize practices that are aimed at serving the needs of communities that are often non-white and lower income (Baldridge, 2014; Baldridge, 2019). Thus, such reform on a systemic level creates a greater disadvantage for Black youth in spaces that have been constructed to serve them directly 

Even so Baldridge et al. (2014) highlights that neoliberal reform also places community-based spaces and programs in the position to frame the youth they serve in deficit terms. As funding is more easily secured in providing services to “disadvantaged” or “at-risk” youth, it perpetuates the dominant narrative that these youth need saving (Martinez & Rury, 2012). These growing aims threaten the pedagogies and practices of community based educational spaces to center positive racial identity and achievement outside of neoliberal measures of success (Baldridge et al., 2017; Baldridge, 2014). They even pressure youth workers to hold youth to such standards that “dismisses the social, political, cultural, and emotional education and development occurring within these spaces” (Baldridge, 2014, p. 441). Thus, it is important to disrupt the impact or influence of neoliberal reform aimed for such spaces to frame Black youth as needing to be saved, reverses the original intention of community spaces as a site of safety and critical education.  

The Case for Restructuring Community Created and Sustained Education  

In order to disrupt the influence of neoliberalism within community-based educational spaces, there needs to be intentional actions for movement workers and organizers to secure funding and support that is not confined by normalized measures of success. As current movements for abolition organize for the divestment of funding from the police, prisons, and military industrial complex (Kaba & Ritchie, 2022), there should be a collective effort to also redirect funding in support of spaces that are community sustained. Given the importance of community-based youth organizations and their possibility for liberatory world-building, they are sites that should be seriously considered. Additionally, it is crucial that such redistributed funding does not reproduce standardized or homogenized practices as a contingency for support. I want to stress that community based-educational spaces are successful in disrupting inequality because of their heterogeneity and ​​ability to curate practices to the direct needs of the communities in which they grow out of (Baldridge, 2019). Therefore, it is important that we allow these spaces to be both created and sustained organically by local communities.  

Furthermore, considering the historical use and prevalence of community networks of support (Katz, 1981) in Black radical traditions, I suggest that community members/adults, organizers, and educators work to continuously reimagine our own conceptions of Black youth. With strengthened community support and belief in the importance of youth spaces, community-based educational spaces can thrive. Moral panics, deficit views, and individualized mindsets often lead many to abandon communal obligations that honor the protection and safety of Black youth. Therefore, in the spirit of abolition that calls on us to change the relationships we also hold to each other, it is integral that we each recognize our obligation to commit to uplifting the agency, abilities, and visions that Black youth hold for themselves and their futures. We also must think of the ways that we can continue to co-construct radical sites of possibility with and for Black youth.   

More importantly, I want to highlight that given the debts owed to Black communities across the United States, it is still a responsibility of the state to invest in the continued capacity-building of those who have been systematically and violently excluded from the creation of educational, economic, social, and political institutions that serve them. The Black relationship to schooling has been filled with precarity, uncertainty, and oftentimes suffering (Dumas, 2014). And yet, Black populations have continued to birth rich visions and tangible realities that allow us to continue forward. Thus, as we look forward to a reparative relationship to the U.S. schooling system, there is a need for both state and national government to rightfully address the educational debt that has accumulated (Ladson-Billings 2006). It is important that educators, organizers, and communities to continue to pressure those in power to address the historical and ongoing harms done to Black communities.  

As we contend what such a debt repayment could look like, Dr. Bettina Love recently calculated the monetary amount that can begin to address the last 40 years of failed education reform [curriculum, discipline, earnings loss]. Love (2023) found that Black children of the 1980s and 1990s are owed at minimum 1.5 to 2.0 trillion dollars. While monetary redistribution is only one component of repairing the accumulated harm that has occurred over the last few centuries, it is also important to move forward with the grand lessons of our pasts. This will include the acknowledgement of the ways in which current structures of education continue to reproduce anti-Black racism along with an expansive plan to delegitimize and undo the current structures we live under. Often “race-neutral” ideas are taken up by law-makers and powerful groups who struggle with confronting the role that racial injustice plays in our society. Therefore, there will be no tolerance for addressing issues within the system that do not specifically acknowledge and seek to destroy the racial capitalism that make up the persisting structures of education. Ultimately, I imagine a future in which a universal public education is fully funded and resourced by both federal and state governments without any private opportunistic interests interfering in governance.   

A return to Katherine McKittrick – Can learning spaces ever be safe for Black youth?  

Earlier in the paper, I provided a quote from ​Black studies ​scholar Katherine McKittrick in which she questioned the premise of thinking about classrooms, schools, and learning as a safe space. It is true that learning about the historical, and continued, violence that is enacted upon Blackness comes with feelings of anger, hopelessness, and grief. Yet, honoring the moments of Black resistance and refusal is integral to our collective consciousness and the Black radical tradition. Therefore, although learning can absolutely be a site of pain, it also pries open doors to the possibilities of Black life. Prominent scholar bell hooks (1994) acknowledge this paradox perfectly in Teaching to Transgress:  

The academy is not a paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom (p. 207). 

Thus, despite traditional classrooms ​​reifying anti-Black practices, the process of learning within the Black radical tradition and imagination can serve as a pathway in not only understanding but acting in connection to the histories of Black resistance. Learning and education, like bell hooks depicts above, has historically existed in a liminal, and often contradictory space, for Black life. However, it is in the imagination and creation of Black refusal to exist in such contradictions, that we move beyond the present constraints. Therefore, although learning like McKittrick contends, comes with pain, it also provides one with the necessary tools to transgress and move beyond the systems, and world, that currently exists.  

Conclusion 

In this paper, building on histories of Black resistance to structures of anti-Blackness, I explore how we can learn from past Black radical traditions to create livable futures in the field of education. Historically, the Black relationship to education is acknowledged as a liberatory pursuit. However, the schooling system continues to reify social inequalities and suffering especially for Black youth. While Black youth are presently still subjected to underfunded schooling environments, teacher bias, tracking into lower academic courses, and high rates of discipline, I explore historical efforts of situating learning not only as Black fugitive planning but creating futures of freedom.  

In this process, I demonstrate the interconnection between education and radical Black practices through enslavement, Jim Crow, and the construction fugitive space. By doing so, I demonstrate the importance of Black histories of refusal to accept repression within traditional schooling structures. While these historical examples are not meant to serve as models for the future, I hope that their importance is valued as sites of deepened reflection and unto which we continue to build. More presently, community-based educational spaces are demonstrated to mirror such radical possibilities by providing Black youth with tools to strengthen community ties, critical consciousness, and praxis/activism. In fact, the tools they impart upon Black youth help in the transgression of societal boundaries especially through the space to organize and reimagine their futures. Additionally, I offer implications regarding the threat of neoliberal reform to community-based educational spaces. Considering that community spaces operate ​​with contingencies for funding, they are at risk of standardizing their heterogeneous practices that conform to deficit views of Black youth and normalized measures of success. Ultimately, I argue that there is an educational debt that should supply increased investment in maintaining the integrity of these important spaces. Importantly, I also offer important considerations for the role that organized networks of community support and the reimagination of our own relationship to conceptions of Black youth will play in these futures.  

 

Notes on Contributor

Imani Wilson is a current Doctoral student in the Sociology of Education program at New York University. Born and raised in Chicago, she has a background working with youth in classrooms and out-of-school settings in addition to serving as a community organizer. Imani is committed to understanding radical Black pursuits for liberation through educational and community-centered movements. They focus their work through a historical, Black studies, and abolitionist lens. Imani currently works as a Research Assistant at the NYU Metro Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. She also serves as the Graduate Student Coordinator for the Race and Public Space Working Group through NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge.

 

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