by Gabrielle Warren

 

Abstract 

This paper explores the case of JKB v. Peel (Police Services), where a six-year-old Black girl was handcuffed by Peel Police officers at her school in 2016, and its broader implications within the educational system. By focusing on the intersection of language, educational processes, and power, this study investigates how the language of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario’s decision obscures the role of education in perpetuating racial discrimination. Through critical discourse analysis rooted in the Black Radical Tradition, the paper examines the processes within the school that led to JKB’s arrest, highlighting the systemic inequities and mundane violence experienced by Black children in educational settings. The study contends that arguments based on a universalist anti-discrimination framework are insufficient to address these harms and advocates for an abolitionist discourse method to dismantle oppressive educational practices. By analyzing education as a state institution intertwined with colonial and imperial legacies, the paper underscores the need for transformative approaches that challenge the production and reproduction of racial hierarchies and exclusion in schools. 

…the point (of abolition) is not only to identify central contradictions—inherent vices—in regimes of dispossession, but also, urgently, to show how radical consciousness in action resolves into liberated life-ways, however provisional, present and past…. what is to be abolished isn’t the past or its present ghost, but rather the processes of hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion that congeal in and the group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death. (Ruth Wilson Gilmore, 2022, p. 227-28) 

 

Introduction 

On September 30, 2016, a Black, 48-pound, four-foot-tall child was handcuffed by her hands and feet and placed on her stomach by two Peel Police officers. In court, the officers denied that the child was treated in a discriminatory manner. They argue that the officers did their best to keep the child (JKB) and others safe when the girl’s behaviour created a safety risk for herself and others. Those representing the child argued that the officers discriminated against her in providing services. This discrimination is defined as being subjected to differential treatment because of her race when two police officers treated her in a manner that lacked the care and compassion with which a White child would have been treated by handcuffing and shackling her at her school. In the case of JKB v. Peel (Police Services Board), brought before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the decision was that the judge found race a factor in the treatment of JKB and that her right to equal treatment under section 1 of the Code was breached (JKB v. Peel, 2020). 

While the decision yielded positive results, does it answer what made this child arrestable?  I was shocked and alarmed when I first came across this case. My first thought was – where were the teachers? Where was the principle? Where were the teaching assistants? How could this child be handcuffed without anyone reaching out in refutation? What environment existed within this school that would lead to a child being treated this way? In the years that followed, several other cases and testimonies appeared that echoed similar instances of distress (Nasser, 2021; Bueckert, 2022). While the police were not involved in all the cases, education was. As I analyzed the final decision, one question continued to plague my mind: What made this child arrestable? What persistent racist processes necessitated JKB and others like her to be placed in situations of harm and neglect? Were these processes self-evident? If not, how can we critique them and abolish them altogether?  

I look to Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s assertion of abolition to guide my analysis of this case’s decision: “The point (of abolition) is not only to identify central contradictions—inherent vices—in regimes of dispossession, but also, urgently, to show how radical consciousness in action resolves into liberated life-ways, however provisional, present and past…. what is to be abolished isn’t the past or its present ghost, but rather the processes of hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion that congeal in and the group-differentiated vulnerability tos premature death.” (s, 2022, p. 227-28). I am interested in the relationship between language, educational processes, and power. How does the language used by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario obscure education’s role in JKB’s arrest? How did the processes within the school, logic around childhood, organizational mismanagement, and the universalist ideals of multi-culturalism create an environment that led to the events of September 2016? What power relations were produced and reproduced through language that did not hold the school responsible for the assault? The question of arrestability aims to connect the larger sociopolitical landscape with education’s role in that landscape.  

While I begin with the case of JKB, I do not end there. JKB is a case study of the ways that the denial of Black children’s humanity is naturalized through the language that we use to describe and repair harm perpetuated in schools. In the analysis section, I articulate “the processes of hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion” revealed through the case. Utilizing a schematic critical discourse analysis, I analytically decentre the police’s actions in the incident to unpack the social relations within the school to contend that arguments based on a universalist anti-discrimination framework are insufficient in abolishing harmful processes of group-differentiated vulnerability. In the discussion section, I look to contextualize my findings within the broader theoretical frameworks of Sylvia Wynter and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, discussing the need for an abolitionist approach rooted in anti-colonialism and a renewed humanism to address the deep-seated racial violence perpetuated in schools. By utilizing a schematic discourse analysis rooted in the Black Radical Tradition, this piece looks to interrogate the coagulation of hierarchies, dispossession, and exclusion to answer the question, what makes this child arrestable?  

 

Theoretical Framework  

I am theoretically rooted in the Black Radical Tradition (Robinson, 2020; Gilmore, 2022). In the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2022), “The (BRT) is a constantly evolving accumulation of structures of feeling whose individual and collective narrative arcs persistently tend toward freedom (Gilmore, 2022, p. 237).” This consciousness, rooted in diverse African epistemologies, initially manifested as a total rejection of enslavement and racism. Over time, the tradition evolved with the emergence of a Black intelligentsia who, through praxis, was “shaped by energetically expectant consciousness of and direction toward unboundedness (Gilmore, 2022, p. 237).” In other words, this radicalism asserts that categories of the human created in the name of colonial, imperial, and economic conquest are not the whole story. The Black Radical Tradition asserts that we can rewrite our human story by questioning why certain phenomena, like deprivation and persistent inequity, are stated as self-evident. It asks why specific populations are persistently plagued by violence, underemployment, underinvestment, over-incarceration, and abysmal wellness outcomes. This questioning is separate from the mainstream cooption of Black Studies, which theorizes human beings within the same order of knowledge that led to slavery, colonialism, and imperialism (Wynter, 2006). My abolitionist practice cannot be disconnected from Caribbean ways of thinking and knowing that reimagines borders, language, psychology, temporality, and even history towards a re-enchantment of humanity (see Cesaire, 2000; Fanon, 2004; Glissant, 1997).  

I align with educational scholars interested in browning. Beyond representation, browning is interested in historicizing and dissecting the complexity of curriculum as a colonial project based on processes including heteropatriarchal white supremacy, state-sanctioned police violence, elusive microaggressions, and innocuous exclusions from the school curriculum (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2015).  In this tradition, I am interested in asking how education is implicated in childhood inequities on a structural and ideological scale (see Baldridge et al., 2017; Coles, 2021; Gerrard et al., 2022; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013; Yoon & Templeton, 2022). I understand childhood as part of a more extensive discussion on who can be fully human and explore how this definition is produced and reproduced (see: Nxumalo & ross, 2019).  

I mobilize critical discourse analysis to delve deeper into the complex relationship between language, the education system, and sociopolitical factors. Through discourse analysis, I am interested in mapping power dynamics and paying close attention to the context of language’s role in shaping social practice and addressing social problems (Farrelly, 2019; Gaudet & Robert, 2018). Thinking with Sylvia Wynter, I define discourse as the system of knowledge production and cultural narratives that shape and sustain societal norms and ideologies. These norms and ideologies are epistemologically rooted in colonial and Eurocentric ideals produced and reproduced through education (Wynter, 1993; Wynter, 2003). A discourse analysis rooted in this definition highlights how language influences social practices in educational settings and addresses how systems of racism, colonialism, and imperialism materialize in school settings.   

My question of arrestability mobilizes a Black Radical critique of language to investigate how education is implicated in what I term mundane violence. Mundane violence represents processes that do not lead to incarceration but do produce “group-differentiated vulnerabilities” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107). I use mundane to highlight how phenomena such as hyper-surveillance, underinvestment, adultification bias, curricular omissions, and targeted streaming are naturalized within education (see: CBC News, 2022; James & Turner, 2017; Maynard, 2017; Nxumalo, 2021; Nxumalo & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2022). In this, I am honing in on the political geographies of the “coloniality of being” (Wynter, 2003). In other words, how might we focus on how educational systems perpetuate colonial legacies by reinforcing racial hierarchies and exclusionary practices? Thus, the premature death that defines mundane violence are processes that necessitate the production and reproduction of this state of being. I argue that we must abolish the processes that lead to this mundane violence. In this piece, I methodologically show how language provides us with space to do so.  

In the next section, I argue how a schematic discourse analysis provides an analytic possibility toward a radical resection of mundane violence from the language used to describe the harm. Thinking with the radical engagement with Black method by Katherine McKittrick, an analytical possibility is a shift to studying ways of knowing, thus allowing one to unravel where and how Black thinkers imagine and practice liberation as we are weighed down by “induced accumulation by dispossession” (McKittrick, 2021, p. 3). 

 

Methodology 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore defines: “Racism is the state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death in distinct yet densely interconnected political geographies” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107). If we define discourse as representing, through language, the system of knowledge production that shapes and sustains vestiges of colonialism and imperialism, then racism is its materialization in our institutions.  Methodologically, I am interested in unravelling the interconnected political geographies produced through state-sanctioned and extra-legal educational processes. In this, a politics of scale contributes to making visible processes of group differentiated vulnerabilities. Neil Smith (1992) argues that social arguments often subordinate space to time, leading to the abandonment of a scalar analysis. He argues that a geographical conception of scale might provide language to analyze time-space. He defines scale as that which “is produced in and through societal activity which in turn produces and is produced by geographical structures of social interaction, (Smith, 1992, p. 61)”. What politics of scale offers is focusing our attention on the politics of dividing the world into localities, regions, and nations. Hence, a politics of scale focuses on the many contradictory social, economic, and political processes that combine to create various places. It does not treat space as absolute but argues that space can be produced, and that this production is inherently political (Lefebvre, 1976). 

In investigating arrestability, I am interested in emphasizing education’s role as a state institution; however, how do we define that role? In the gaps and fissures of social conflict, compromise, and cooperation, a state is a territorially bound collection of relatively specialized institutions that develop and change over time. States and governments differ in their analytical approaches. States are ideological and institutional capacities that derive their legitimacy from citizens. Governments are the animating forces that require policies plus personnel to set state capacities into motion to orchestrate or coerce people in their jurisdictions to live according to centrally created and enforced rules (Gilmore & Gilmore, 2007). If governmental and judicial systems are animating forces of the state, then their policies and agencies — including education —are necessarily part of space production. Abolition geography builds on this analysis by asserting a need to make something into something else by negating what is. In other words, when we understand education as a state institution whose ideologies are undergirded by systems such as colonialism and imperialism, an abolitionist methodology asserts that we must abolish the systems to create new environments. The goal is not to overlook the history of these systems but to find alternatives to how these systems are currently in motion (Gilmore, 2022, pp. 228-229). A scalar analysis aids us in developing a new language to analyze and recreate processes toward a radical resection of mundane violence. 

 

Analysis and Findings 

In this section, I critically examine the case of JKB v. Peel (Police Services), focusing on the intersection of education, language, and power and its implications within the educational system. This section aims to unpack the systemic inequities and the mundane violence experienced by Black children in school settings, highlighted by the processes that led to the arrest of JKB, a six-year-old Black girl handcuffed by Peel Police officers at her school in 2016. By employing a critical discourse analysis rooted in the Black Radical Tradition, this study investigates how the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario’s discourse obscures the role of education in perpetuating racial discrimination. The analysis emphasizes the importance of understanding how educational institutions contribute to the production and reproduction of racial hierarchies and exclusion through their language and practices.  

The descriptive analysis will present the narrative features identified in the case, summarizing the child’s biographical context and describing the events leading up to and following the incident. It will emphasize the roles and processes within the school that were highlighted during the Tribunal’s review. The interpretive analysis will then offer a schematic exploration of the language used within the Tribunal’s decision, focusing on the body, region, and race scales to reveal the underlying processes of hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion. 

This multifaceted approach aims to provide a deeper understanding of the systemic violence embedded in educational practices and advocate for an abolitionist discourse method to dismantle these oppressive structures. The findings underscore the necessity for transformative approaches that challenge the existing order of knowledge and envision new, liberatory ways of being and learning within educational spaces. 

 

Descriptive Analysis 

At the time of the incident, JKB was six years old and enrolled in Grade One at a public school in the Peel District School Board. She is described as typically sized for her age at between three and four feet tall, slim at about 48 pounds and Black. She lives with her mother and older siblings and has a very close relationship with her mother — finding it difficult to be away from her. Before the incident, she was subjected to several traumatic events, including the murder of her father a year prior and her mother undergoing treatments for cancer.  

When the child was in Junior Kindergarten, the school began calling her mother, asking her to pick up the applicant because she was refusing to stay in class, running around the school or fighting other children. When the mother arrived at the school, the applicant appeared fine. This cycle continued through to the next school year. JKB’s mother said these behaviours were not evident at home or when she attended the Boys and Girls Club. 

On JKB’s behavioural issues, their mother did everything she could to discover the underlying reasons for the applicant’s struggles at school. This included engaging in a parenting program, counselling sessions and using a book the school social worker provided. The mother also consented to a psycho-educational assessment of the applicant, which described JKB with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. The school put in place an Individualized Education Plan before September 2016. 

Before the incident, the police had been requested three times during the school year because of the applicant’s behavioural issues. One school board (DP) employee who testified offered that he had placed the child in a “child hold lock” on multiple occasions and claimed that he was exhausted when the police arrived. There was no indication that this child was offered mental health services or had a trusted adult within the school. Although the educator claims to be an expert in “de-escalation techniques,” there was no mention of what those techniques were. Instead, there was a foregrounding of how violent JKB was. 

In the front office, one officer handcuffed the child’s wrists. The school board employee was watching as this took place. While DP wrote detailed notes of the incident, he stood back during the time the child was handcuffed and observed. DP suggested that the child be moved to the back office when he saw that an assembly was letting out so they would “not be seen.” At least two other adults — the principal and DP––were present while the incident unfolded in the back office. In the back room, handcuffs were placed on the child’s ankles, and through DP’s testimony, she was also placed on her stomach. This was contested. There is no mention of DP or the principal objecting to the child being placed on her stomach at the time of the incident. 

DP’s testimony mentioned that the officers’ voices “were never aggressive or angry and that their demeanour was polite.” When the paramedics arrived, JKB calmed down, and the police officers stopped engaging. The purpose of the handcuffs was to control her and reduce injuries. A small Black child was hoisted across three rooms by grown men. The testimony of her violence did not include her size, age, or gender. The testimony disconnects her and reconstructs her as a violent human. While I do not know this child, using critical fabulation, I cannot help but imagine the fear in this child (Hartman, 2008). 

The final decision was that the judge found race a factor in the treatment of JKB and that her right to equal treatment under section 1 of the Code was breached. Section 1 of the Code states that “Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities, without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, family status or disability (Government of Canada, 1999)”. The judge asserted that the handcuffs placed on JKB’s ankles and wrists and those placed on her stomach are highly likely to have intensified her efforts to “break free” (as DP described it). While they did not believe these officers intended to discriminate against the applicant based on her race, it is clear that their goal was to control her. In the absence of any explanation for their overreaction in placing the child’s stomach down with her hands cuffed behind her, ankles cuffed, and remaining in this position for 28 minutes, the evidence supports the conclusion that the most likely reason for this action is that the officers were influenced by implicit bias in respect to the applicant’s race (JKB v. Peel, 2020). 

Although a victory, the decision does not answer the question — what made JKB arrestable? I wish to highlight the judge’s assertion that in the absence of any explanation for their overreaction. If the officers were not found to overreact, does equal treatment for children under the law mean that if a child is “difficult” (regardless of identity), they are arrestable? 

Schematic Interpretive Analysis 

The question of arrestability stems from the assumption that the phenomenon of violence does not only apply to physical harm. It can take place in omissions of curriculum, the weaponization of whiteness by educators, streaming students into programs that necessitate they cannot enter higher education spaces if they please, and pedagogical assumptions driven by colonial and imperial logic. In Miseducation of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson (1933) asks us, what is wrong with our present education? He argues that the demotivated and inferior intellectual performance of Black students and the racist attitudes of white students were seen as psychosocial responses regularly induced by the systematic nature of the cognitive distortions of being deemed inhuman (Woodson, 1933). Woodson’s thinking is an epistemological break as it argues that the carceral geography of education leads to educational spaces where students socially reflect group differentiation.  

 Arrestability demands an interrogation of the processes of harm that lead to the materialization of spaces that produce demotivation and inferior performance. In other words, processes produce spaces. In this section, I employ a schematic interpretive analysis to explore the meanings and implications of my descriptive analysis by highlighting the mundane violence of JKB v. Peel. I attend to this by analyzing body, region, and race scales. Through this analysis, I argue that mundane violence is a matrix containing interdependent scales that lead to “extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107).  

How am I defining scale? Scale is not simply a solidification of the spatial or materialization of contested social forces and processes. Scale is the motion of how whiteness has constructed the human in its own image (Wynter, 2003). Scale production provides language that allows us to view the institutions we interact with differently (Smith, 1992). A schematic exploration of language aims to find an alternative way of conceiving educational study as producing places. If we are to practice abolition as “radical consciousness in action,” how might education be reimagined (Gilmore, 2022, p. 227-28)?  How might activists, organizers, community organizations, and concerned citizens locate the changes needed for spaces where students are often at the mercy of those who do not see them as human? With extreme violence and abandonment, reform is not an option. A scalar analysis provides the opportunity for us to be more explicit in our desires for a public education that is transparent and accountable to the public. I emphasize public education because I assert that education is a right. In other words, all children should have the right to a good education. In untangling how various places are produced, we might begin to abolish mundane educational violence. 

The Scale of the Body 

Neil Smith (1992) argues that the scale of the body is socially constructed. The place of the body marks the boundary between self and other in a social as much as a physical sense. Additionally, identity and difference are central to the definition of scale and the body. Care for the body, physical access to and by the body, and control over the body are the central avenues of contest at this scale (Smith, 1992).  

For the child, the scale of the body is a space where there is a lack of control. In this case, JKB was handcuffed — her autonomy was removed. Before the handcuffing, the child was placed in a “child lock” on several occasions. This lack of autonomy or social narrative that the child’s body can be invaded at adult will is inculcated in our systems of education.  

To understand the mundane violence produced by this scale, we must attend to the history of childhood education in the West. Culture epoch theory, developed in the 1800s, was based on the law of recapitulation, stating that humans evolved from savagery to civilization over time (Baker, 1998). This theory aligns with the Darwinian model of biocentricity (Wynter, 2003), where humans are placed on a racialized axis with Whiteness as good and Blackness as bad. In the middle of this axis are those with high or low proximity to Whiteness (McKittrick, 2015).  Thus, leading to the theme of miscegenation in the foundational place of Man’s order of knowledge. As a result of culture-epoch theory, a correspondence between childhood and savagery was thought to mark the beginning of “development” in the young. In the late 19th century, childhood became a concept used in relation to public schooling in North America.  

Child study was the first reform movement to use “childhood” frequently and define what it meant. It was also the first movement to centre the child in curriculum meant to target public school teaching (Baker, 1998). This is an essential point because the function of public schooling in Europe and the US was to mould a specific citizen. Germany became a model of organizing and teaching the redemption of young people through tasks and relations. As with colonial logic, this mass education was tied to Latin Europe’s perception of Judeo-Christian values. In Prussia, schooling was tied to Christian pastoralism, which encouraged salvation through the state. In the United States, there was an emphasis on specific values that moulded a good citizen. 

“Savages” and the “civilized” were described in child-study as having different phenotypes and natures. In the new terminology, “child development” was posited as a measure of one’s “racial evolution” (Baker, 1998, p. 164). If there is a binary of “savage” and “civilized” created by child study, then a human who is both child and Other is a savage child. If the savage child is not deemed fully human, where do they exist? From a young age, there is a necessity for this child to either conform and believe their existence is subhuman or resist while being presented with an education that deems them subhuman. The scale of the body as a child reveals the savage child by arguing that the social relations of perception produce spaces, which produce and reproduce their unhuman status. I argue that the discipline of the savage child through carceral methods, such as restraint and the allowance of police intervention, reveals their status through the invasion of the body and the removal of autonomy. This removal is justified through logic such as child study and developmentalism.  

The scale of the body, particularly for children, serves as a critical site where social constructions of identity, difference, and control are contested and manifested. The example of JKB being handcuffed illustrates the profound lack of autonomy children experience, reflecting broader societal narratives that normalize the invasion and control of their bodies. Understanding this dynamic requires examining childhood education’s historical and cultural underpinnings in the West, particularly the influence of culture epoch theory and its alignment with racialized hierarchies. The evolution of child study and its impact on public schooling underscores how educational systems have historically perpetuated notions of the “savage” child, reinforcing their subhuman status through carceral practices and disciplinary measures. By critically analyzing these educational discourses and their implications, we can better understand the ongoing violence enacted upon children’s bodies and challenge the structures that justify such practices. Analysis on the scale of the body highlights the importance of rethinking childhood education and calls for re-evaluating the systems that perpetuate inequity and dehumanization. 

The Scale of the Region 

Neil Smith (1992) defines the region as the site of economic production. It is largely bound up with the larger rhythms of the national and global economy, and regional identity is constructed disproportionally around the kinds of work performed there (Smith, 1992). Sylvia Wynter argues that our learning systems conserve the status-orienting principle by producing and reproducing Man’s order of knowledge (Wynter, 2003). By analyzing these learning systems on the scale of the region, I look to investigate how the mismanagement and anti-Blackness in education systems can create school cultures that are toxic to Black children. Unlike other countries, Canada is unique as it does not have a national ministry of education. Instead, the responsibility for education is given to the provinces. Each province has its own Ministry of Education, which develops policies and provides funding to school boards (Ministry of Education, n.d). How does this assemblage of education impact the ways that group-differentiated vulnerabilities materialize? I emphasize a regional analysis to argue the necessity of assessing the national and global economic processes and the disproportionally constructed identities. As a Canadian scholar of Caribbean descent, I find frustration in how United States narrative centrism makes it difficult for others to assess what processes should be abolished in their localized political situation. As a result, countries like Canada, which are deeply connected to historical European colonial and imperial conquest (Lowe, 2015), default to liberal arguments of representation (Coulthard, 2007) or internationalist arguments of global citizenship (Patel, 2017), leaving Black people vulnerable and unprotected (Statistics Canada, 2024). 

Three years after JKB’s arrest, on November 27, 2019, the Ontario Minister of Education ordered an urgent review of the Peel District School Board to address serious concerns about anti-Black racism and systemic inefficiencies, leadership and governance dysfunction, and unfair human resources practices within the board. For context, 69% of people in the Peel region identify as racialized, with the Black population representing the second largest visible minority (Peel Anti-Black Racism Project, 2023; Region of Peel, 2021). The range reviewed by the Ministry to make these claims includes 2016 when the arrest occurred. 

The Review Team conducted various consultations between December 2019 and February 2020, including interviews, community and student consultation sessions, and written submissions. Based on the Reviewers’ Report and Recommendations. On March 13, 2020, the Minister issued 27 binding Directions to the PDSB. Arleen Huggins was appointed by the Minister of Education on April 27, 2020, to investigate the PDSB’s compliance with the Minister’s binding Directions issued on March 13, 2020. The Minister received Ms. Huggins’ report on May 18, 2020. The Minister then gave the PDSB one final directive, with a deadline of June 22, 2020.
The board did not meet the directives. A government-mandated supervisor, Bruce Rodrigues, was appointed to the Peel District School Board in June 2020. It was two reports on widespread racism in the PDSB that prompted the decision to appoint a supervisor. The reports described PDSB’s inadequate response, lack of action, and commitment to fully combat anti-Black racism and Islamophobia, discrimination against other minority groups, and broader equity imperatives. It also described human resource practices, board leadership, and governance issues (Ministry of Education, 2020).  

After almost three years, in early 2023, the PDSB posted a notice announcing the end of its supervision. Rodrigues updated all 27 directives in his final report, some still in the works. The board must provide the ministry with quarterly updates on its progress. Advocacy Peel, a community group that advocates against racism and discrimination in education, was disappointed with the end of the supervision,  

“Many Peel residents are disappointed and feel betrayed because the ministry never consulted with Black community representatives until after the decision was made,” according to a statement. “Once again, the historical practice of ‘decisions made about us and for us but not with us’ repeats itself and does not instill confidence and hope in the community.” (Toronto Star, 2023) 

Although Rodrigues seemed hopeful of the work done within the board, the reports of anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and discrimination have not ceased. This communicates that the discrimination processes cited in JKB’s case have not been abolished. In 2022, students of the Peel District School Board opened up about the racism they experienced. From racial slurs in the hallway to teachers ignorant of their cultural backgrounds, four students opened up to CBC News during a panel discussion about their personal experiences of anti-Black racism within the Peel board (CBC, 2022). On this  

On this regional scale, it is clear that the environment JKB entered in 2016 was producing and reproducing a toxic culture that coagulated in her arrest. This reading situates our gaze to consider how the regional scale influences the production of space and place. While police officers may not have overtly discriminated against JKB, the place the school was situated (on a small regional scale) and the state the school resides in (on a large regional scale) might have produced an environment prime for harm, leading to the climax of events September 2016. From the lack of support to her labelling as a problem child, it was not an isolated incident of discrimination but a systematic process of educational neglect.  

The Scale of Race  

Diverging from Neil Smith’s spatialized politics, Treva Ellison (2020) argues that Blackness is materially and ideologically produced as a kind of place. Instead of relegating race to the scale of the body, they assert that the criteria of differences between place production need recalibration when an analysis overrepresents configurations of race, gender, and sexuality. Ellison’s critique of the Violence against Women Act (VAWA) shows how race influences the differentiation between juridical and ethical concerns (Ellison, 2020). Their argument that Blackness is produced as a kind of place provides a critical perspective for analyzing educational systems. Applying this analysis to Ontario’s education system reveals the systematic isolation and differential treatment of race, highlighting the persistent and ever-present legacies of colonialism and imperialism in schools. 

How might we use Ellison’s analysis to think about arrestability? Their argument helps us answer the question of arrestability by elucidating how race (with its various historical and sociological dimensions and complications) undergirds the processes that produce places. Within JKB’s context, the history of education in Ontario reveals the systematic isolation of Black students and persistent differential treatment in schooling spaces.  In the province, Black segregated schools existed until the 1970s (Bradburn, 2018). Additionally, Black students across school boards are over-disciplined and underrepresented in advanced classes through the generational practice of streaming. These statistics have been consistent for over 30 years — even with reforms (James, 2022). The heinous legacy of residential schools continues to proliferate today, with Indigenous students struggling to receive equal educational opportunities to their non-Indigenous counterparts (Fontaine, 2018; CBC, 2021). Their racialization has led to disproportionate surveillance, underfunding, and inadequate culturally relevant support. Racialization has a specific role in how the place of school is experienced and produced for particular bodies. Thus, methodologically attending scalar reveals group differentiating processes obscured by universalized notions of the body and the child. 

The decision exemplifies how focusing on police discrimination privileges the school as a site of social problems while neglecting racial dynamics. This focus reveals an assumption that racial issues are external to the school’s decision-making, overlooking the production of schools as places of racialized violence. This overlook is stressed by the persistent normalization of anti-Blackness within the Peel District School Board (PDSB) that produced an unsafe place for JKB, marked by consistent headlocks, lack of culturally relevant counselling, and frequent police involvement. 

By overlooking the scale of race, language renders police involvement the focus of the most significant concern and the process that requires the most attention. This becomes a problem because processes of arrestability do not end when the police are removed. The event only took place because of the space produced by the school. A critical schematic analysis of language in the Decision reveals an assumption that the child’s treatment in the school leading up to the event was not racial. However, the treatment by the police could be racial. As evidenced in the above section, the PDSB produced a space where anti-Blackness was normalized. Thus, the school for JKB was produced as an unsafe space where she was repeatedly deemed symbolic death on multiple scales (Wynter, 2003). 

Understanding race as a scalar problem shows how educational spaces are experienced differently by those who are racialized. This perspective challenges us to rethink how educational environments are structured and to address the ingrained inequalities within them. By recognizing and dismantling these processes, we can create educational spaces that are truly inclusive and equitable for all students. 

 

Discussion  

Black studies and anticolonial thought offer methodological practices wherein we read, live, hear, groove, create, and write across a range of temporalities, places, texts, and ideas that build on existing liberatory practices and pursue ways of living the world that are uncomfortably generous and provisional and practical and, as well, imprecise and unrealized. (Katherine McKittrick, 2021, p. 5) 

The offering of a schematic descriptive and interpretive discourse analysis is meant not only to interrogate processes of harm but also “to show how radical consciousness in action resolves into liberated life-ways.”  In this section, I discuss how a methodology that looks to abolish the processes of hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion within education might resolve into liberated life-ways. This section aims to synthesize the insights gained from the analysis of the JKB v. Peel (Police Services) case, emphasizing the broader implications of these findings within the educational system and beyond.  

Here, I look to contextualize my findings within the broader theoretical frameworks of Sylvia Wynter and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, discussing the need for an abolitionist approach rooted in anti-colonialism and a renewed humanism to address the deep-seated racial violence perpetuated in schools. The discussion will also highlight the necessity of adopting an abolitionist discourse approach within educational research and practice. This involves recognizing and dismantling the existing structures of power that perpetuate harm and envisioning new, liberatory ways of being and learning. By focusing on the hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion processes identified in the language analysis, this section argues for a radical transformation of the educational system that goes beyond surface-level reforms to address the root causes of educational inequities. 

I emphasize the urgent need for collective action and commitment to reimagining education as a space of liberation where all children, particularly those from marginalized communities, can experience dignity, respect, and humanity. This requires a shift in focus from individual acts of discrimination to the systemic and structural conditions that produce and sustain such acts, advocating for a comprehensive abolitionist approach to educational transformation. 

 

Unsettling the Colonial Order of Knowledge in Education 

Sylvia Wynter’s concept of the “coloniality of being” helps us better understand how radical consciousness in action resolves into liberated life-ways by directing us to understand how educational systems perpetuate colonial legacies (Wynter, 2003). Wynter argues that the prevailing order of knowledge is deeply rooted in a Eurocentric and biocentric framework, which marginalizes those who do not conform to this narrow definition of the human. This colonial framework is evident in the case of JKB, where her treatment by the school and police reflects deep-seated racial biases and dehumanizing practices. 

In the analysis, the school’s repeated calls to the mother about JKB’s behaviour, the use of a “child hold lock,” and the eventual handcuffing of the six-year-old girl highlight how Black children are often seen as inherently problematic. This perception is a direct consequence of the colonial order of knowledge that positions Blackness as a deviation from the norm, warranting control and punishment. Wynter’s framework helps us understand that these actions are not isolated incidents but part of a broader system that perpetuates white supremacist hierarchies through education. 

Wynter emphasizes the need to unsettle the existing colonial order of knowledge that shapes educational discourse and practices. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario’s language, which failed to fully address the educational system’s role in JKB’s arrest, exemplifies how language and power intersect to maintain racial discrimination. By critically analyzing the Tribunal’s language, it becomes clear that the focus was on the immediate actions of the police rather than the systemic educational practices that led to the situation. Wynter’s theoretical framework calls for a radical rethinking of education, advocating for approaches that challenge and dismantle these colonial legacies to create a truly inclusive and equitable educational environment. 

She extends her discussion of the “coloniality of being” by arguing for a transformation of language itself. Wynter (2015) asserts that we are a storytelling species. She states that the transformation of our species is the Third Event, which completely changes the question of who and what we are as humans through language (Wynter, 2015). Away from the axis of being that white supremacist neoliberalism has given to us, this Event foregrounds a new way of being human. From this understanding, Wynter elucidates that education is an initiation into the symbols of the current order — whatever that order may be. In this, she argues that education can produce and reproduce the current order of knowledge or remake it (Alagraa, 2021). This production and reproduction impact how place and space are produced — including how the curriculum is shaped, how school policies are implemented, and who is deemed a “disruptor of space.”  

 

Examining State, Government, and Spatial Dimensions of Marginalization 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s scholarship offers a lens through which we can examine the concepts of the “state” and “government,” particularly in the context of enduring material inequalities. Her analysis delves into capitalism’s mechanisms for sidelining certain groups towards systemic neglect and premature death (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107). As a geographer, Gilmore uniquely focuses on the spatial dimensions of marginalization, with a critical eye on institutions such as prisons as sites where these injustices are vividly enacted. Her approach invites a reconsideration of value, commodification, and labour dynamics as intertwined with social stratification. 

Gilmore’s work animates Wynter’s conversation of our present order of knowledge by showing us the art of noticing governing codes in our everyday lives. This is most prominently featured in Gilmore’s definition of racism: “Racism is the state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death in distinct yet densely interconnected political geographies” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107). Gilmore’s definition is not confined to prison infrastructure but extends to other domains, such as education, arguing that they, too, are implicated in group differentiation. Abolition, in this context, is seen not merely as dismantling oppressive structures but as a profound reimagining of society that addresses the root causes of organized neglect and premature death. Gilmore advocates for spatial awareness in our pursuit of freedom, suggesting that liberation involves a collective re-envisioning of our everyday spaces and interactions (Gilmore, 2022).  

In the analysis, I highlighted the ways JKB was repeatedly disciplined, subjected to a psycho-educational assessment, and eventually handcuffed. These actions reflect a broader pattern of mundane violence where Black children are hyper-surveilled, under-supported, and criminalized within educational settings. Gilmore’s call for noticing how the governing codes operate in our world encourages us to envision education as a space of liberation, where all children, particularly those coded outside the definition of human, can experience dignity, respect, and humanity.  

 

Synthesizing Wynter and Gilmore: Reimagining Education as a Space of Liberation 

If we read Sylvia Wynter and Gilmore in conversation, education’s function in our current episteme begins to reveal itself.  The first part of Gilmore’s racism definition speaks of “the state-sanctioned and/or extralegal exploitation of group differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107). Abolition geographies of education open up possibilities for educational researchers to think about various scales. From this lens, Gilmore urges education to think about it as a place in the world and expands its scope to reckon with space, place, time, scale, and landscapes within and without traditional institutions. The analytic possibility of geography allows us to notice how “race is a modality through which political-economic globalization is lived” (Gilmore, 2022, p. 107). In other words, we engage with how capital impacts curriculum and pedagogy by shaping ontological commitments. For example, Gilmore asks us, “Does education receive the same kind of financial and political support, or command the same attention to demands, as police or the military? (Gilmore, 2022, p. 112).”  

By synthesizing Wynter’s and Gilmore’s theoretical contributions, we comprehensively understand how systemic racism and colonial legacies manifest in educational settings. Wynter’s focus on the coloniality of being and the need to unsettle the colonial order of knowledge aligns with Gilmore’s abolitionist approach, which seeks to dismantle systemic structures of oppression. Together, these frameworks provide a robust foundation for analyzing and addressing the systemic inequities highlighted in the case of JKB. 

The findings of this piece underscore the importance of adopting a critical abolitionist perspective in educational research and practice. This involves recognizing and challenging the deep-rooted colonial and racial biases that shape educational institutions and creating new, transformative approaches that promote equity and justice for all students. By contextualizing the findings within the broader theoretical frameworks of Sylvia Wynter and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, this study advocates for a radical reimagining of education as a space of liberation and humanity. 

 

Conclusion 

This paper set out to interrogate the arrest of JKB, a six-year-old Black girl, through the lens of educational discourse, systemic inequities, and the broader sociopolitical landscape. The analysis, grounded in the Black Radical Tradition, reveals the deep-seated processes that contribute to the dehumanization and criminalization of Black children within educational settings. By employing critical discourse analysis, this study highlights how the language and practices of educational institutions, interwoven with broader societal structures of systemic racism, perpetuate harm against Black children. 

Addressing the question of what made JKB arrestable requires us to delve into the mundane violence embedded in educational systems. Exploring the scales of the body, region, and race demonstrates that educational spaces are far from neutral. They are, instead, arenas where historical and contemporary processes of hierarchy, dispossession, and exclusion intersect and manifest. The case of JKB starkly illustrates the insufficiency of a universalist anti-discrimination framework in addressing the pervasive, systemic violence that occurs in everyday educational practices. 

My findings underscore the necessity of an abolitionist discourse within educational research and practice. This involves recognizing and critiquing the existing structures of power, but more importantly, dismantling them and envisioning new, liberatory modes of being and learning. By shifting our focus from isolated acts of discrimination to the broader systemic and structural conditions that produce such acts, we can begin to address the root causes of educational inequities. 

The answer to the question of arrestability lies in understanding that the processes leading to JKB’s arrest are deeply rooted in the historical and ongoing racialization of Black children. The school environment, steeped in colonial and imperial understandings of the human, created conditions where a Black child could be viewed and treated as a threat. This incident is not isolated but indicative of the broader societal and institutional practices that dehumanize and criminalize Black children. 

Ultimately, the case of JKB serves as a compelling reminder of the urgent need for radical transformation within our educational systems. It calls for an abolitionist methodology that seeks to dismantle not only the overt manifestations of racial violence but also the underlying processes that sustain them. This requires a collective commitment to reimagining education as a space of liberation where all children, especially those from marginalized communities, can experience dignity, respect, and humanity. Through this abolitionist lens, we can work towards creating educational environments that genuinely uphold the principles of equity and justice, ensuring that no child is ever rendered arrestable. 

Notes on Contributor

Gabrielle Warren  is a Ph.D. student in Curriculum and Pedagogy at OISE/University of Toronto. She is deeply interested in the history and politics of Canadian education, with a specific focus on policy research. For the past eight years, Gabrielle has worked with Start2Finish Canada, an organization dedicated to alleviating the effects of poverty for school-aged children through community connection and educational enrichment. In her role, she has developed programs, collaborated with researchers, engaged with volunteers, and participated in anti-poverty campaigns, integrating her academic work with direct action and advocacy.

 

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