Knowledge and POWER: A Case Study on Anti-Blackness within Schooling
Publication Date
7-30-2020
Document Type
Contribution to a Book
Publication Title
The Future is Black: Afro Pessimism, Fugitivity, and Radical Hope in Education
Editor
Carl A. Grant, Ashley N. Woodson, Michael J. Dumas
DOI
10.4324/9781351122986-15
First Page
95
Last Page
100
Abstract
In one of the author's most memorable sessions with Shaun, he passionately expressed his dreams of traveling the world and studying in Italy to become a “world renowned chef.” Public shaming is as much a part of the school culture at POWER middle school as bells and uniforms. The policing structures that inform POWER middle school’s policies also inform Shaun’s consciousness as it relates to what he understands as acceptable communal realities. Shaun’s community pays what researchers call a poverty tax, where resources like gasoline, groceries, and even parking meters are priced significantly higher than in nearby white communities. POWER’s schooling processes reflect a larger neoliberal culture that reproduce the community’s disenfranchisement; it engages the language of “hard work,” “grit” and “delayed gratification” in order to explain away legacies of discriminatory and excluding legislation, gang-injunctions, poverty taxes, and other forms of state sanctioned violence.
Department
Secondary Education
Recommended Citation
Tiffani Marie. "Knowledge and POWER: A Case Study on Anti-Blackness within Schooling" The Future is Black: Afro Pessimism, Fugitivity, and Radical Hope in Education (2020): 95-100. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351122986-15
