By Sikivu Hutchinson
Now that the grand jury in Staten Island has desecrated Eric
Garner’s dying breath and re-confirmed fascism in the U.S. what Black person
has confidence in the justice system? What
descendent of slaves has “faith” that speechifying, praying, and pleading for
the system to recognize Black life will have any demonstrable impact on the
United Terrorists of America? Who
believes that the rule of law means anything other than a jack boot and a lynch
rope around the neck of African-descent people who built this country brick by
brick?
As progressive educators many of us enter the classroom every
day with fierce expectations of change and redress. Working against textbooks that obliterate
poor and working class people of color, we teach our students about social history
to enlighten, inspire, transform and enable them to think critically about the
similarities and differences between past and present. Even among those of us who push back against
grand narratives that pimp the obscenity of Western exceptionalism there is an
implicit assumption about progress; a secular faith in “advancement” despite the face
of insidious institutional racism.
Today,
we go into the classroom with that secular faith blown to bits yet again. Today, some of us will tell our students that the Garner
decision makes it important to amplify that people of color have always fought terrorism
on this soil. Some of us will say that the
U.S. has a history of using the Orwellian language of freedom and justice to vilify
the non-Western other while waging terrorist war against its own. During World War II black activists fought the
hypocrisy of the U.S.’ campaign against fascism in Europe. These interventions were the legacy of 18th
century revolutionary war era protests and legal resistance that free and
enslaved Africans mounted against the tyranny of “democratic” empire. Social justice pedagogy is designed to empower
young people to critique, question and ultimately organize against these
contradictions. When we teach we try and
lift up these brutal contradictions and show how they inform the present. In an age of wall-to-wall corporate media it’s
one of the last bastions of decolonization for youth of color who are told that
race is no barrier but see white supremacy at work every day. But in the cold light of unrelenting state
criminality and savage indifference to black life it’s difficult to remain hopeful.
Discussing racism and discrimination with South Los Angeles students
in a new multiracial leadership group before the Ferguson decision, some were
initially hesitant to unpack their experiences.
Yet in the same school students reported that some teachers divide their
classrooms by seating “smart” Latino students on one side and “underachieving”
African American students on the other. In
the same school black boys are led away in handcuffs by school police every
week. In the same school “out of control”
students of all genders are physically restrained. In the same school, and in schools just like
it across the district, black students are grossly under-represented in
Advanced Placement and Honors classes but pack special education classes and detention
halls. Unlike the murder of Eric Garner,
these are the routine, everyday acts of state violence that are never captured
on videotape but also signal that breathing while black remains a punishable,
lethal offense. Our challenge as
activist teachers and mentors is to keep pushing students to see that the
system doesn’t want them to see these terrorist violations as the same.
