Post for Sam, Carol, Kakas, Erin, Ryan, Celestina

What gets realer than the school to prison pipeline? What gets realer than the projection of a child in 3^rd grade filing the bed of a prison in the future? It’s crazy to try to think that a 3 year old child can be suspended… from pre-school... As I listened to the American Life podcast about the personal narratives of the interviewees, I couldn't help but look across my classroom usually filled with 7^th grade boys. Disdain for black skin is interwoven in the ethos of American life. It is so rooted and grounded in every system that it is no more alarming than the 16 year old students in Brooklyn, NY that were subjected to watching  their friends be put into handcuffs by an undercover cop, who incited the response he received. However, these flaws don’t exist solely within the schools themselves. The question of “is what they’re learning in school preparing them for the outside world they live in?” is such that when kids are doing well in school, they still have to go home and navigate their neighborhoods. The covert and overt system of racism in American society crushes them. When a 3 year old boy is suspended for doing the same things his peers do without receiving a consequence for it, he is taught that he is less-than and unequal-to. He begins to understand that each framework of society categorizes him as threatening the balance of the system which allows for a firm grip placed on by oppressors.

I go back to the idea that a toddler is told to leave school because he is black. And racist individuals who I presume wouldn't consider themselves racist, or bigots are teaching him how to color and learn the alphabet. These individuals who stand by as a black child is treated unfairly are just as much a part of the problem. Their silence perpetuates the actions of those in charge of making the decision to discipline a child in that manner. In Arvada, CO students are protesting the district’s decision to change the History curriculum and make it more ‘patriotic’. In Tuscan, AZ students tried to fight against an oppressive school district hell-bent on taking away their ethnic studies courses. In the documentary “Precious knowledge,” students were shown which part of the American dream truly belongs to them. These students were stereotyped and categorized in a negative light, such that the masses supported the politicized and legalized movement to ban TUSD. The students in Arvada are viewed as heroes standing up for what they believe in, yet the students in Tuscan are vagrants and un-American. The students in Arvada are white and middle class, moreover, the students in Tuscan are Hispanic, black, and poor whites. 

The oppressive narrative is nothing new. The manner in which people of color are oppressed change depending on the temperature of the nation. Overt racism is currently not status quo (unless you carry a gun, badge and ride in a blue and white car laminated with words about protecting and serving) and would be met with some back lash. However the system is broken. The faults, fissures and fractures in the rocks are only made more apparent when more liberalized North-eastern parts of the country claim that the nation is now post-racial due to the fact that a bi-racial president was elected.

 I can continue to analyze and theorize the issues, but the question is where do we go from here? How do we EFFECTIVELY combat these systems of power and oppression? How do we ensure that overtly racist individuals don’t get to make decisions for the general population? And then how, like Jose Gonzalez do we impart “Precious Knowledge?”