RE vOLUTIONARY POLITIcAL EdUcATION

Igrew up in Southern California. The community that I lived in was racially diverse, but there was a very small concentration of Black people. In my neighborhood, there were four Black families that lived on our block, we all knew each other. In our schools, there were very few Black educators, so much so that during my matriculation from Kindergarten to senior year of high school, I didn’t meet a Black educator until seventh grade. I never had a Black teacher before starting college at UCLA at age 18. However, the importance of a holistic education was not lost on my father, who was at one point a lawyer and became a college professor – as a child, he was my source of political education and the voice of liberation. Still, because of his proximity to me, and my innate stubbornness to his directions, some of the history and movementmaking fell on deaf ears and I continued in without the guidance of any other Black educators. In suburban communities, the loss of political education occurs as communities are dispersed and individualistic, schools do not reflect the diversity of their constituents, and cultural education becomes inferior to common-core curriculum. In large cities and predominantlyBlack communities, the driving factor for political education is the proximity to the issue, as well as proximity to others facing the same issues. Regardless of location, Black students deserve access to their history, culture and the knowledge to be passed onto them. For Black students, acquiring an education, both traditional and political, is a greater struggle than their nonBlack counterparts. A political education is defined as “teaching students to take risks, challenge those with power, honor critical traditions, and be reflexive about how authority is used in the classroom.”

(1) For Black Americans, the importance of political education coincides with breaking early cycles in traditional education systems that cause Black students to feel inferior or provide disrupting narratives through “Western” pedagogy. Changing those cycles through political education looks like questioning the political agenda and/or assertions made about their race through selected educational texts, challenging feelings of imposter syndrome, altering the axis of power from hierarchy between teachers and students to mutuality, or honoring their culture and beliefs in peaceful acts of self-expression. One major was we are combatting the issue of political education is by having more Black educators in our classrooms, which has proven to not only benefit Black students but all students in the class. (2) The challenge presented from a lack of Black educators and lack of athome political education is equity. We see the issue of equity in our California school systems as Black students are gravely underperforming compared to their counterparts, especially since the covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the population’s exposure to health crisis, financial burden, and food insecurity. There are just over 300,000 Black students in Calfornia schools, and the statistical underperformance is a calling card for transformation in our school systems. According to “Black in School,” a panel of Black educators and policymakers dedicated to the improvement of Black student achievement, Black Californians:

(2)

67% of California Black children do not read or write at grade level.

86% of Black students are not at grade level in science.

31% of Black students have completed their A-G requirements, (necessary for admission to a California State college or university) as opposed to 49% of White students and

70% of Asian students. 77% of Black students graduate high school, in contrast to 88% of White students and 93% of Asian students. The underperformance of our children is directly connected to the inequitable distribution of resources and funding in schools, and continues to impact students after their secondary education ends. We know that education directly affects the likelihood of being incarcerated in a lifetime, and if Black and Latino students are systemically and historically underserved, we will remain the largest populations in prison. Of the 58 counties in California, only six counties arrest their white residents at a higher rate than its Black residents. (3) That means 90% of California’s counties are overpolicing Black Americans, who consist of six percent of the state’s population. This cycle of disenfranchisement is why high school dropouts are arrested at 3.5 the rate of graduates and only 20% of California inmates are considered “literate.” (4) Latinos constitute 44% of California inmates, and Black inmates are 28% as the two largest demographics in the prison system.

So what makes our political education revolutionary?

An early education on Black Americans legal rights and how to use them. While learning from Black educators and incorporating culturally competent curriculum is uber important in the struggle, the focus on legal education for Black Americans could alleviate a small threshold of the burden that the fear of incarceration bears on us. Black communities, parents, women’s groups and movement spaces have all advocated for legal education as a preventative measure, and in some cases impart it themselves upon their community; here, the fear of incarceration or death by police becomes an emotional labor expended by Black people – even when the threat of violence is not imminent, many of us have routinized and naturalized ways to protect ourselve into our daily modes of being. To take this further, we must mobilize on the praxis that this is not a labor of love, but fear, and to transform the small ways we protect ourselves into a knowledge base with access to resources and people who will fight with you. If we can make change with one less plea deal or one less invasive traffic stop, then we have made change. I am not saying that knowing our rights will end the violent persecution of Black people by police and the justice system, as we know that system was built to work against us and is doing so effectively. We mourn the loss of those lives daily. We know the systems of knowledge and power in this country are not constructed with Black faces in mind, yet use Black bodies to actualize their visions. What I argue is that we have been doing the work. The unintentional labor of care and passion for community is apart of the work. The ability to gain knowledge and pass it on, is apart of the work. Becoming the Black teacher you never had or the Black lawyer someone may have needed is apart of the work. A political and legal education (composed of legal rights and how to use them effectively) is one piece of the puzzle that has the ability to impact Black Americans, Indigenous peoples and Latinos on the scale of the individual. When one teaches, two learn.