Many racialized groups in the U.S. have pushed back against these practices such as: the East L.A. Chicano walkouts, Black Panther Party Oakland Community Schools, and the Third World Liberation Front. These movements share in common the fight to gain control of how schools serve historically disenfranchised communities, what is taught, how it is taught, who does the teaching, and bringing a quality education.
The 1968 East L.A. Chicano Blowouts were mass student walkouts across the Los Angeles Unified School District to protest the treatment of high school Mexican American students. The treatment of these students included: corporal punishment administered by teachers and administrators, rules against speaking Spanish, not having access to bathroom facilities during school hours, irrelevant curriculum to the community, not enough teachers that shared a similar background to students, and educational tracking. A high school teacher, Sal Castro, and students organized many high schools in the district to walk out of schools in order to peacefully demonstrate against this treatment. This movement is also known as a catapult to the Chicano movement of the late 60’s and 70’s. Please see the Chapter 6, page 6.2: "Roots and Resistance" for more details on the impacts of the East L.A. Chicano Blowouts.
The Black Panther Party (BPP) is known for having a great impact on California social movements and on the U.S. imagination of what Black Power is and how to organize effectively. Among the many impacts of the BPP to culture and society they had a great impact on how to re-imagine education in the U.S. In 1973 the BPP established its own school in East Oakland called the Oakland Community School (OCS) directed by Ericka Huggins and Donna Howell. The school was active until 1982. The creation of the school was a direct response to the disinvestment of public education in Oakland and to provide a model for liberatory education. OCS was so impactful that it influenced the creation of the U.S. free lunch program to lower income children.
Point 5 of the Black Panther Party’s 10 Point Platform:
We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else (Ealey et al., 2016).
OCS offered much more than breakfast, lunch and dinner to its students; it was a true model for a well rounded education for its students. Students at OCS practiced meditation and mindfulness in order to focus on student’s mental health. They also participated in martial arts classes and peer led justice committees. Just as important OCS provided youth with the opportunity to learn from people who looked like them and who were from their own community. Please see Chapter 2 and Chapter 11 on the creation of Ethnic Studies and the influences of the Black Panther Party.
The first established Historically Black College or University (HBCU) was Cheyney University of Pennsylvania in 1837 a little over 200 years after Harvard University (the first university of the U.S.). Cheyney University was established before the civil war, whereas most HBCUs were established post civil war.
According to the article “The danger of history slipping away: the Heritage Campus and HBCUs: HBCU presidents must learn to use preservation planning as a tool to leverage new resources” by Clement and Lidsky, HBCUs need over $1 billion to bring the many buildings up to code. “HBCUs are as diverse as higher education. These institutions have different histories, different cultures, and different resources. They are public and private, large and small, two-year and four-year, single sex and coed, religious and non-denominational. The common thread that binds them is their mission to provide access to higher education for African Americans, who were previously enslaved and later segregated in the United States” (Clement & Lidsky, 2011).
The Legacy of Ethnic Studies in Education
An important question to address is, what methods are being used to effectively teach children who attend underfunded schools without the same resources as children in wealthier neighborhoods? Underfunded schools are disadvantaged in many ways when attempting to close the achievement gap; some examples are they are not able to access the same teacher recruitment strategies, educational technology, and extra-curricular opportunities. Underfunded schools have found creative ways to implement pedagogical practices to help their students succeed for example, implementing culturally relevant pedagogy, hiring teachers of color from similar backgrounds as students, and in some districts finding alternatives to campus police presence.
California’s AB 101 is the implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy. Through this bill all C.A. high school students are required to take one semester of Ethnic Studies before graduating. Although AB 101 requires C.A. K-12 school districts to implement ethnic studies by 2025 many districts are starting to offer Ethnic Studies courses (Karlamangla, 2021).
In a 2021, Stanford University study of Ethnic Studies courses in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) found that these courses had long lasting positive impacts (Dreilinger, 2021). Ethnic Studies courses in SFUSD boosted attendance for at-risk students, boosted academic performance, helped them earn more credits, increased GPA, increased graduation probability, and likelihood of enrolling in college.
Furthermore, the study used social psychology theoretical perspectives to demonstrate that taking an ethnic studies course in 9th grade aligned with being a psychological intervention. Ethnic studies courses offering a “sense of belonging in school, affirm personal values and forewarning about stereotypes have all shown promise in improving student engagement and motivation.” (Dreilinger, 2021). Ethnic studies classes in this study also demonstrated that students were able to see their ancestors and other groups in the curriculum, whereas these narratives have been omitted in the master narrative. Please see Chapter 2 for more information on the movement for Ethnic Studies in higher education and K-12 districts.
Occupy Wall Street
One of the largest and most recent popular movements to fight against income and wealth inequity was the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, according to the OWS official website “the movement was a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Manhattan and quickly spread globally. OWS fought back against major banks and corporations involved in the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations” (occupywallst.org, 2022). The OWS movement slogan was “we are the 99 percent” in contrast to the idea that the 1 percent of ultra wealthy hold much of the resources in the U.S. Some of the goals included better jobs, more equal distribution of income, less profit for bankers, and stricter policies on banks negotiating with consumer services, i.e. mortgages and debit cards. Other goals included bank reform, student loan forgiveness, and fixing the home foreclosures.
The Ongoing Struggle for Reparations
In his article, The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a powerful statement of the morality of the US not coming to terms with the historic economic inequities the legacy of slavery has left on generations of Black American families. Coates writes,
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. (Coates, 2014).
In many ways, it seems simple enough. Wealth was forcibly extracted from Black laborers in the form of a lifetime of free labor, so in order to atone for it, financial compensation should now be provided. As a gesture, in 2008 Congress apologized for Jim Crow laws and Slavery, nine states have officially apologized for slavery (Congress Apologizes for Slavery, Jim Crow, 2008). How can the US repay the value of the economic extraction of labor during state sponsored slavery?
Reparations are righting the wrongs of a past injustice through resources or monetary payment. The idea of reparations for slavery and the recommendations for it is not new to the US and was first discussed after the emancipation proclamation as a policy of “40 acres and a mule” in 1865 (NAACP, 2019). Then again in 1894 the US senate would propose a bill to grant direct payments of “$500 to all ex-slaves plus monthly pensions.” The US public would hear the demands for reparations during the 1960’s Black Power movement, then again in the 1980’s (NAACP, 2019). But the case for reparations has always remained controversial and politically challenging.
Any authentic conversation on reparations acknowledges the role of local, state, and federal governments and laws during and after slavery. After slavery ended, its legacy has sustained such disparate outcomes in wealth by race that some sort of “repair” must also occur for there to be economic equity. In recognition of this, California recently emerged as a leading state in the discussion for reparations. At the end 2022 California has still remained in discussion of how much financial reparations (possibly $350,000) and to whom (Mahdawi, 2022).
