We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

Chapter 1 opens with a quote by W. E. B. Du Bois, which claims that Black people see racial injustice in America with greater clarity than white people. Love adopts Du Bois’s term “dark” to remind readers that skin color is the root of systemic discrimination and state-sanctioned racial abuse. She advocates for abolitionist pedagogy. This teaching promotes justice and focuses on thriving, mattering, resisting, healing, freedom, joy, and love—not just surviving. People are diverse in their races, cultures, religions, abilities, genders, and sexualities. Intersectionality uses these social markers as analytic tools to explain overlapping, interdependent forms of discrimination and disadvantage. Intersectionality also allows educators to have constructive conversations around students’ identities, giving them a better grasp of the challenges students face, while also shedding light on the ways schools perpetuate injustice.

What is Mattering?

Mattering is about humanizing people of color. It refers to the relationship of Black Americans to the country, not to their communities or families. According to Love, systems and institutions protect and reinforce discrimination of all forms. The collective identity of people of color grew out of acts of rebellion, so they must continue to fight to dismantle systemic and institutional discrimination.