Why Racial Justice and Raising Free People Can’t Include Coddling White Guilt

“The paradox of education is precisely this — that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” ~James Baldwin

It is said that Baldwin’s language seemed purposely chosen to shock and shake the reader into a concerned state of action.

In other words, he chose his words (both written and spoken) with great care, in part because he used words to incite change.

I too write and I speak to incite. I mention James Baldwin because he is up there on my list of beings who did not cloud their assertions with undue apologies, or tread lightly so as not to offend.

If I focused on offenses, then my eyes would have to veer away from my people, and the ways we suffer, and the ways we participate in that suffering by centering the white gaze. I cannot afford to do that.

Even if I was designed in a way that leaned toward that, my experiences have groomed me otherwise.

On July 9 of 2016, I started Fare of the Free Child podcast to create a community that would (hopefully) inspire the formation of other communities worldwide. I envisioned a web of communities where adults engaged in unconventional Black and Brown parenting and care-giving would be heard, and could find and support each other.

There are so few spaces where Black folk and Brown folk can speak honestly — can, come plain wid it, as Mos Def once said — about the ways in which we suffer, without being policed by the voices that are uncomfortable with their participation in our longstanding issues. The space I nurture is designed to facilitate precisely that. And I can’t half-create safe space; space is either safe, or it ain’t.

So, I want to have the conversations out loud that Black folks in all our iterations all over the world have been having among ourselves for years. And I also want to have them out loud because our children and we intersect and interact in real life and online.

These conversations make room for us to expand our understandings of each other, and equally important, of our options as People of Color, outside the standard, fucked up education system. And by options, I don’t mean a cheaper private school, or a less shady charter school, I mean our options outside of all that foolishness.

I am not of the belief that the system is broken; it works exactly how it’s supposed to work. It’s our belief system that is broken, because we believe that if we can get our children to play the game right, they might end up better off than us in adulthood.

They won’t.

They might have nicer things, but they’ll face the same real issues. Maybe we feel that getting our children as far away from poverty, which we tie to lack of education, is the solution, and I agree.

But what I don’t agree with is that we gotta put them on new age auction blocks to be examined and tested and spun around and made to do shit that has nothing to do with their real value and their infinite potential to build, to collaborate, to excel, to create, to be amazing.

The system is NOT designed to facilitate that, so on my podcast, we lament, we build, we highlight the places and people where solutions are being explored and implemented, and we also talk about the barriers and the costs of choosing education that is based on real learning, not systemic indoctrination.

We also, of course, talk about racism, because that is one of the big, bad barriers to raising free people. And in talking about it — centering ourselves and welcoming allies who are willing to listen and to learn and to follow our lead — we are creating social change.

We can’t do that curtsying and shit.

We can’t do that afraid to step on toes.

We can’t do that if we shy away from our truths because they make people feel bad.

Feeling bad ain’t got shit on being targeted and hurt, or killed, or left out, or singled out, simply because other people have developed — and the world has normalized — a false, fear-based perspective of our people.

By the way…

I shared this essay in the introduction of episode 31. The episode is entitled Solutions to Whitewashing Self-Directed Education; you can listen to it here.