In Chapter Three of “Progressive Dystopia,” Savannah Shange details her ethnographic research on the schooling experiences of Black students in San Francisco. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, she reveals the ways in which the supposedly “progressive” policies and practices in the city’s schools serve to reinforce and perpetuate antiblackness, including the criminalization of Black students and the perpetuation of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Throughout the chapter, Shange advocates for abolitionist policy as a means to address the systemic antiblackness in the city’s schools. She argues that abolition is about transforming systems and institutions beyond just closing down prisons, but also about fundamentally reimagining and restructuring the ways in which we approach education, punishment, and control. Shange’s stance on abolitionist policy highlights the importance of completely dismantling harmful systems and replacing them with ones based on principles of justice, equality, and liberation. By taking an abolitionist approach to schooling, she argues that real transformation can occur and the experiences of Black students in San Francisco can be improved.
We read this piece in an anthropology class I took last semester about race in the americas. Our discussion in that class resonated with me because I went to a very progressive high school that prided itself on its anti-racism. The school seemed to value its image more than its actual practice and seldom followed its anti-racist rhetoric with abolitionist policies.