Schooling in the Afterlives: Neoliberalism, Anti-Blackness, and Fugitive Pedagogies in Black Education

The COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020 coincided with significant social unrest following the state killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. This period saw wide-spread protests against systemic racism and police brutality, leading to various corporate and institutional responses, including those in the public education sector. Many charter schools that once upheld harmful punitive rules and policies known as “no excuses” did away with them, rebranding and adopting anti-racist policies and practices as a step to-ward repair. Schooling in the Afterlives: Neoliberalism, Anti-Blackness, and Fugitive Ped-agogies in Black Education examines how Black students and their teachers in an urban charter school on the South Side of Chicago navigate the neoliberal considerations and challenges of a charter school in the wake of anti-Black policies and practices. Given the current political moment and ongoing legislative attacks on educational freedoms, there is a need to understand how Black students and their teachers in urban contexts create liberatory spaces amidst ideological changes in education while also confronting the leg-acies of anti-Blackness that shape them. This study seeks to contribute to existing knowledge on educational reform, particularly those affecting Black (liberatory) learning spaces, while also proposing strategies/possible models for creating more equitable, supportive, and transformational educational environments.