Faces at the Bottom of Schools: A Counterstory For The End of Racism

M. Alex Evans

Abstract:

This article explores the intersections of race, policing, and disability in educational settings, revealing the systemic violence disproportionately affecting Black students, especially those with disabilities. It critiques the existence of carceral schools, emphasizing how punitive measures criminalize Black bodies and perpetuate trauma. Through personal narrative and counterstory, this paper illustrates the emotional toll of police presence in schools, referencing incidents of violence that have left lasting psychological impacts on students. The work advocates for a radical reimagining of educational frameworks, where the focus shifts from punishment to empowerment, highlighting the importance of maintaining a safe and supportive environment for all students. By invoking Critical Race Theory, the article calls for transformative justice that upholds Black life and promotes a future devoid of systemic oppression, culminating in a vision for a peaceful educational landscape free from violence and fear.

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Y. Davis[1]

Introduction‍ ‍

When carceral schools, the brutalization of Black bodies, and disability converge, a troubling nexus of systemic violence and marginalization is revealed, perpetuating repeated racial and bodily harm as Black people are especially vulnerable to policing and punishment.[2] Carceral schools[3], a part of the broader school-to-prison pipeline, function not merely as educational institutions but as sites of punishment and confinement. They operate to criminalize Black students entrenching punitive, carceral logic within classrooms and hallways.[4]  This was my experience.

In a racially just world, the most memorable moments of my high school career might be performing as Teen Angel in the school musical Grease, winning Homecoming King on a freezing Fall night, attending Senior Prom with two of my best friends, or maybe even when my family attended my graduation. In a similar non-ableist fictional world my memories of graduate school, the capstone of my educational journey, would be flooded with late night study sessions and kickbacks with our Black Graduate Student Association. Instead, both my high school and graduate school experiences were tainted by overzealous law enforcement that left me with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that continues to haunt me years into my professional career.

In high school I was a popular, confident, student-athlete on honor roll. Somehow, I managed to avoid getting into any major trouble, but I had countless friends that found themselves entrapped in the school-to-prison pipeline.[5] One day during Senior year, as we waited for the first bell to ring, two of my Black male peers got into an altercation which led to the Student Resource Officer (SRO)[6] placing them both in handcuffs, while lying face down on their stomachs. Several of us were frustrated by the SRO’s intervention because the altercation itself was not violent. The most visibly agitated of us were the students lying in cuffs, who chirped at the SRO, provoking him to suddenly turn to one of them and shoot him with his taser. Shocked, terrified, angry, and helpless I stood mere feet away, unsure of what I could do to help in the situation. This feeling remained with me for years and it ultimately became one of the primary reasons that I would attend law school and lead a life of advocacy. Each day my passion for advocating for marginalized Black youth grows as I continue to fight equally for students physically harmed by police violence as well as those subjected to the vicarious trauma of carceral schools.

The #SayTheirNames campaign is a powerful call to remember victims of racial injustice and police brutality as it ensures that the names of Black youth murdered by police, like 7-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, killed during a police raid, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by police on a playground while playing with a toy gun, are not forgotten.[7] In addition to those lives lost, we must recognize the names of Black students subjected to police violence in schools. Taylor Bracey of Kissimmee, Florida, a 16-year old Black girl who suffered from memory lost after being body-slammed by an SRO.[8] Ahmad Williams Jr. of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, a 15-year old Black boy who was taunted, choked, and slammed to the ground by an SRO and then tasered while the school’s principal held him down.[9] Shakara Murphy of Columbia, South Carolina, a Black 16-year-old girl, who was knocked over by an SRO while in her desk as he grabbed her by the shoulders and the neck, pulling her from her chair before ultimately throwing her across the room.[10] Mik-Tazza Wynn of Henderson, North Carolina a 12-year old Black girl who was left with a dislocated shoulder and whiplash after an encounter between her, an SRO, and an Assistant Principal.[11] ‍

These young people are just a small fraction of Black students harmed by the existence of law enforcement officers in schools, along with the punitive school discipline culture that reflects our society at-large. Not only do students see the incidents of violent treatment against Black people in the streets, but also within their own schools they see Black students body-slammed, tased, placed in handcuffs, and physically assaulted for behaviors such as falling asleep, asking questions, and using a cellphone.[12] These students are often left afraid of police and fear for their safety upon returning to schools where school resource officers (SROs) patrol the halls, not to mention the PTSD that comes along with experiencing or even witnessing such violence.[13] Students already inundated with depictions of Black death and suffering in their communities at the hands of police must also deal with police brutality in their learning environments, which should be safe for all students.[14]

My lived experiences[15] with police in schools unearths both the direct and vicarious trauma that Black students and Black students with disabilities face in school settings.[16] Not even being an attorney and PhD student at a large research institution will save you from police violence on a school campus.[17]  I was a new attorney pursuing a doctoral degree researching the implications of police in schools for Black students, and had previously served as a member of the county’s Racial Justice Task Force where we studied the racial disparities in policing on and around campus.[18] At the time, I had not experienced any personal run-ins with the police. Yet I was intimately aware of the racial discrimination that Black students and community members faced in the community through secondhand knowledge. One weekend, after weeks of working feverishly hard on my dissertation proposal, I felt overwhelmed, as though I were in crisis. This feeling was unfamiliar. ‍

In my state of psychosis, I believed that law enforcement officials were looking for me because they suspected that I had found the cure to racism.  For hours, the voices of Derrick Bell, Geneva Crenshaw, Bernie Mac, Kevin Hart, and Beyoncé played in my head as we laughed and cried hysterically and debated whether racism was in fact a permanent feature of American society. Ultimately, we formulated a plan to broadcast to Black Twitter that a new constitutional order, a new world order, was upon us. ‍

In my state of psychosis, fearing the worst, I barricaded myself in my on-campus studio apartment and allowed the water from my kitchen sink to cover the floor, which seeped into the hallway. This prompted maintenance personnel to knock to the door. Due to my fears that law enforcement was looking for me, I did not allow maintenance into the apartment. When maintenance returned shortly thereafter, they returned with the police. I can only assume that the police were there in relation to the maintenance call as the maintenance personnel were standing there with the police when the door was opened.

Midway through the day I heard a loud banging at the door. I hid behind the door as I heard, “Police! Open up or I’ll blow your f***’n head off!” Now that my suspicions were confirmed I was scared for my life, so I cracked open the door only to find the officer's gun inches away from my forehead. He kept the gun trained on my face as he pushed past the barricade. For nearly five minutes I stood with my hands up, unable to speak, as he held me at gunpoint asking questions like, “is he deaf and dumb or something?” After getting a message from his radio he lowered his gun, placed it in its holster, and chirped “somebody clean this mess up,” and walked out of the room. ‍

As soon as the police left, I hid behind the barricade, afraid that they would come back to finish the job: kill me. Unbeknownst to me, I was suffering my first ever manic episode. It wasn’t until hours into the late night that a friend would find me and eventually take me to get me the mental health assistance that I desperately needed.

The timing of this unfortunate event was critical for me. As I grappled with scholarship on police in schools and their impact on Black students, my research became deeply personal. Nearly a decade later I find myself still struggling through the resulting PTSD, which enhances my understanding of the fact that many Black students also continue to wrestle with the trauma of police encounters long after they occur.

Carceral schools are manifested through harsh disciplinary practices that vividly exemplify the spectacle of Black bodies being subjected to physical, psychological, and symbolic violence, which reinforces narratives of Black deviance and threat.[19] When intersected with disability, these dynamics become even more devastating; disabled Black students are disproportionately targeted, further dehumanized, and excluded from meaningful participation and support.[20] The spectacle of brutalization acts as a form of racialized and ableist violence that devalues Black and disabled bodies. Thus, rendering their suffering visible and reinforcing intersecting systems of oppression that uphold a racialized and ableist carceral state. ‍

For over a decade, countless names and faces of Black women, men, and children killed at the hands of armed law enforcement officers have been plastered across social media and websites for all to see. In the wake of digital videos capturing police violence against Black people in the United States, the #SayHerName and #SayTheirNames movements were born.[21] Considering the nation’s well-documented history of lynching and chattel slavery, these movements highlight the continued U.S. tradition of publicizing state-sanctioned violence against Black people. A dreadful custom that undoubtedly impacts the emotional and psychological well-being of the Black community heightens mistrust and contempt for law enforcement and the “rule of law” that is habitually applied in an uneven fashion.[22]

SROs and law enforcement are just one factor—albeit a large one—in punitive school discipline cultures across the U.S. Teachers, school and district administrators, community members, corporations, policy and lawmakers, and justice systems also contribute to varying degrees, reflecting our nation’s penchant for punishment.[23] As education justice advocates and as a society at-large we must disrupt and ultimately abolish the punitive treatment of all students in schools. ‍

Notably, Black students and students with disabilities are suspended, expelled, and placed in alternative placements at disparate rates as a means to remove them from the school environment for their perceived misbehaviors.[24] This practice is otherwise known as “school pushout.”[25] Although suspensions and expulsions across the nation and state are declining over the last decade,[26] Black students and students with disabilities continue to face the starkest disparities in school discipline.[27] This begs the question, how do we, as a society, effectively abolish carceral schools for our most vulnerable student populations, the faces at the bottom of schools?

Critical Race Theory, Counterstories, and Mental Health

One of Critical Race Theory’s most contentious interventions made in legal scholarship has been the use of narratives in the exploration of law.[28] Narratives have taken many forms, including “personal histories, parables, chronicles, dreams, stories, poetry, fiction, and revisionist histories.”[29] Those that many consider the most foundational and influential voices within the framework have employed storytelling in their work.[30] The counterstory methodology operates through methods that emboldens minoritized scholars through the creation of stories that interrupt the erasures rooted in normalized majoritarian methodologies.[31] Put another way, counterstory offers scholars of color an opportunity to utilize their unique voices in ways that traditional scholarship falls short. Critical race counterstory is employed in scholarly publications, such as Derrick Bell’s landmark chronicles of Geneva Crenshaw in And We Are Not Saved, and Faces at the Bottom of the Well, and Richard Delgado’s narrative dialogue The Rodrigo Chronicles.[32] ‍

In Derrick Bell’s chronicles his fictional alter ego, Geneva Crenshaw, was one of the most talented litigators at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a Howard Law professor.[33] Crenshaw and Bell’s narrator go back and forth about the shortcomings of civil rights law in America as it is not aimed at improving conditions for Blacks, except for the very rare occasions when improving their conditions coincides with whites’ self-interests. Our legal system, historically, ensures that society has the perfect amount of racism: too little would forfeit white’s psychic and financial benefits, while too much would risk disruption. ‍

Considering the context of my counterstory, it is critical to point out that in the Summer of 1964 Crenshaw suffered a severe mental breakdown caused by a violent racist attack, overwork, and the stress of working towards goals that seemed always to retrogress, forcing her to be institutionalized for twenty years. This took place all before Geneva and Bell’s narrator discover together, through ten chronicles, how little American civil rights law has progressed.[34] This demonstrates that Bell was keenly aware of the strain that racism causes victims and survivors of white supremacy, and how such violence can cause mental fragility in even the highest of achievers.

In a review of Bell’s And We Are Not Saved, Richard Delgado constructs an eleventh chronicle where Geneva returns to the mental institution from which she had been furloughed to request a discharge.[35] She meets with the psychiatrist in charge of her treatment, Dr. Gilder, who interviews her to make the determination of whether she is fit to be released from the institution.[36]  Although fictional, the dialogue between Geneva and Dr. Gilder felt familiar as I have on numerous occasions spoken with a psychiatrist charged with determining whether I am fit to be discharged from a mental institution. Racism and its effects are seldom understood by whites as demonstrated by Dr. Gilder’s insistence that Geneva remain hopeful despite hundreds of years of racial oppression.

Bell and Delgado’s exploration of mental health and racism warrant further inquiry, which is why my contribution to the Critical Race Theory tradition is of particular importance. Not only do I have the lived experience of researching and studying race, but I also have the experience of suffering multiple mental breakdowns while being hyper-fixated on solving the issue of racism in society. While Geneva was dark and pessimistic and devoid of hope because she believed that people of color will never escape subordination, I have found myself bursting with optimism and dreams that one day we will truly overcome even if it’s with the aid of forces and powers not yet realized.

The following counterstory was born out of imagining my younger self and my older self if they could somehow interact with each another and help each other come to understand the world in a much different way. It approaches Critical Race Theory with a freedom dream and radical imagination, that envisions a future beyond the confines of systemic oppression and racialized violence. This perspective does not simply critique existing structures but actively reimagines what justice, equity, and liberation could look like through the lens of marginalized voices. By grounding itself in a freedom dream[37], the counterstory aims to ignite hope and inspire collective resistance, daring to imagine worlds where Black life is valued, disabled bodies are honored, and education serves as a space of genuine empowerment rather than punishment.[38] It embraces radical imagination as a tool to break free from the limits imposed by systemic racism, offering a vision rooted in liberation, resilience, and transformative justice that challenges the status quo—an urgent call to create a new reality where all bodies can thrive.[39]

A Counterstory for the End of Racism‍ ‍

Nile: What’s up, Doc? It’s good to see you. I never expected to see you at an alternative school. What are you doin here?

Professor: Hey, what’s up, Nephew? It’s good to see you, too. Man, I volunteer here on Fridays. I mentor students and chop it up about life, the importance of education, our futures, and even the latest trending topics on social media. ‍

Nile: Ah man that’s so dope! I shoulda known you’d do somethin like this. How long you been comin out here? ‍

Professor: It’s been years now. I done experienced a buncha of wins with a good number of students earnin their diplomas, goin on to college, or startin their own businesses, but unfortunately we’ve took some L’s to violence and lengthy jail sentences. But I wouldn’t trade the experience and relationships for the world. I was definitely looking forward to this week to meet up with you though. The administrators hoped that I would take on mentoring you because they’re “worried you’re headed down the wrong path.” I don’t think they know that you were in my CRT for Teens Summer School last summer. So not only do I know of you, but I respect the heck outta you and consider you one of the few students that I learn from just as much as I impart.

Nile: I appreciate that, Doc, that means a lot coming from you. But why I gotta be headed down the wrong path? That’s crazy work!

Professor: Yeah, this white secretary told me that you incited a riot at your school and police officers and teachers were hurt. She said it was worse than all of the race riots that you hear about that went on in the 70s during integration. I confronted her by telling her that due to her racism she refuses to see you as the brilliant organizer and burgeoning political strategist that our community recognizes you as, and that she only sees you as just another Black boy deserving of punishment and future incarceration. Shoot, at that moment I was immediately transported back to my teenage years where white school secretaries would cheer for Black boys on the football field on Friday nights, only to gossip and debate about whether they belonged in school on Monday mornings. It makes you wonder, do times ever really change? She mentioned her thoughts and prayers for the officers involved. I told her that there is so much more to your story because not many students sent here have an IEP[40] and grades high enough to earn valedictorian.

Nile: That’s right! Top two not two! ‍

Professor: So what happened, man? How’d you end up in here? The word on the street can’t be right. ‍

Nile: They would craft that convenient master narrative, eh? But you know, after watchin’ them take out George Floyd, we knew we wouldn’t allow our classmate to go out at the hands of an SRO with a knee pressed against her back. All year we been organizin’ students to resist police violence by the corrupt SRO. Most people don’t even know about 16-year-old Cornelius Frederick who was killed in a similar way back in 2020 for throwing a sandwich in a cafeteria.[41] So many of us have had “comply or die” beaten into us that we felt it was time to take back our school in a way that only we could. So when he pinned her down for “mouthin’ off” we knew it was our chance to finally fight back.

There would always be more of us than them, so we mapped it out. If he kneeled on one of us we’d remove him and then kneel on him, hold him down, take his handcuffs and put them on him. We knew that kneeling on someone is dangerous so we left him alone after we got him on his chest with his hands cuffed behind his back. It took bout eight of us to get the job done, but at least fifteen others were there shielding teachers from comin’ to help him. He was never in danger; the most damage done to him was his ego for havin’ kids catch him slippin’ with his own cuffs. And no teachers were harmed, either, I've heard those rumors. The cop claims that his rotator cuff was injured in the tussle so they’re tryna to pin assault of an officer on us. They suspended every Black student standing near the incident, but they expelled me and sent me here for organizin’ the whole thing. I can’t say that it rose to the level of taking master’s weapons and turning them on him, but it sure felt good to watch him struggle with them cuffs on just like so many of us had in the past for far less harmful actions.

Professor: I mean, you’re right. Too often cops disregard the safety and well-being of students as they body slam them for somethin’ as little as using their phones, and in some instances knock students unconscious with their use of force. It was only a matter of time before some SRO would run up against students that had enough. At least his weapon wasn’t pulled; that coulda been catastrophic.

Nile: That was one of the only non-negotiables in our action plan. Students had to know that reachin’ for his gun was off limits because someone could be hurt or worse. We don’t want any more students to be harmed in schools, and honestly, we don’t want any SROs harmed in schools because more than anything we want SROs out of schools because they don’t make us any safer. After the school shooting at Columbine there was this explosion of SROs placed in mostly urban schools, along with metal detectors, when what we really needed was school social workers, school psychologists, and counselors and educators that are committed to keeping the peace in schools.[42]

And it’s Black students and students with disabilities, particularly those students at the intersection of those groups, Black students with disabilities who face the brunt of punitive school discipline.[43] As we all know, it’s Black students who are more likely to be suspended from school than white students.[44] While the total number of suspensions has decreased over time in many places, Black students are still disproportionately suspended and policed as compared to white students.[45] And you know me, I could easily rattle off a slew of statistics to prove that Black students, especially Black students with disabilities, are disciplined far more harshly.

Professor: I assume you already know that you’re preachin’ to the choir on this one.

Nile: Well, kinda. Last summer in our CRT for Teens Summer School we never really went into detail about the school-to-prison pipeline. I imagine Columbine happened while you were in school. What was the beginnin’ of the pipeline like?

Professor: As a millennial, I’m one of many in a generation living through the PTSD of being schooled in a white supremacist police state. My lived experiences include being witness to police violence in schools as well as being subjected to police violence at school. Like many children in the U.S. I had a gentle introduction to police in schools in the form of a D.A.R.E. officer.[46] Since I was bused to school and never left home without a guardian, I’d yet to experience the daily feeling of being criminalized because my elementary schools did not have SROs. However, middle school was different. Although we had no SROs there, it was the first time I can recall having quotidian experiences with the over-policing of Black youth in our neighborhood, during walks to and from school, and around our town.

It wasn’t until high school that I had my first real lessons in carceral schools. I remember mornings during my 9th grade year, when we were forbidden from sitting still in the hallways and were herded to circle the first floor of our school building as school administrators and SROs barked at us to keep walking around and around in a circle. We were constantly yelled at for what felt like any and everything. Making matters worse, Black students were noticeably treated harsher than white students by SROs, administrators, and teachers. Unfortunately, it was no surprise when Black students were assaulted by SROs for trivial teenage behaviors. These experiences undoubtedly shaped my understandin’ of justice and policing; more importantly, it demonstrated with clarity that these forces were channeling myself and those who look like me towards a certain social death.

It’s been an uninterrupted thirty-plus years of school pushout, the school-to-prison pipeline, the school-prison nexus, carceral schools, or whatever other clever device one wants to use to describe the enclosure and outright oppression of our youth in schools. And quite honestly, there was never a break in the punitive handling of Black children from slavery, through Reconstruction, to convict-leasing and Jim Crow, to the so-called integration of schools, to the era we’re in now. Black children have always been subjected to criminalization and adultification.[47] As Malcolm X said, “Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.”[48]

Nile: Doc, do you remember our discussion last summer on the tenets of CRT? Many of the tenets we felt should be reaffirmed, such as critique of colorblindness, intersectionality, unique voice of color, counterstorytelling, and commitment to social justice.[49] Each of these tenets speak to a larger effort to make positive change in our society through critical engagement and analysis of race and identity. However, while we respected the work that was put into developing the permanence of racism thesis, we just felt like the notion of racism’s permanence should be reconsidered due to possible advances in antiracist creativity and technology.

Professor: Yes, I remember you havin’ quite the critique of the permanence of racism. We didn’t go as deeply as I would have liked into your critique, but I recall that you were concerned with the pedagogical effects, or the impact they would have on future generations of advocates and freedom fighters. Most importantly, with advances in technology and the will power of future youth, we may be cutting off true revolution at the knees. ‍

Nile: Exactly! I take issue with how they couldn’t even imagine a world where white supremacy and racism no longer exists. It took centuries for white supremacy to develop into its current form in America, where is the hope that maybe, just maybe, another few hard-fought centuries might shift the tide back in the opposite direction? I’m not takin’ the power of white supremacy lightly, but even more than that I don’t want to underestimate the will of a determined people. The same level of plannin’ and forethought that went into building the problem can be applied to a solution.

Professor: I think Derrick Bell took the problem of racism into account and found the most reasonable solution. Look back at what Bell wrote on the permanence of racism,

Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance.[50] ‍

Bell goes on to say, “[w]e must acknowledge it and move to adopt policies based on what I call ‘Racial Realism.’[51] This mind-set or philosophy requires us to acknowledge the permanence of our subordinate status. That acknowledgement enables us to avoid despair and frees us to imagine and implement racial strategies that can bring fulfillment and even triumph.”[52]

Look at the chapter “The Afrolantica Awakening,”[53] where a land mass pops up off the coast of South Carolina.[54] The U.S. and other governments attempt to occupy the land but fail because the air pressure doesn’t support human life, except that of African Americans.[55] They then debated whether African Americans should emigrate to the new “promised” land.[56] Later some African Americans mounted ships to the new land and just before they reached the shore, Afrolantica sank back into the sea.[57] Somehow, they were overjoyed because they actually looked for something better, as they remembered words from Frederick Douglass that America was also their land. Even in Bell’s imagination Black folks can never win and they are to be overjoyed and grateful for America despite their losses.[58]

Or look at one of his most famous chapters, “The Space Traders,”[59] where aliens appear on Earth and offer the U.S. advanced technology and resources to solve its debt, nuclear, and environmental crises, in exchange for all of its African American citizens.[60] The aliens appeared as Ronald Reagan so whites were not alarmed, while Blacks felt uncomfortable by the aliens’ appearance.[61] After much debate in the government and the public, white Americans voted in favor of the trade in a national referendum prioritizing their own well-being over the lives of Black citizens.[62] Black people are then rounded up and forced onto the alien ships, mirroring the horrific journey of their ancestors during the transatlantic slave trade, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day of all days.[63] Here, Bell imagines a world where whites send away Blacks and save their country at the same time, and the extent of Blacks’ agency is demonstrated through a Black conservative professor who attempts to use cunning and guile to trick whites into rejecting the trade.[64]

Lastly, look at the chapter “Neither Separate nor Mixed Schools”[65] from Bell’s And We Are Not Saved.[66] In this story all Black school-aged children mysteriously vanish as America is left to figure out how to move forward without them.[67] The missing schoolchildren illustrated how the public and school boards prioritize issues that affect white interests, while the fundamental injustice of sacrificing black children is ignored.[68] The financial impact of the missing Black children was more of a cause for concern than the children actually being gone.[69] ‍

Nile: I think it’s time we change that and change it for good. I’m not even as old as Fannie Lou Hamer was, but I’m also sick and tired of being sick and tired. You mean to tell me that the worst of white folks[70] done colonized and terrorized this earth for centuries and Professor Bell couldn't imagine a world where racist whites would disappear or be shipped off to save America? Or how come he couldn’t dream up some virus or somethin that wouldn’t allow for white babies to be born anymore? I mean you just said that Black schoolchildren vanished seemingly to prove a point to white folk about how much they actually needed Black children financially. It just makes me sick.

Professor: What more do we have to work with? I mean the permanence of racism makes total sense if we look at the history of race across the modern world. It is so deeply entrenched in our social, political, economic, environmental, and even legal systems that almost nothin’ imaginable could shift the tide in the opposite direction without catastrophic levels of bloodshed. And I’ve gotta admit, I don’t think Professor Bell would’ve had as great an impact and sold as many books if he disappeared white folks in his work.

Nile: That’s my point exactly. Plus, I’m not sure exactly what he was thinking when it comes to future generations that want to address the race problem. It’s just all too pessimistic for my liking. Are we just supposed to all sign up to fight in a war that we know we’ll never be able to win?

Professor: If nothin’ else, critical race theorists have impressed upon us the seriousness and depth of the race problem, particularly in the United States. Without their work you’d have nothing to analyze and critique. And I doubt they were too concerned with generations or circumstances in the distant future, because who truly knows what the future holds.

Professor: What do you have in mind?

Nile: There’s something I should tell you, I’ve been holdin’ on to it until just the right time.

Professor: Okay, shoot.

Nile: Years ago when the Space Traders first came and took away all Black folk in the U.S., on that fateful Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, my mother was a part of the number. While Black folk eventually made the choice to come back to Earth to save the country once again, a few stayed back with the Space Traders, my mother being one of them. After years of living with the Space Traders, the brave holdovers were able to expand on their powers of telekinesis, their ability to teleport, their universal communication skills, and their ability to heal themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. Most importantly, a number of the holdovers found love in the Space Traders and birthed a generation of half-human Space Traders.

Professor: Wait. So you mean to tell me that you’re a Space Trader?

Nile: Yes sir, but that’s not it. We have been trying to figure out the best way to solve the problems that have plagued this country for centuries. We are afraid that if this country continues on the path of destruction that very soon the world will cease to exist. Black people were traded for treasures and resources to revitalize the country, but to no avail. So, we believe that our final solution shall heal the Earth of its infirmities and restore the environment to a level where life can not only survive, but can thrive.

Professor: What is it now? As you mentioned before, Black people have sacrificed enough, time and time again. We’ve left the Earth only to find ourselves having to return again, losin’ our powers from the Space Traders’ planet. I’m not sure that Black folk will be willing to stand in the gap once more; our collective hearts and souls have been broken far too many times to stand another ultimate catastrophe.

Nile: This I know. Out of all the powers granted to us by the Space Traders, there was one unique to the children of the holdovers, time travel. Our time travel powers work not only in the land of the Space Traders, but also here on Earth. And one of the most critical aspects of our ability to time travel is our ability to alter the timeline. We are able to heal the Earth as we travel from time to time.

Professor: How did you find all of this out? Have you always known and kept it secret? Who else knows?

Nile: No. All of us Space Trader Love Children have experienced shared dreams, where messages were shared with us from the future. It wasn’t until very recently that we were given instructions on how to utilize our powers. No one else knows yet. Ultimately, this is still very new to us, and we need you to help us navigate the challenges of the time-space continuum.

Professor: Just to make sure that we’re on the same page and all, what does this have to do with the school-to-prison pipeline and your current set of circumstances?

Nile: So much of the racism that we face in schools is nothin but a symptom of much larger ills in society that only white supremacy can take account for. I know there are all kinds of supposed remedies to dismantle the pipeline, but none will work quite like cutting the head off the snake and ending white supremacy all together.

Professor: How about you humor me though? What exactly do we need to end the pipeline? I understand that it operates within the context of a much larger social and political framework, but I’m curious to know what you’d do in schools.

Nile: Well, the first thing would be to restructure the entire discipline system. We’d need to completely eliminate zero tolerance policies along with suspensions and expulsions. All suspensions and expulsions do is teach our youth that problems can be solved by simply disappearing folks from our society. And zero tolerance policies fail by not allowing for case-by-case analysis of circumstances that may not require discipline at all,[71] for instance when a student accidentally leaves a hunting knife in their bookbag from a weekend hunting trip.

Professor: I’m surprised that that was first on your list considering the problems that SROs and law enforcement cause within the pipeline.

Nile: I didn’t have that first because I believe that the first priority is keepin’ students in schools and not relyin’ on pushout to deal with discipline issues. But trust me, SROs and law enforcement come in at a close second. Police should be removed completely from school discipline, because there is no evidence that demonstrates that their presence in schools makes students safer. But to the contrary, increased police presence has negative impacts on school climate.[72] There are obvious, less punitive, and less discriminatory methods of addressing safety in schools than policing and surveillance. The negatives far outweigh any positives that couldn’t be replaced by a program promoting Peacebuilders and restorative justice practices.[73] Schools that have positive school climates are often the safest.[74] With additional guidance counselors and health care professionals like school psychologists, school social workers, and nurses, schools stand a far better chance at promoting a healthy environment for students.

Professor: I’ve heard of Peacebuilders before. Do you think they’d really make the difference in schools?

Nile: Yes, because Peacebuilder programs focus on prevention and positive intervention instead of punitive approaches which traumatize and criminalize many Black students and students of color.[75] Peacebuilders aim to create nurturing, safe environments without making an investment in the criminalization and pushout of students of color.[76] While Police officers are trained to profile and see people as victims and perpetrators, Peacebuilders identify strengths and potential of youth and their families.[77] Beyond that, the success of SRO programs is measured by arrests and citations, and Peacebuilders success is measured by the amount of positive relationships built, conflicts solved, number of lives saved and students kept out of the justice system.[78] But what about you, Doc? What would you say is critical to abolish the pipeline? ‍

Professor: The very first thing that I would consider is guns. Police presence in schools exploded after Columbine. One of the very first questions you hear when debating police in schools is “what about school shootings?” So, it would be very difficult to remove police from schools without ensuring that guns will not be on school campuses. But guns have a complicated racial history in our country that many overlook when discussin’ the Second Amendment. Several scholars point out in their work just how instrumental the control of guns was in maintainin’ slavery in the South.[79] Without control of guns, the slave owners would not have been able to crush rebellion and resistance by the enslaved Africans.[80] Even more than that, the history of white rage and lynchin’ would look quite different without the constitutional right to own guns. But if guns simply disappeared from the face of the earth, we wouldn’t have to consider any constitutional protections.

But thinkin’ even further than that, I think that if there were no guns, it would be important to consider what would replace them. Obviously other weapons would come into play such as knives or swords, but if an object like a gun can shoot a projectile and take life, what if an object could do the exact opposite. What if there were a type of ray gun that boosted life instead of takin’ it, a lifegiver. Then, who would carry them? Healthcare providers, educators, safety personnel, or anyone?

Nile: Doc, you bring up a critical conversation around guns in America. Youth in particular are concerned with the presence of guns as we are left largely unprotected from gun violence in schools. So not only would white rage be limited by removing guns, but school shootings would also be eradicated. And I never thought of guns that bring life instead of take it, I think you’re right that healthcare providers, educators, and safety personnel that replace police would need to carry them. But I think Peacebuilders would be perfect for carrying the lifegivers.

Professor: Yeah, I imagine the lifegivers to reduce negative emotions like extreme anger, anxiety, depression, stress, and things like suicidal thoughts and trauma. This is important because many students are faced with a challengin’ range of feelings and emotions that negatively impacts the school environment. This would be useful for times of crisis like fights and acts of violence, however they wouldn’t create a dependency, and students should still be taught the valuable skill of masterin’ their emotions.

Nile: I think all educators should be armed with lifegivers as well to assist Peacebuilders in promoting and building safe and peaceful environments in schools. And peacebuilding cannot be left to adults only. Youth Peacebuilders should operate similar to safety patrol and Junior ROTC, meaning students should be exposed to the methods and training of peacebuilding so that the entire community has buy-in.

Professor: Creating a pipeline-to-peace program is brilliant. Peacebuilders could be expanded to colleges and universities as well, and they could even be promoted as replacements for policing in communities as well. Replacing the carceral logics of the school-to-prison pipeline with pro-social, community-centered, and restorative practices would only serve to create safer schools.

Nile: But one pivotal question remains, Doc; what time period should we time travel to?

Professor: I’ve always thought that if I have the ability to time travel I would travel back to save the lives of everyone who was a casualty of white supremacy. That means every enslaved person, every person lynched, those murdered in hate crimes, everyone murdered by police violence, and those targeted and assassinated by the U.S. government through COINTELPRO. So many of our leaders like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fred Hampton, and so many citizens like Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Emmett Till, and George Floyd–to name a few–would return to life and their families and communities would be healed of the trauma suffered due to their untimely demise.

Nile: You know, I was thinkin’ of a specific time to travel to but that sounds worthwhile because saving the multitudes whose lives were taken at the hands of white supremacy would ease the secondary trauma of generations of Black and Brown people in this country. I mean can you imagine if #SayHisName and #SayHerName was never a thing? I mean just that recent history would have such an impact on society.

Professor: Now that we’re dreamin’, yeah, I can imagine it. But I imagine even further back to all of our enslaved mothers and fathers, along with every Native American that had their life cut short by genocide. We could easily heal ages and ages of folks and recalibrate the nation to what it could’ve been had colonialism, settler colonialism, slavery, and Jim crow not ravished this land. It would be unrecognizable. Hell, this nation wouldn’t even exist.  It would be something else, something completely different.

Nile: I think it only works if everyone that we give a chance to avoid their untimely death, is given a chance to become a part of the Peacebuilders, this way we extend its work beyond safety in schools and communities to the actual work of fightin’ against white supremacy. This would work to combat the destruction that slavecatchers, the Ku Klux Klan, police, and other white supremacist organizations have had on society.

Professor: Ah, man, this makes me think of the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 where the White Government Union in the State of North Carolina, disenchanted by the rise of a majority-Black population governed by a biracial Republican-Fusion party, led an insurrection, killing dozens–if not hundreds–of Black people and taking control of the local and state level governments.[81] It wasn’t until Henry Frye was elected in 1968 that another Black state legislator was seated in the state. So that’s over 70 years of white supremacist rule.[82]

Nile: I bet if those slain Black people were given a chance to live and remain in state politics throughout the 20th century, they would take up the opportunity without hesitation.

Professor: Or what about the Tulsa race massacre? Where white residents massacred the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma for two days, in what is considered one of the single worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history.[83] More than 35 square blocks were burned and destroyed, in one of the wealthiest self-sustaining Black communities in the nation, known as Black Wall Street.[84] This incident that took the lives of up to 300 people, mostly Black, was in response to the boomin’ economy that the Black residents established.[85] Greenwood was a place where Black folk could escape Jim Crow segregation and the white-dominated economy in the Deep South. We can only imagine how the city woulda grown and expanded over time from the 10,000 residents with thriving Black-owned banks, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, luxury shops, and offices of Black lawyers and doctors.[86]

Nile: I can’t even fathom the level of trauma that this left for the residents who survived, because every time I hear about it over 100 years later leaves goosebumps on my skin as I reckon with the murder and destruction of a people who were simply livin’ the “American Dream” in a segregated society, which white folks forced into being.

Professor: Trauma has been a focal point in our conversation thus far, but we’ve only discussed it in terms of what Black and Brown folks face. It’s equally important for us to acknowledge how important it will be for us to demonstrate to white folks that they can no longer inflict racial trauma on us.

Nile: Without their guns I’m sure it will be much harder for them to pillage and plunder, but I bet they would still find a way to fight against equitable integration, diversity, and inclusion. But I don’t think they deserve the lifegivers that the Peacebuilders bring.

Professor: Ultimately, the negative feelings and emotions that the lifegivers address such as anxiety, depression, trauma, stress, etc. would likely apply to feelings of racial angst. Meaning lifegivers would decrease the racism that people feel when they are shot with its rays.

Nile: I believe it was Toni Morrison who said to white folk something like, “what are you without racism?”[87] What would many white folks be without their racism if they were shot with lifegivers? Would it simply lessen the racism that they feel in the moment, or would it be a wholesale change in their racial outlook making them instantly anti-racist? I don’t know how I feel about this because I originally thought you were conceiving these lifegivers as primarily a tool for Black and Brown folks who were victims, not perpetrators, of oppression.

Professor: How is this still not a tool primarily for Black and Brown folks if it operates to keep them safe from internal and external forces that operate in a manner harmful to their wellbeing? We need to keep the benefits to our brothers and sisters at the front of our minds and not the detriments of white supremacists. For far too long our society has put the considerations of white folks before the very real needs of folks of color. As we dream of solutions for our people we should look far beyond mere retribution for the wrongs against us. Violence begets violence and vengeance will only cause more problems in the long run.

Nile: I’m not suggestin’ violence or even vengeance, but I agree with Toni Morrison that white people have a serious problem, their racism, and that they should consider what to do about it. Like she says, “take me out of it.”[88]

Professor: As much as I love Toni, I think our current circumstances warrant an alternate plan of action. Have you ever heard of keepin’ your allies close, but keepin’ your enemies closer? Leaving them to fend for themselves only serves to keep us divided and could ultimately mean that racist sentiments and ideologies would resurface.

Nile: I’m glad I asked for your help because I never would’ve thought of a ray gun that eliminates racism. What you’re sayin’ makes a lot of sense, and I think a multigenerational peacebuilding operation would serve this land well after having the exact opposite for the entire duration of this nation’s history. But hey look, Prof. I gotta run pretty soon. There’s here’s a letter that I think you should read later on when you get a chance. Later!

Professor: As always, it was great choppin it up with you. I’ll be sure to take a look at this when I get home. Take care Nephew!‍ ‍

Conclusion

As soon as the professor reached his driveway, he eagerly opened Nile’s letter. He was surprised to see that it was in his own handwriting. For a moment, he was confused because he couldn’t recall ever writing a letter nor could he remember ever giving a letter to Nile. As he scanned the first line he began to weep, because he realized that Nile was telling the truth.

‍ ‍

Letter To My Younger Self,

‍ ‍

Greetings from the distant, but not too distant, future. Like your ancestors before you, you have seen many things in this world that would cause anyone to lose hope in humanity’s ability to solve its issues with race, gender, sexuality, and a host of other identities. But unlike those that came before, you have been bestowed the gift of time travel. There have been many theories of time travel, but nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared you for the adventures that you and Nile will embark upon. But I firmly believe that your abiding faith in hope for a brighter tomorrow has led you to this moment. A world free of violence, where reparations for wrongs are a default, where healing, diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice are not only promises of a founding document, but universal values even more common than democracy and capitalism. A world where racism is but a distant memory is not only your future reality, it is your destiny. Leave behind all fears and doubts, for they will not aid you in your journey. For something great and new has arisen under the sun, and you are at the brink of a new world older. Be brave, be loving, and be confident. Endless generational joy and healing is at your fingertips. I’m proud of you and I thank you for all that you are doing to improve humanity.

‍ ‍

‍ ‍

[1] Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Univ. of Cal., Santa Cruz, Lecture at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Feb. 13, 2014).

[2] Jamelia Morgan, Disability, Policing, and Punishment: An Intersectional Approach, 75 Okla. L. Rev.169 (2022).

[3] Carceral schools are educational institutions that do more than merely serve as pipelines funneling students into prisons, as they operate as quasi-prisons themselves.

[4] Connie Wun, Not Only a Pipeline: Schools as Carceral Sites, 38 Occasional Paper Series, 1 (2017),  https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1131.

[5] The “school-to-prison pipeline” can be defined as the manner in which criminal legal control mechanisms, such as punitive policies, law enforcement, and surveillance mechanisms in schools increase the likelihood that youth contact with the juvenile or criminal legal systems. See Paul J. Hirschfield, Preparing for prison? The criminalization of school discipline in the USA, 12 Theoretical Criminology,79, xx (2008).

[6] Under the authorizing legislation for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program (42 U.S.C. §3796dd-8), a “school resource officer” is defined as a career law enforcement officer, with sworn authority, deployed in community-oriented policing, and assigned by the employing police department or agency to work in collaboration with schools and community-based organizations—(A) to address crime and disorder problems, gangs, and drug activities affecting or occurring in or around an elementary or secondary school; (B) to develop or expand crime prevention efforts for students; (C) to educate likely school-age victims in crime prevention and safety; (D) to develop or expand community justice initiatives for students; (E) to train students in conflict resolution, restorative justice, and crime awareness; (F) to assist in the identification of physical changes in the environment that may reduce crime in or around the school; and (G) to assist in developing school policy that addresses crime and to recommend procedural changes.

[7] https://sayevery.name/

[8] Taylor Ardrey, A Black teenage girl is suffering from memory loss after she was body slammed by a deputy at school, her mother says, Business Insider (Jan. 31, 2021), https://www.businessinsider.com/black-florida-student-slammed-in-viral-video-suffering-from-memory.

[9] Colin Deppen, 'Culture of abuse' claims at Pa. high school prompt investigation, Penn Live, (May 11, 2017), https://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/05/culture_of_abuse_claims_at_pa.html.

[10] Evie Blad, New Scrutiny for School Police After Violent Arrest of S.C. Student, Education Week (Nov. 2, 2015), https://www.edweek.org/leadership/new-scrutiny-for-school-police-after-violent-arrestof-s-c-student/2015/11 [https://perma.cc/W4JR-5ZQY].

[11] Colleen Quigley, Vance County sheriff: ‘No merit’ to 2nd abuse allegations made against school resource officer, CBS17 (Dec. 19, 2019), https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/vance-county-sheriff-no-merit-to-2nd-abuse-allegations-made-against-school-resource-office/

[12] Monique Morris, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (2016).

[13] ARTICLE: ENDING SCHOOL BRUTALITY, 28 Wm. & Mary J. Race, Gender & Soc. Just. 617

[14] Jacob Bor et al., Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study, The Lancet, Volume 392, Issue 10144, 302 – 310.

[15] I situate myself in the strong tradition of other Critical Race Theorists like Devon Carbado and others who utilize personal narrative as an analytical tool. See Devon Carbado, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment (2022).

[16] Pryce, D. K., Olaghere, A., Brown, R. A., & Davis, V. M. (2021). A Neglected Problem: Understanding the Effects of Personal and Vicarious Trauma on African Americans’ Attitudes Toward the Police. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 48(10), 1366-1389. https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211006756 (Original work published 2021)

[17] Jenkins, D. A., Tichavakunda, A. A., & Coles, J. A. (2020). The second ID: critical race counterstories of campus police interactions with Black men at Historically White Institutions. Race Ethnicity and Education, 24(2), 149–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2020.1753672.

[18] Champaign County Racial Justice Task Force, https://www.co.champaign.il.us/countyboard/rjtf/1710RJTFReport.pdf

[19] Justin A. Coles and Powell Tunette 2020. “A BlackCrit Analysis on Black Urban Youth and Suspension Disproportionality as Anti-Black Symbolic Violence.” Race Ethnicity and Education 23 (1): 113–33. doi:10.1080/13613324.2019.1631778.

[20] Timmesha A. Butler (2022). African American Students’ Experiences of the School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Phenomenological Study, Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, 7(1), 04. https://doi.org/10.20897/jcasc/11529

[21] The #SayTheirNames campaign, https://sayevery.name/

[22] Ben-Menachem, Jonathan, and Gerard Torrats-Espinosa. Police violence reduces trust in the police among Black residents, PloS one vol. 19,9 e0308487. 11 Sep. 2024, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0308487

[23] Victor M. Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (2011)..

[24] Harold Hinds, Leonard D.T. Newby, and Hailly T.N. Korman, (2022). Ignored, Punished, and Underserved Understanding and Addressing Disparities in Education Experiences and Outcomes for Black Children with Disabilities, Bellwether.org.

[25] Morris, supra note X.

[26] Melanie Leung-Gagné, Jennifer McCombs, Caitlin Scott, and Daniel J. Losen, (2022), Pushed Out: Trends and Disparities in Out-of-School Suspension, Learning Policy Institute.

[27] Harold Hinds, Leonard D.T. Newby, and Hailly T.N. Korman, (2022). Ignored, Punished, and Underserved Understanding and Addressing Disparities in Education Experiences and Outcomes for Black Children with Disabilities, Bellwether.org.

[28]See Khiara Bridges, Critical Race Theory: A Primer (Concepts and Insights) (2019).

[29] Mari J. Matsude et al, Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment 6 (1993).

[30] Bridges, supra note X.

[31] Aja Y. Martinez, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory (2020).

[32]See Richard Delgado, The Rodrigo Chronicles: Conversations About America and Race (1996); Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1987); Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992).

[33] Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1987).

[34] Id.

[35] Derrick Bell and the Ideology of Racial Reform: Will We Ever Be Saved? And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. By Derrick Bell., Basic Books, Inc., 1987. Pp. xii, 288. $ 19.95 , 97 Yale L.J. 923

[36] Id.

[37] Freedom dreams are the visions of the future that motivate activists in various social, cultural, and political movements. Amber M. Neal and Damaris C. Dunn, Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams: (Re)membering the Freedom Dreams of Black Women Abolitionist Teachers, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 35(4), 2020.

[38] Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002).

[39] Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto (2024).

[40] IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan, https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/parents/needs/speced/iepguide/iepguide.pdf.

[41] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-fatal-restraint-cornelius-fredericks-16-michigan-foster-facility-n1233122

[42] Charles Bartholomew, Preventing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Public Health Approach for School Psychologists, Counselors, and Social Workers (2023).

[43] Amanda Merkwae, Schooling the Police: Race, Disability, and the Conduct of School Resource Officers, 21 Mich. J. Race & L. 147 (Fall 2015).

[44] Pincus, R., Kurz, C. A., Rock, W. D., & Hines, E. M. (2025). Using Anti-Racist School Counseling Practices and Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports as Alternatives to Punitive Disciplinary Practices for Black Males. Professional School Counseling, 29(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2156759X251318659

[45] Corey Mitchell, Joe Yeradi, & Susan Ferris. (2021). When schools call police on kids. CTNewsJunkie.com. Available at https://ctnewsjunkie.com/2021/09/08/when-schools-call-police-on-kids/.

[46] D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, www.dare.org.

[47] Amir A. Gilmore, and Pamela J. Bettis. "Antiblackness and the adultification of Black children in a US prison nation." Oxford research encyclopedia of education. 2021.

[48] Malcolm X, a renown Black Muslim activist during the civil rights era, articulated this quote to his followers. See George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics 183 (2006).

[49] Bridges, supra note X.

[50] Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992).

[51] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[52] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[53] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[54] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[55] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[56] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[57] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[58] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[59] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[60] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[61] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[62] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[63] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[64] Bell, Faces, supra note X.

[65] Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1987).

[66] Bell, And We Are Not Saved, supra note X.

[67] Bell, And We Are Not Saved, supra note X.

[68] Bell, And We Are Not Saved, supra note X.

[69] Bell, And We Are Not Saved, supra note X.

[70] Kiese Laymon, The Worst of White Folks, https://empathyeducates.org/Journeys-to-and-through/the-worst-of-white-folks/ originally published in Gawker.

[71] Rocio Rodriguez Ruiz, School-to-Prison Pipeline: An Evaluation of Zero Tolerance Policies and Their Alternatives, 54 Hous. L. Rev. 803 (Winter 2017).

[72] Jason P. Nance, Students, Police, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline, 93 Washington University Law Review 919 (2016).

[73] Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Building Peace in Wake County Schools: A proposal to replace school resource officers with peacebuilders, https://southerncoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Building-Peace-in-Wake-County-Proposal-2020.pdf

[74] Building Peace in Wake County Schools, supra note X.

[75] Building Peace in Wake County Schools, supra note X.

[76] Building Peace in Wake County Schools, supra note X.

[77] Building Peace in Wake County Schools, supra note X.

[78] Building Peace in Wake County Schools, supra note X.

[79] See Carl T. Bogus, The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, Univ. of California at Davis Law Review, Vol. 31 (1998); Carol Anderson, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America; Akhil Amar, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920; Lahny Silva, The Trap Chronicles, Vol. 3, Felons & Firearms, 84 Md. L. Rev. (2024) Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol84/iss2/4.

[80] Id.

[81]SYMPOSIUM: FEATURED ARTICLE: THE WILMINGTON MASSACRE AND COUP OF 1898 AND THE SEARCH FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE, 14 Elon L. Rev. 117.

[82]SYMPOSIUM: 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT: LOOKING BACK & MOVING FORWARD: ARTICLE: AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN NORTH CAROLINA: AN ILLUSION OR POLITICAL PROGRESS?, 6 Wake Forest J. L. & Pol'y 85.

[83]PUTTING TULSA IN CONTEXT: RACIAL CAPITALISM AND RACE MASSACRES: TULSA'S BLACK WALL STREET AND ELAINE'S SHARECROPPERS, 57 Tulsa L. Rev. 39

[84]PUTTING TULSA IN CONTEXT: RACIAL CAPITALISM AND RACE MASSACRES: TULSA'S BLACK WALL STREET AND ELAINE'S SHARECROPPERS, 57 Tulsa L. Rev. 39

[85]PUTTING TULSA IN CONTEXT: RACIAL CAPITALISM AND RACE MASSACRES: TULSA'S BLACK WALL STREET AND ELAINE'S SHARECROPPERS, 57 Tulsa L. Rev. 39

[86] Tom Huddleston Jr., ‘Black Wall Street’: The history of the wealthy Black community and the massacre perpetuated there 100 years ago, CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/04/what-is-black-wall-street-history-of-the-community-and-its-massacre.html

[87] Toni Morrison, PBS Interview 1993 with Charlie Rose.

[88] Id.

‍ ‍

[QJ1]Jacob Bor et al., Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study, 392 THE LANCET, 302, pin cite (xx)

‍ ‍