Black Lives Matter at School Book Trailer Transcript

Haymarket Books. (2020, November 16). Black lives matter at school book trailer. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Xh87oePtY

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[dark music plays]

Narrator: What would schooling look like for black students if they didn’t have to walk hallways in straight, quiet lines like prison? What would schooling look like if educators centered the well-being of black students instead of school codes of conduct?

Dr. Denisha Jones: A lot of what schooling does is-is to not affirm, is to make black children and black people and brown people feel inferior from the inception, right? We, we, all, a-and we start this with just very young children in general. We see them as full of deficits, and focus on things they can’t do, but it’s even done to a further extreme with black children, right, where they’re not only a deficit, their whole family and their whole culture and their whole people are a deficit, right, so we have to address that.

[music becomes more upbeat]

Jesse Hagopian: Black Lives Matter at School is a declaration that [pause] black students deserve to be taught the truth, and that their lives have value in our schools, and that they can’t just be cast aside and pushed out of schools by zero tolerance discipline, and, uh, they need to be nurtured and supported rather than punished, and pushed out.

Israel Presley: As a, as a black man, again, thinking critically, you know? So many of my friends have wound up in jail, you know, I, you know I used to, really s–we used to really support each other, you know? Emotionally, we was going through hard times of, you know, really finding who we were, you know? It’s hard to find, you know, who you are in a system that doesn’t wanna find you, period. They don’t recognize us.

Marquette Prinzing: It’s not okay for some students to feel like they can and that they’re able, and for other students to feel like they never will. For other people to question the worth of our children.

Narrator: The most truly radical tenant of Black Lives Matter at School may be the intentional space and time created for black youth to be safe and experience peace. Black Lives Matter at School centers the humanity of our children, who all deserve to breathe, process, inquire, challenge, create, fail, experiment, envision, dream, and exist.

Israel Presley: You know, wh-why don’t we talk about black leaders, you know, cause all I ever see is us being slaves, you know? Like, why don’t you ever teach me to, you know, how we fought back, cause I know my people are strong.

Narrator: Educators have to dismantle systems of oppression, systems that we influence daily. We have to be radically different from the missionary educator depicted in popular culture.

Jesse Hagopian: It’s just amazing to see this uprising of educators from coast to coast who are demanding an end to institutional racism in the public schools, and really want to empower their students to change our society.

[music becomes darker]

Israel Presley: And that’s what these demands are doing, they’re giving us the chance to fulfill what we want, you know, to empower us.

Narrator: Black youth deserve a chance to dream, uninterrupted.