Punished for Dreaming: The Case for Abolitionist Teaching and Educational Reparations

In this keynote conversation, Dr. Bettina Love tells the story of her generation, the Hip Hop generation - children of the '80s and '90s - who came of age when mass incarceration and educational policies put unmistakable, identical targets on the backs of Black children. Crime reform and education reform merged to label Black children as crack babies, Super Predators, and thugs, and told the nation they were nothing more than an achievement gap. Dr. Love's presentation vividly explains how the last four decades of educational reform laid the foundation for each book ban, CRT ban, and the never-ending goal of reformers to extract from Black education for their own gain. Her talk will end with a road map for repair, arguing for educational reparations with transformation for all children at its core.