Educational Equity: Pathways to Success

Abstract

vividly defended within the book’s discussion of climate justice. Táíwò’s examination shows how the distribution of environmental risk and vulnerability within and across countries and populations is tied to the structural accumulation of advantages and disadvantage owing to the global racial empire. Signposting some pathways to justice, the book outlines the ‘targets and tactics’ that a constructive view of reparations could entail: unconditional cash transfers, global climate funding, abolishing tax havens, divesting from fossil fuels and investing in communities, not least community control and solidarity. In each, there are actors (institutions, states) who bear more of the burden to enact these shifts. But how might these liabilities be collectively recognised and agreed upon, especially by those required to give things up? Readers of this journal might recognise the potential role of education here: the deliberation that can be at the heart of pedagogic relationships; the possible impulse of education to co-create meaning, understanding and ideals. While education is, perhaps understandably, not a central theme within Reconsidering Reparations, there is much in it for the education theorist to pick up. After all, matters of epistemic justice, deliberation, and building new solidarities are key to the project of reparation as much as it is to the project of education. Moreover, the future-oriented view of reparation – its commitment to build something new – offers a framework for thinking through the futures of education too. The lens of reparation can offer a radical vision for education, one that goes beyond the piecemeal incrementalism of reform which by and large leave the conditions of educational injustice in place. Instead, a ‘reparative future of education’, as I have written about elsewhere, is one that seeks to redress the injustices of education, both past and present, so that these are not carried into tomorrow’s systems of education. As Táíwò recognises, the task of justice has always been large. I can imagine this is why he framed this book around the Malê Revolt against slavery in Brazil; the Malê knew another world is possible – and as Táíwò helps us see, in 1835 they ‘continued a fight that we can help finish’ (p.213).