Learning from the Movement for Black Lives: Horizons of Racial Justice for Comparative and International Education

This opening editorial for the special issue “Black Lives Matter and Global Struggles for Racial Justice in Education” engages with the theory and praxis of Black Lives Matter (BLM). One cannot fully understand the powerful intellectual and political work of BLM without considering the macro-level structural forces of state violence, racial capitalism, and anti-Blackness that BLM boldly challenges. To this end, the editorial first outlines the origins of the Movement for Black Lives and the genealogy of Black resistance that informs it. We then interrogate the global legacies of state violence that BLM confronts and the foundational systems of anti-Blackness and racial capitalism that sustain structural inequalities in schools and society. Finally, we return to BLM’s charge to forge abolitionist horizons within and beyond the Global North in order to set out implications for the field of comparative and international education and global struggles for racial justice in education.