The concluding chapter documents the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline movement on reducing suspensions and challenging policing practices in schools. It then highlights the features that help explain the growth and success of the movement and its emerging intersectional nature—like centering the participation of people most impacted by injustice. It draws lessons from this study for reconceptualizing social justice movements as ones that “nationalize local struggles.” It considers the enduring challenges facing the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, including the persistence of racial disparities in exclusionary discipline, tensions between local and national organizing, and the difficulties of implementing restorative alternatives that serve to transform deep-seated racialized processes. It ends with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities to building racial and educational justice movements powerful enough to fully transform entrenched systems of racial inequity and educational injustice, particularly in an era that has witnessed the rise of white nationalism.
“Challenges and opportunities in academic medicine” APS racism series: at the intersection of equity, science, and social justice
