Reading the Past and Listening to the Present

The conclusion of First Strike debunks the claim that teacher unions prevent administrators from excising bad teachers from schools, which in turn creates underperforming students. Through a meditation on his mother’s experience as a schoolteacher, Sojoyner suggests that the exclusionary potential and pedagogical insufficiency of standardized testing, as well as the cutting of social support nets for students, are the actual contributing factors. The author describes his influences in W. E. B. DuBois and Clyde Woods, and summarizes his individual chapters’ claims.

By All Means Possible

The fifth chapter elucidates a needed connection between the competing visions of the education of Black people and the current iterations of the educative process. The construction of this chapter in this manner is of great importance, as a major flaw in the school to prison pipeline analytic framework is a historical representation of the issues that are central to the discussion.

In the Belly of the Beast

The second chapter looks at how the ideology that informs the “need” for prisons is normalized. Analysing the root causes of the development of the prisons as an ideological construct, it looks at the ways in which such ideology has affected the relationships of social structures.

Troubled Man

The fourth chapter presents the harsh realities that young Black men face in the gendered social hierarchy that presents a very limited set of, often problematic, solutions as models. Situated within a society that advances violent expressions of masculine behaviour, the stories of Black male youths explore the consequences of when Black males reject these notions of masculinity.

The Problem of Black Genius

The first chapter of the book maps out the manner in which Black manifestations of cultural autonomy, from music to visual arts, have been systematically eliminated from public education. This discussion is bookended by a discussion of the central force that fomented Black cultural enclosures – Western Christianity.

Land of Smoke and Mirrors

The third chapter analyzes the mechanisms that have fuelled the rise of draconian discipline policies and normalized violent within public education. It traces the contemporary history that gave rise to punitive policy formation in Southern California and questions the intent of such legislations.