Barbed Wire Fences: The Structural Violence of Education Law

LaToya Baldwin Clark

Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

I thank Guy-Uriel Charles, Hiba Hafiz, Osamudia James, Etienne Toussaint, the participants of this Symposium and the Culp Colloquia, as well as the excellent editors of the University of Chicago Law Review. To William, Ahmir, Amina, and Ahmad: thank you for giving me the time, space, and motivation to write about issues that matter to me. All mistakes are mine.

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Abstract

In this Essay, I argue that, in urban metros like Chicago, poor Black children are victims of not just gun violence but also the structural violence of systemic educational stratification. Structural violence occurs in the context of domination, where poor Black children are marginalized and isolated, vulnerable to lifelong subordination across many domains. Specifically, I argue that U.S. education policy subjects poor Black children to the violence of intergenerational subordination by trapping children behind residential barbed wire fences, starving their schools of necessary resources, and abusively dangling powerless community control.

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