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The manufactured lie that Black and Indigenous people are inferior begins to crumble when a Black or Indigenous person does as well as, or prevails over, a white person. That is when we see the truth that has been hidden by these lies. Inferiority was never real. It was created and repeated to keep people of color powerless and to protect the systems that depended on their oppression. David Walker’s point reminds us that education is so threatening because it gives people the knowledge and language to expose those lies.

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I am immediately lead by this quote to Gordon Parks' A Choice of Weapons. In this memoir Parks shares his experience as a black photographer - articulating the vision that the camera was a powerful weapon of witness that shaped the civil rights movement.

I wanted to raise this idea question: does representation or learning offer more opportunities for change? Is there a difference between the two?

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Now true for most students...

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Not sure.

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True of all schools? What about Hampton and Tuskegee and the like?

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very true, real education is empowering.

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I can relate to this quote as I reflect on my childhood as a student of the public school system. I graduated with "shackled of the mind" that held me in bondage long after I graduated.

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This is a good reminder of the power of liberatory education - if it weren't so powerful, they wouldn't be working so hard to keep it from the people they fear.

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Today I would say, I have contributed to "teaching Negro inferiority and white supremacy" most of my career. I am actively working to identify and push against WSC which is embedded in the curriculum I am tasked to teach.

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Rosa Parks, civil rights organizer in the Black Freedom Struggle:

The schools in the South were the best training ground for teaching Negro inferiority and white supremacy.

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Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid revolutionary and the first Black president of South Africa:

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

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Madeline Morgan, Black educator and curriculum developer in Chicago (1940s):

Knowledge is only power if it is put into action.

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Noliwe Rooks, Black scholar and author:

The public funding of Black education was not viewed as a right of citizenship, but rather as a way to include Black people in a changing economic order in service to a changing southern economy in a manner mindful of northern industry.

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Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (1970s):

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

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David Walker, Black abolitionist and author of David Walker’s Appeal (1829):

For colored people to acquire learning in this country, makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation. Why, what is the matter? Why, they know that their infernal deeds of cruelty will be made known to the world.

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Ina, 2a -- If education is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world, then it seems fitting that BIPOC folx have had such struggles with the education system because clearly we do not have the power in this world