“I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully
understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and
painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education ‘reform’
in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I
hated school because I loved to dream.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How
to be an Antiracist
In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning
with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on
generations of Black lives
In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully
that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children,
pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs.
New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of
funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts
increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system.
These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in
particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind
eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today,
there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of
American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now
passed off as justice.
It is time to put a price tag on the miseducation of Black children.
In this prequel to The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a
blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the
lens of the people who lived it. Punished for Dreaming lays
bare the devastating effect on 25 Black Americans caught in the
intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. Then, with input
from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair,
arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its
core.