Decolonizing School Systems: Racial Justice, Radical Healing, and Educational Equity inside Oakland Unified School District

Educational spaces, like the rest of the nation's current policy arenas, have become a contentious terrain where ideological and political battles are fought and particular futures won. This article is written in the aftermath of the atrocity at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in August 2017, where racism, racial rage, hate, violence, and death took center stage during a white supremacist rally at an institution of higher education. A month later, motions were set into play to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program--impacting the legal rights of children of immigrants to attend school. Oakland is also a battlefield. The innovative work of the Office of African American Male Achievement (AAMA) in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is part of a larger legacy to reimagine schooling as powerfully inclusive and unapologetically democratic. In this article, the authors offer a racial justice paradigm for other school systems struggling to move towards educational equity.