How the Black Next Story Creates Schools for the Future

There was a time in our history when schools for Black children were designed to create a class of leaders, politically, culturally, and otherwise, who would shape our country into something more democratic, progressive, and fair. While a lot of discourse around school segregation was focused on the physical differences between schools, the underlying purpose of these schools was to prepare a group of people for a world that had yet to exist. When we talk about the Black Next Story at 228 Accelerator, we're talking about not only the present, but what could and should be in the future. It's a balance of reality and imagination, knowledge and wisdom, and sophistication and innocence.

There is but one problem that we are called to attend to: the disconnection and separation from ourselves, our home, and each other. The impact of segregation has taken on many names and forms throughout our time. Today, when it happens between bodies of different shades, we call it racism. We call it classism when it occurs between bodies of different material means. Sexism when it occurs between bodies of different genders. The survival of the body depends on how it's understood and how it's perceived. While we have created taxonomies for the social phenomena that threatens our bodies, naming should not norm or numb. Rather, it should remind us that the experiences of segregation are so prevalent that we need a way to communicate them with others.  

We are in a moment when incredible fractures are happening in our education systems. Children are armed, Black body police brutality is in syndication, and schools, teachers, and leaders are stretched beyond their flexibility. Meanwhile, an AI chat bot has consumed all of the written materials humans have ever written and is able to effortlessly leap over and master even our most challenging academic hurdles. While we might respond by creating more separation between technology and students through bans and prohibitions, what if we actually acknowledged that the problems we are facing do not need a technical solution or even more space between? 

Doannie Tran said it best:

“We need new social technologies to metabolize the challenges of our time.”  

We believe the Black Next Story requires community building and relationship building to become explicit skills that are taught, measured, and assessed. A technology in and of itself, the ability to create a community with different humans and practice being one with each other is both the process and the product. Our collective metabolism is unable to process our challenges and the cost is catastrophic. One part of the body is brutally beaten. Another part withers from hunger. Another part still is poisoned by neglected water or land. We cannot move together because we are not well. We are a community when we are connected, and the process of connection in this new moment is new social technology that we all can co-create and co-design with one another. The Black Next Story prioritizes the wellness, connection, and integration of our bodies, especially Black and brown bodies. 

Without this metabolism, energy is expended in crisis, but without the technologies to process, we leave exhausted and without nourishment. While some cultures have their own ancient technologies and traditions, when we are not in community with each other or reject them because they do not fit into our conceptual frameworks, we are unable to learn from each other. We remain right in our own heads and unwell. The Black Next Story creates spaces for us to learn new ways to be with ourselves and learn from each other.   

We are in the business of writing the Black Next Story. We believe that all public spaces (especially schools and places of learning) need to reemerge as public healing spaces. As we emerge from the pandemic, public lynchings, and gun violence, we need to remember that there is still a great need for schools to become places where a multiethnic, multiracial, multigenerational democracy is taught and modeled in practice. This requires a new progressive pedagogy, instruction, and assessment that greets the moment with courage, compassion, and imagination. This requires new social technologies that have to be taught and mastered by humans, and the magic that we create when we are in community with each other. 

Our collective progress hinges on our willingness and ability to create the new technologies of our time. Luckily, we have some help. The internet allows us to convene beyond borders. Artificial intelligence can help us practice new language and new ideas of community, and understand new stories that emerge when we are together. Our ability and tendency to separate and segregate is too great to ignore—perhaps it's time to think about how our technologies, the ones that exist and are waiting to exist, can bring us closer together and make us more whole.   

We must heal, design, and transcend.

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