William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice
Abstract
As diverse forms of anti-democratic and anti-inclusionary politics escalate in the United States, public education is increasingly a site for retrenchment and contestation with targeted efforts to silence and erase civil rights victories for equity and access. Addressing a critical, yet unattended issue at the intersection of education law and policy and civil rights, this Article joins with the growing discourse interrogating the “parental rights” movement and racially regressive legislation. Employing a case study analysis of social movement activism and education policy legislation from 2018–2023 in Florida, it aims to provoke critical praxis emanating from essential inquiry— what is the future of school-based restorative justice within the expanding politics of the right and resurgence of carceral logics in public education? In posing this inquiry, this Article is guided by two core purposes. First, to amplify the increasing precariousness of educational equity and access for students who have long existed at the margins of public schools under anti-Black regimes. Second, to sound an alarm as to the expanding reality that school-based restorative justice is not only at risk, but under threat. From these vantage points, this Article joins with scholars, activists, and communities organizing for democracy and liberation in the face of a renewed ecosystem of punishment and exclusion promulgated in the name of school safety, choice, and parental rights.
Repository Citation
Thalia González and Mara Schiff, The Uncertain Future of Restorative Justice: Anti-Woke Legislation, Retrenchment and Politics of the Right, 30 Wm. & Mary J. Race, Gender, & Soc. Just. 1 (2024), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol30/iss1/2Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Education Law Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons