Education

Education is an apparatus of the state to colonize and mold useful, docile subjects and citizens. But education can also enable resistance to oppression and exploitation. It is thus a site of struggle for rulers to maintain order and for their subjects to gain a measure of freedom. American education, from its inception, was designed for the elites and, later, the white masses to inculcate conformity to social norms. Enslaved African Americans were largely denied learning, and US education for Native, African, and Asian Americans and Latinxs featured segregated, inferior schools for subjugation.