Date of Graduation

Spring 5-17-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Human Rights Education (HRE)

College/School

School of Education

Department/Program

International and Multicultural Education (IME)

First Advisor

Monisha Bajaj

Abstract

The right to education, understood from a lens of transformational human rights, is not being fulfilled for youth of color in the Bay Area, particularly in historically Black neighborhoods like the Western Addition and Hunters Point, where high school and college graduation rates are significantly lower for Black and Latino students than for their white counterparts. The systemic barriers to educational attainment for people of color are rooted in legacy of Jim Crow-era segregationist policies, but they only exist today because they have been preserved in contemporary “race-neutral” policies and practices. This ongoing racial inequality in education has incurred a debt that educators and community activists in the Bay Area are demanding be repaid, with many utilizing the language of reparations to aim for the radical reimagining of Black education. Reparations in education has also been gathering momentum in some higher education institutions, particularly amongst the Jesuits, as they uncover legacies of complicity in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and seek to repay their own debts.

This convergence of community activists, the Jesuit ministry, and higher education institutions engaging in calls for reparations is happening right at the gates of the University of San Francisco. Is there a role for the university to play within community efforts to fulfill the right to education for Black students in the Bay Area? A deeper engagement with actively fulfilling the right to education in San Francisco has the potential to radically transform the university and the movements arising outside its gates.

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