Barbed Wire Fences: The Structural Violence of Education

Abstract

In this Essay, I argue that, in urban centers like Chicago, poor Black children are victims not just of gun violence, but also the structural violence of systemic educational stratification. Structural violence occurs in the context of domination, where poor Black are marginalized and isolated, vulnerable to life-long subordination across many domains. Specifically, I argue that U.S. education policy that traps children behind residential barbed wire fences, starves their schools of necessary resources, and abusively dangles powerless community control. Taken together, these structural choices subject poor Black children to the violence of intergeneration subordination.