Envisioning Justice Grantee Partner Spotlight: Asif Wilson

In this Illinois Humanities Spotlight, Envisioning Justice grantee partner Asif Wilson shares his thoughts on what a just future looks like in schools, and how the humanities help to bring that future into focus.

Q: How do you see harnessing the arts and humanities as important strategies in working toward that future?

AW: My first reaction to this question is the counter-story. Counter-stories are the stories of the oppressed. They, as Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate put it, “provide a way to communicate the experience and realities of the oppressed, a first step to the road of justice.” I think that the arts and humanities, for BIPOC folks, have always provided us with the mediums to share our stories.

As I think about the counter-story as it relates to education, I often think about the work from Tara Yosso that reveals the assets that BIPOC students bring to schools from their communities. Because schools function within a carceral web of surveillance and punishment, BIPOC students’ communities and cultures are viewed as characteristics to remove, not grow. 

As both teacher and administrator, I’ve experienced first-hand the wealth of knowledge, aspirations, and analyses of the world that students bring into schools, and the ways in which the arts and humanities provide them with mediums and learning experiences of such.

Q: What is the most important thing people should know about your work?

AW: I should start by saying that my work is what I have learned from being in community with others. I’m not sure I can call it my work. However, I hope that folks can better understand the ways in which schools function as contributors to the school to prison nexus, the interconnected ways that schools function as prisons and their power to transform those conditions. On the one hand this analysis helps students and their families to remove the blame from themselves, better articulating the structures of the world that create harmful experiences. And on the other, I hope this helps folks to know that they hold power to create change. That transformation is possible. 

I believe that schools can function in ways that aren’t harmful. In ways that are life-giving, healing-centered, and culturally sustaining. I hope that folks find motivation for the latter in my work.

Q: What are some recommended books, articles, podcasts, etc. that have been influential to your work?

First Strike by Damien Sojoyner
Right to Be Hostile by Erica Meiners
We Do This Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love