school to prison-pipeline agenda. How will this be achieved through this text set, positive images in the music industry, and scholars like Dr. Umar Johnson that look like Black boys?
First, it creates a platform to reinforce a deep understanding about a meaningful topic that is culturally relevant. Secondly, fostering the conversation produces critical thinking, a passion to read, write, speak, and listen that addresses Common Core Learning Standards. Thirdly, it is interdisciplinary, cross disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. Lastly, it prepares students to be successful at surviving in the very world that will repeatedly test their strength and endurance through the permanent existence of institutionalized racism.
Confrontation is necessary to provoke change. Historically change has been a very slow process, "Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict" (Saul Alinsky).