ABSTRACT
This essay walks through three stories that demonstrate the anti-Black dualism between paternalism and punishment. Each describes how research, policies, and reforms that rely on pathological descriptions of Black children as at risk and/or as potential trouble-makers to equalize education reproduce narratives that subject black children to punishment. Embracing theories, practices, and methods of refusals may offer researchers a way of escaping this dualistic confinement. Refusing traditional forms of research, epistemic disobedience, embracing more complex narratives of youth, undoing paternalistic framings, and offering new narratives are as important as undoing practices that punish Black youth.
