We Who Are Not Cared For: Social Death, the Lie of Educational Equity, and a Radical Replanting Praxis

This thesis examines how the concept of social death, as theorized by Orlando Patterson and expanded by Frank B. Wilderson III and Christina Sharpe, can serve as a transformative foundation for culturally informed care practices within academic institutions. Arguing that traditional equity efforts and even critical race interventions often fall short by focusing on reform within inherently anti-Black systems, I propose a new framework: Radical Replanting Praxis. Using the metaphor of education as a tree, this praxis calls for a shift in attention from reforming institutional “roots” to transforming the “soil”—the relational, ideological, and everyday conditions in which Black students live and learn. Through a close analysis of how natal alienation, gratuitous violence, general dishonor, fungibility, and accumulation manifest in schools, this work exposes the limitations of liberal multiculturalism and soft inclusion. Drawing from the works of Dumas, ross, and Sharpe, it calls for a care practice rooted in radical clarity, relational accountability, and the affirmation of Black epistemologies. This thesis ultimately reimagines care not as a performance or intervention, but as an urgent and ethical commitment to shifting the conditions under which Black students grow—not for institutional success, but for collective liberation.