Oral History Interview with Luke Bastiaansen

Title

Oral History Interview with Luke Bastiaansen

Interviewee

Luke Bastiaansen

Interviewer

Eli Bastiaansen

Description

Luke Baastiansten of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was interviewed by Eli Baastiansten, a Sewanee student, on November 4th, 2023 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included Bastiaansen’s transition to Philadelphia, a majority-minority city and experience as a tutor in carceral settings.We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.

Transcript

00:00:02 Eli Bastiaansen: This is Eli Bastiaansen from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is Saturday, the 4th of November at 3:45 PM and I am with Luke Bastiaansen.

00:00:16 Luke Bastiaanse...: Hi, this is Luke Bastiaansen. I am here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the same date, the 4th of November, 2023 at 5:44 PM

00:00:31 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you Luke Bastiaansen for being here. First off, we're just going to start, where are you originally from?

00:00:37 Luke Bastiaanse...: I was born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

00:00:40 Eli Bastiaansen: Nice. And how does that differ from being in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia specifically?

00:00:47 Luke Bastiaanse...: It's incredibly different. Culturally, it's different. Colorado Springs is absolutely not a big city, especially a big city with diversity. And Philadelphia is a big city. There's tons of diversity. It's one of the cities, one of the few cities in the United States where there's a majority minority, meaning that white, white people are the below 50% population in the city, which is rare for this country.

00:01:27 Eli Bastiaansen: Nice. And I guess, what was your journey from Colorado Springs to Philadelphia and how did you get to the occupation that you have now?

00:01:37 Luke Bastiaanse...: Well, I went to Swarthmore College, which is in Philadelphia, pa, or not in Swarthmore, it's in Swarthmore, pa. And at Swarthmore I studied black studies, which made me incredibly passionate about issues of social and racial justice. And again, recognizing the extremely large black population in Philadelphia inspired me to begin working in racial and social justice in the city. That while at Swarthmore, that led me to volunteering as a tutor in Carceral settings, including the State Correctional Institute of Chester, Pennsylvania, which really opened my eyes to the immense inequity that exists, but also the power of education to begin remedying some of this inequity and really providing the opportunity for people to put their boots on the ground in working against some of this systemic and intentionally designed inequity that exists within this country. With that, I decided that I wanted to approach this work through an educational lens, understanding education and teaching as power and seeing teaching as an opportunity to begin to make change. So I moved to into Philadelphia and became a teacher with the school District of Philadelphia Public School District in Philly, and began working at a middle school in North Philly teaching eighth grade English.

00:03:31 Eli Bastiaansen: Very nice. Thank you. And you talked about your involvement in the Carceral setting, and what do you believe is that connection between incarcerated individuals and then the power of education?

00:03:48 Luke Bastiaanse...: Well, there's a massive connection, and I think it goes in a lot of different ways. It goes in a lot of different ways throughout one's life even. It starts, especially for young black men in their childhood where the school to prison pipeline, or as most scholars now refer to it as the school to prison nexus, because it's more than just as an individual pipeline takes hold, right? There's police in schools, there's policies sort of one strike throughout policies in schools, and there's all sorts of different structures in place within educational settings that promote the school to prisonn pipeline or nexus and begin to funnel young black men and young black women into carceral settings. After that, while in a carceral setting, the power of education becomes even higher. For those who are incarcerated, they experience an incredible lack of education, and they tend to find themselves feeling the most interested and the most passionate in education that they ever have throughout their lives because it's one of the only things they can do to escape the oppressive environment that they exist under. And yet in carceral settings, the educational opportunities are the least.
00:05:32 So with that in these settings, education becomes a path towards freedom. It becomes a path towards intellectual freedom. It becomes a path towards physical freedom that those who invest themselves in, even the sparse educational offerings that carceral settings have, they are seen as more likely to get parole within the system that we live under, but also they find themselves feeling more intellectually free and as though their minds aren't necessarily contained within the four walls of their cell. And even after that, education plays an immense role in their ability and everyone's ability to work against the carceral system, towards prison abolition.

00:06:20 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess working in elementary or in middle schools now, you sort of see education as that form of liberation and that can begin through the youth to try to avoid and try to work against many of those systems.

00:06:35 Luke Bastiaanse...: Yeah, exactly. You mentioned working in middle schools. I think there's a statistic, and I'm not exactly certain what the specifics of the numbers are, but I seem to remember that if children are black, I think black children aren't literate by grade five. They are more likely than not to end up in the carceral system somehow within the next five, 10 years of their lives, right? So education truly is a means of disrupting A, the school to prison pipeline, but B, the prison industrial complex more broadly, and the mechanism in which the prison industrial complex acts as a new form of slavery and enslavement of black and brown individuals.

00:07:37 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess that transitions us very well into our discussion of Black Lives Matter directly. And to start, how did you receive the news of maybe the death of Trayvon Martin or just the news during the Covid pandemic with the death of George Floyd, or how did you receive the news surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement?

00:08:03 Luke Bastiaanse...: I mean, I think those are two questions, right? How did you receive the news of these deaths? How did you receive the news of the Black Lives Matter movement? And I think that these murders, these deaths were felt in different ways, but all of them stemming from pain, right? This pain caused a lot of anger, a lot of sadness, frustration with the system, with the world we live in, with the fact that this is an unsurprising reality about where we exist and the systems we exist under. And I think that was the biggest thing that I was truly disappointed and saddened and angered by the fact that I wasn't surprised. The fact that this was normal is incredibly sobering, and honestly, still I'm feeling chills right now because it's just that powerful.
00:09:17 And with that, the Black Lives Matter movement, if you will, took even more power, took even more social attention, and that was inspiring. That really felt huge. It was a fantastic moral uplift. And I think with that, I'm in a similar way, I would even say equally disappointed by the fact that the movement has seemed to have lost so much power in our current present because of all these social pressures and the constant return to whiteness and a white and white power in our society. As soon as things like Black Lives Matter come up, as soon as movements for civil rights come up, whiteness finds a way of pushing them down and placing itself back in power. And that's not to say that Black Lives matter necessarily put black people even in power, but it created a glimmer and that glimmer was quickly dashed away.

00:10:37 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think that social media had a large impact in just spreading the movement, but also as you say, sort of that reassertion of the white power extinguishing the glimmer that was provided with Black Lives Matter?

00:10:55 Luke Bastiaanse...: Of course. I mean, the interesting thing is that Black Lives Matter was the first social movement, especially for black life and black America that we've had, that has not centered around a single focal leader. There was not a single individual or a single set of individuals that we could point to and say, these people are leading the movement, right? There were the people who started Black Lives Matter, but they eventually became somewhat less powerful. They weren't leading the marches or the singular march like Martin Luther King was, or like Malcolm X. They weren't single people and individuals. And in that sense, social media and accounts, right? Social media accounts became the power. And I think in that sense, without social media, that's never would've happened, right? This anger and this inspiration would not have spread throughout the country like a wildfire that it is. But I also don't think social media has created an attention span that is very short, and with that, people forgot about what they were so angry about, and people lost their anger and their inspiration just as quickly because social media moved on, right? The trend wasn't then to focus on something else or the election, I don't know exactly what it was, I forget. But the attention moved and shifted, and the devotion to black life was quickly dashed away as a result of just the new social media news scape.
00:12:46 And similarly, I'm weary that protests for Palestine will similarly be forgotten, and the Palestinian people will be left abandoned by our society as a result of the quick news cycle that social media has created.

00:13:04 Eli Bastiaansen: You bring up Palestine. Do you think that there's a connection, I mean, obviously you do, but what is that connection between Black Lives Matter and the current events in Palestine?

00:13:15 Luke Bastiaanse...: I mean, I think it's almost one for one, it's an effort for a capitalist economy driven by money and by money hunger and by whiteness, first off, an understanding of whiteness as perpetuated by capitalism, right? Capitalism is a tool for the perpetuation of whiteness in both of these senses, the killing of George Floyd, the protests in the United States that followed, and the manner in which those protests were dealt with were dominated by a conversation around whiteness and white power in the United States. And similarly, Israel and its government are empowered by whiteness and capitalism in the same way that the American government is supporting the Israeli cause financially and militaristically in a way that lends its power to the whiteness of Judaism and the whiteness of Israel that is not paralleled by the minoritization of the Muslim population in this world and the minoritization of the brown population that exists in Palestine because they are in fact a global minority as a result. You know what I mean?

00:15:08 Eli Bastiaansen: Yeah. Just as a white male yourself, how have you sort of understood your own positionality and how has the Black Lives Matter movement sort of influenced the way that you interact with others, with the community in the prisons, in the elementary and middle schools in Philadelphia, and even in talks and conversations that you may or may not have had with maybe people about Palestine and Israel?

00:15:43 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think my positionality allows, it's the conversation around I requires two things. I think the first is a recognition of the power that I have that if I don't recognize the power that I have, I'm working against myself that if I don't, I need to recognize the power, the social power that I have as a straight white man in order to understand the world around me. If I don't, and if I'm not awakened to that power, then I'm instantly placing those around me below myself, right? Because I'm operating within the system that was designed to place them below myself. But by awakening myself to my privilege, I can then understand the system and see the system for what it is. With that, as a straight white male, I'm also given the power to make change in a way that no one else in this society can. My word is trusted, unlike anyone else's. Because of my positionality, my perspectives are trusted.
00:17:10 I have one small step for me, makes a lot more change than a large step for many other populations just as a result of my social privilege. And with that, I think I've understood my positionality to be a call to action then that by being aware of it and by understanding the issues that exist in our society, my positionality calls me to use that power to help make and inspire change. And I think there's sort of a necessary nuance that needs to be understood that I really, really appreciate the ideas of Gloria Ladson-Billings who says that those in social power should not even be allies, but should be co-conspirators saying that allyship still puts sort of a saviorism and a heroism on those in social power, those being the white people. But instead, I need to surrender my power in order to pull and leverage, not leverage, pull and lift those of less social power and bring them into power.
00:18:37 I can't maintain my social power and see those of less social power, gain power. I need to surrender my power in order to see that happen. And it almost works like a seesaw. And Gloria Ladson-Billings offers the example of, I forget where this was. I think it was somewhere in the south during the protests surrounding the confederate flags and the confederate statues. And there was a lady, a black woman, who wanted to climb a flag pole to apprehend a confederate flag, and she wanted to do this, but the police had surrounded the flagpole and were threatening to tase the flagpole. They said, if you climb up, we'll tase the flagpole, which would've certainly killed her. She had a white man with her. And the white man as she started climbing, placed his hand on the flagpole as such, if they tased the flagpole, they would've tased him and her.
00:19:46 He said, feel free to tase it, do what you will, but recognize that you will not only be killing a black woman who you view as disposable, you'll also be taking the life of a white man who socially is not viewed as disposable. That's viewed as murder, not doing your social duty or a police officer doing his job. And as a result, the woman apprehended, the flag came down safely, and both of them were arrested, but it was peaceful and he saved her life. He was not made the hero. She was still made the hero. He was not given any of the credit, she was given the entirety of the credit, but he made her mission possible because he used his social power and sacrificed social power for her justice and for her enacting of a leveraging of her own social power. And I think that's what a co-conspirator is, and that's what I think I view my or my positionality to be as a call to be a co-conspirator

00:20:53 Eli Bastiaansen: Throughout the movement. How did you see the importance of the presentation of that information? Because as you said, the white man was not portrayed as a hero, but in many cases there is a presentation, especially through the media that glorifies the white and does the opposite to sort of the black individual. How do you see that presentation media as sort of exacerbating these inequities?

00:21:30 Luke Bastiaanse...: I mean, I think that that presentation creates an understanding of white saviorism and displays. White saviorism is the right thing, which only stimulates white power. And I think that that's probably the biggest thing is that by displaying these acts as an opportunity for white people to be in the limelight, then we just understand them as white saviorism and they become white saviorism. So their social power is not important.

00:22:16 Eli Bastiaansen: Exactly. I agree with that importance of media. Do you think that there's almost divides intergenerationally surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement?

00:22:31 Luke Bastiaanse...: Yes and no. I mean, I think, yes, there is a tendency that old white men are probably the least comfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement while younger people have a different understanding of race in America. But if the next question is will that said, as these old white people die off the thought, the ideology of whiteness is thrown away, right? It's not just old white people. It is generational to an extent, but it's also not in that as we move through generation to generation, whiteness isn't disappearing and neither is its power.

00:23:34 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you.

00:23:37 Luke Bastiaanse...: You're welcome.

00:23:38 Eli Bastiaansen: How do you also see community today, and how do you think community has almost shifted? Or do you think it has shifted just since the Black Lives Matter movement

00:23:54 Luke Bastiaanse...: Community? What do you mean?

00:23:58 Eli Bastiaansen: In Philadelphia, as you talked about as a minority majority, do you think that the definition of community has changed or even what was your community in Philadelphia's reaction to the movement sort of as a whole?

00:24:20 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think it was the same as myself. It was one of Andrew and,

00:24:28 Eli Bastiaansen: Sorry, I think we cut out a little bit. You mind repeating that?

00:24:33 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think it was the same as myself, one of anger and with passion, one of bitterness with sadness. I know some people who were so angry and so passionate that all they could do was scream and cry and protest and get out there and try to act. And I know there were other people who locked themselves in their room and couldn't leave their houses 'cause they were so depressed. I think everybody, these reactions aren't about a community because every individual reacts differently. And I think community can be formed and broken through any act of protest. And ideally, and I think through this, a lot of community was formed, but the reaction came, I think more on an individual by individual basis in my experience that people each had to do what was best for them, because otherwise, if you didn't, it was too intense of a time.

00:25:43 Eli Bastiaansen: Returning back to your experiences as a teacher in an education, did you see or do you think that the Black Lives Matter movement brought an increased attention to disparities and inequities in education?

00:25:56 Luke Bastiaanse...: Yeah, I think it brought attention to inequities as a whole and these disparities on the whole, but they only lasted so long. People don't talk about them anymore. People pretend as though they don't exist anymore, and as though the Black Lives Matter movement was a cure for them, but it absolutely was not. It shined a little bit of light on it, and then as I said, people moved on and we're here now and the same inequities exist and probably are worse, honestly. But we're still here.

00:26:34 Eli Bastiaansen: Or do you believe that the Black Lives Matter movement succeeded?

00:26:38 Luke Bastiaanse...: No, I mean, I think it succeeded in raising publicity, but it didn't last long enough. And I really hesitate to say the Black Lives, the Black Lives Matter movement was a failure, right? It did a lot and it made, it had a lot of power and the movement wasn't a failure. It's that white power was in America's too strong and quelched that fire. So it wasn't a failure. It was successful in what it was doing, but success can be defined in a lot of different ways, and it didn't create the change that any of us would've dreamed or wished that it maybe would've created, but it was never going to because of the society we live in.

00:27:36 Eli Bastiaansen: What do you think is the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, or what do you think would be required to either reignite the movement or take increasingly steps or increasing steps forward?

00:27:51 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think this movement is dead. I think it's lost. It doesn't have enough power anymore. It's not new enough to reignite. I think personally, a lot of change can come when we start as a society moving away from capitalism and creating space for equity intentionally and with an understanding that the dollar is not the most or can no longer be the most almighty power in our society. And when white power begins to release its grip on society, but that in a sense, it's a sort of hopeless picture because God knows if that will actually, that day will ever happen. In the meantime, it's about the little changes, the step-by-step kind of stuff that can happen in education as we a new society and society to maybe be a little more different. We take it step by step

00:29:05 Eli Bastiaansen: In order to achieve that. As you say that, so-called Dream, what steps do you think you can take on a more personal basis, or what steps might you be taking to try to help support these minority groups and work towards that goal of equity?

00:29:33 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think it's about doing the work that I'm trying to do and educating 'em in a way that works to inspire change that is culturally relevant and that is empowering and that builds 'em up and makes space for them working towards an equal society and making those changes on a small scale within the walls of my classroom, and ensuring that my students aren't contributing to the school to prison pipeline, that they have a resource and a teacher, that they can feel the love that they need to within a society that is completely loveless for them.

00:30:24 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think you could expand a little bit further on that concept of love?

00:30:31 Luke Bastiaanse...: Yeah. I mean, I think love, ideally, and in this dream, love is the currency that money currently stands for. That money operates as a mechanism for currently, money operates as a mechanism for the propagation of whiteness and white power. However, in this dream, love would propagate the power of equity and justice, and I think that James Baldwin has a very clear understanding of the power that love can have in a society in order to work away from inequity and work towards justice. That love is not romantic and even necessarily nice at times, but that it is driven by justice and calls whiteness the danger that it is. And by loving white people and the white people that propagate white power by loving them intentionally and intensely with an eye towards justice, and I think you can love them harshly, then I think they can begin to see and understand and work towards change. But until that power of whiteness is loved in a Baldwinian sense, this change might not come.

00:32:20 Eli Bastiaansen: The movement had a lot of protests and direct action and even violence. Do you think that that is consistent with that image of that intense harsh love or is sort of a break from that, or do you think the protests are still required,

00:32:45 Luke Bastiaanse...: The protests are required? Did they stand for love? Yes and no. I think there were a lot of actions in the protest that stood for love. I think the manner in which they were dealt with by those in power was loveless, and I think a lot of what was done in the background and by the movement was loving. But I also think that there was just a lot of people expressing their pain in the only way they knew, which was loveless, which was in a dangerous, harmful way that did not express love. So it's nuanced, I think,

00:33:48 Eli Bastiaansen: With that expression of emotions and opinions and reactions to either just the sense of black pride that the movement brought, but also the violence. What role do you think music, especially black music, including hip hop brought to the movement or what was dealing that role was, or that connection between the movement and music?

00:34:15 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think it was huge. I think music is huge in black culture, in black American culture and black global culture. But I think that as a result of that, because this was a movement of black culture, music had to play a pivotal role. And we can see that in songs like people were marching down the streets to Kendrick Lamar's, "Alright." That was a theme song of the movement itself. And people, I struggled to imagine a protest happening without that song. I think there were hip hop artists, I think it was a lil baby who created a song in response to the protest. I know Meek Mill created a song in response to protest. There were a lot of artists who, in a sense, control the hip hop landscape who were protesting in their own way through their music.

00:35:29 Eli Bastiaansen: And you cited Meek Mill, for example, who I know spoke a lot about prison systems. Do you think just with your experience in the prison setting, could you sort of, I guess, expand further on just your experiences there

00:35:50 Luke Bastiaanse...: On my experiences or make Mill's experiences?

00:35:52 Eli Bastiaansen: I guess both.

00:35:54 Luke Bastiaanse...: I mean, I don't think I can expand on Meek Mill's experiences because they're his experiences, and I think he has a documentary that talks a lot about it, and I can appreciate the work he's done as a cultural icon to work against the person industrial complex. And yeah, I think a lot of what, I think he lived a very real and true experience, and I think a lot of what he lived aligns with the experiences I've had, and I think a lot of the work he's currently doing, maybe not currently, but that he was doing is really powerful and hopefully making some change in the Carceral system.

00:36:53 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think that, you mentioned that the music was both an expression of reactions and opinions, but also as a protest. Do you think it was directed towards any specific group, be that some political leaders or just a community at large?

00:37:15 Luke Bastiaanse...: I mean, yes. I think a lot of the music was done as was created and sung as a gathering cry or as a rallying cry. I think it was sung as an echo for hope and better days and a prayer for hope and better days. I think that some of the music was done and created and produced in hopes that it would be heard by those in power. I think a lot of the music though, was made by black people for black people to rally them, to inspire them, to console them, to lament that they've experienced. I think a lot of the music that was produced then also had callbacks to times of slavery. I think there were a lot of songs that ended up having callbacks to the slave song, "Wave in the Water." And I think that a lot of songs were also snipping news clips and news voices as a tool for inspiration to really point out how ugly this is.

00:38:35 Eli Bastiaansen: Yeah. Do you think that the Black Lives Matter was maybe consistent with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s? I know you had cited and mentioned names like MLK and Malcolm X, or do you think it was sort of unique and different just with the developments and technology and just this new age?

00:39:00 Luke Bastiaanse...: I mean, I think it was incredibly unique because of technology, because of social media, because of how quickly it formed and how quickly it fizzled out. I think it was unique as a result of the fact that it took place in the Covid Pandemic. It was unique for a number of reasons, but at the end of the day, it was still a protest. It was still a black protest, and it was still a civil rights movement or movement for civil rights and social rights. And I think that in that sense, it does have a lot of through lines to the Civil Rights movement.

00:39:51 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to add just with your own personal experiences, either while you were at school, maybe in the education system, maybe conversations that you've had or just things that you've seen while being in the city of Philadelphia?

00:40:19 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think what I would have to say is that it's real. I think you can live in Sewanee, Tennessee or Colorado Springs, Colorado or an area dominated by whiteness and know that it exists, but not understand it. And the more time I spend in these places in Philadelphia teaching these kids and working with these people and working against these issues, the more I am understanding it because I'm seeing it. And it absolutely is real. It's not just theory. It's not just something you see on the news, but this is impacting the babies who can't read. This is impacting the kids in my classroom. This is impacting everyone, and it impacts every facet of their lives.
00:41:20 I have students who are homeless. I have students who are fighting and screaming in the hallways because of the society they live in. I have, who are treated differently, who are disciplined, who are made criminal by the society that they live in, and not by their actions and not by their choices, not by and not by even what they want, and absolutely not by their intentions. I see it on a daily basis. And I would want to make very clear how real all of this is, that there's a very clear and intentional manner in which these people have been made to experience the inequity that they're experiencing and made to experience the subjugation that they're experiencing. And it's designed, the system is designed intentionally and incredibly well, and you can only really and truly see it and understand it once you've lived around it. And yeah, I think that's something I would want to add. And to make very, very clear, it's just how intentional this is and how real it's, and the fact that it should not be forgotten even in places where it's not visible

00:43:01 Eli Bastiaansen: And how do we ensure that it is made visible and it is clear for people around the country, not just in some of these urban centers and places where there is maybe a larger black population.

00:43:17 Luke Bastiaanse...: I think people need to look inside themselves and ask themselves what really matters to them. They need to work in things like sympathy and empathy. They need to understand, they need to look inside themselves to do the work, to try, and they need to want to try to understand the world around them. And they need to be willing to surrender some of their power in order to see a more equal society. They need to love hard enough to be willing to surrender that power in order to see their black and brown brothers at the same level they are. And they need to want that more than their social power.

00:44:13 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess I can tell you're obviously very enthusiastic and passionate about this, and you believe that this is possible, that everyone can find this within themselves and will seek this out. This truth

00:44:29 Luke Bastiaanse...: I, I don't know if I believe that it's possible that everyone, there's always going to be people who will not. There will always be people who are too selfish and too unaware and too addicted to the power to give it up. But that doesn't mean change is not possible.

00:44:57 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you. Thank you for this time. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

00:45:02 Luke Bastiaanse...: I don't think so. Thank you.

00:45:05 Eli Bastiaansen: Well, I hope you have a great day, and I'm really grateful for this time. Thank you again, Luke Bastiaansen.

00:45:12 Luke Bastiaanse...: Thank you.