True and False Hope

Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade wrote a powerful piece on hope;  a powerful feeling that motivates us to pursue things in life and to be optimistic for the future. Duncan-Andrade discusses how hope has been assaulted in urban communities. The assault on hope can be seen in the disinvestments in schools and overinvestment in the prison industrial complex. This claim by Duncan-Andrade is not only true but it stings when i acknowledge the extent of it. As a student I am constantly reminded that education is not only my key to success but it is essential to my future. I do believe this statement is true but I also acknowledge that only a few will actually reap the true benefits of this claim. Education has the potential to break many barriers that prevent us to reach our true potential but many students face trauma that make it nearly impossible to excel in school. Many urban youth are also given false hope on access to education granted that more prisons are build than schools and schools are underfunded. Duncan-Andrade identifies reactionary distortion as a process that promotes false hope and takes away true hope

Duncan-Andrade identifies three forms of false hope, the first is Hokey hope. Hokey hope affirms the american belief of pulling yourself by your bootstraps. This false hope suggests that one can simply pull themselves out of poverty or bad situations if they “work hard, play attention, and play by the rules”, critical analyses of this statement recognizes that there are inequalities and systematic oppression urban youth and people of color face that make it unattainable to reach. As Duncan-Andrade states Hokey hope, “delegitimizes the pain that urban youth experience as a result of a persistently unequal society” (p.3). The second false hope identified by Duncan-Andrade is mythical hope. Mythical hope proposes that everyone has equal opportunity. As we all know we do not have equal opportunity, urban youth are more disadvantaged in regards to opportunity (academic, economic, and socially) than wealthy suburban youth. This false hope also perpetuates the false notion of a color blind society and does not acknowledge political and historical events that cannot validate mythical hope. Mythical hope in my opinion is like a disney film, it’s suggests that life is a fairytale and that all is well and fine but neglects to recognize that processes that casts certain characters a certain way. The third false hope is hope deferred, this false hope, as stated by Duncan-Andrade “hides misinterpretations of research that connect the material conditions of poverty to the constraints placed on schools” (p.4). It's the inability to efficiently create a transformative pedagogical project that focuses on aiding students rather than focusing energy on the errors of the system. This false hope also mandates that students go on a route that teachers are reluctant to take.

Duncan-Andrade gives his readers solutions to false hope; material, socratic and audacious hope. These three true hopes are mutually ingrained and as advocated by Duncan-Andrade they must work holistically. Material hopes helps us acknowledge that the road is not smooth and will have potholes that we encounter. Socratic hope ables us to push through difficult paths that we cannot escape. Audacious hope encourages us to sacrifice pieces of ourselves so that others may rise thus we can collectively aid each other on the pursuit to our definition of success. When I finished reading this article I acknowledged that I have been at both ends of hope. I have been fed lies and at the same time I have been given so many helpful resources that have aided me to achieve my goals and dreams. As a person of color who attends a institutionalized public university I have come to understand that my peers and I face the same struggles, some harsher than others but nevertheless we all face struggles. The extent in which we receive aid greatly differs, I have been very fortunate to have professors who truly care about me and want to see me succeed. Unfortunately this has not been the same experience for some of my peers. This article opened my eyes to value true hope, hope that acknowledges that the road will not be smooth and easy and that everyone will endure different challenges but we should all preserver