Exclusion and Extraction: Situating Spirit Murdering in Community Colleges

Black, Indigenous, and other students of color (BIPOC) are selecting to attend community colleges more than any other post-secondary school setting. However as the author argues, community colleges have, since their inception, served as exclusionary spaces for labor extraction that murders the spirits of BIPOC students. This article explores spirit murdering at a mid-sized urban community college in Chicago. The author presents historical and contemporary narratives of community colleges as sites of extraction and exclusion. The article ends with a call for community college policymakers and practitioners to engage in a more liberatory hidden curriculum, creating and maintaining more co-conspiring relationships and a more community-driven ecosystem of teaching and learning.