Critical race comics: Centering black subjectivities and teaching racial literacy

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the complexities of Black subjectivities as written and illustrated by comic book creators of color who wrestle with the enigmatic qualities of blackness as they write within and beyond racial imaginaries and social realities. I call these works “critical race comics” to highlight their explicit engagement with the ubiquity of race and racism and other tenets of critical race theory in education. Critical race comics teach through onto-epistemological explorations of blackness and by centering the black gaze in ways that foster humanizing racial discourse in classrooms, develop racial literacy in readers, and contribute to antiracist pedagogy. As such, I position critical race comics as pop culture and curriculum as they reflect larger literary, artistic, and social movements for racial justice in America (e.g. Antislavery, Reconstruction, New Negro, Civil Rights, Black Power, Hip-Hop, and #BlackLivesMatter).