Politicized caring as anti-carceral pedagogy: An ethnographic case study of a Black woman educator

Abstract

ABSTRACT The “racialized social control infrastructure” of schools refers to the over-emphasis on controlling the behaviors and bodies of Black, and other, students of color. Politicized caring, or the strategic prioritization of the needs and desires of those traditionally marginalized, may be disruptive to it. The objective of this analysis is (1) to describe how one Black female educator enacts a pedagogy of politicized caring on a day-to-day basis and (2) to investigate how it intersects with one school’s social control infrastructure. Arising from a longitudinal, collaborative research partnership with a predominantly Black high school, the analysis features two years of data with over 80 observations and 13 interviews. The findings identify five discrete forms of enactment of politicized caring and shows how the educator uses them to buffer her students from the harsher elements of social control. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.