Toward What Justice and Justice for Whom? A BlackCrit Meditation on and against Miami University’s Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry’s Threshold Concepts

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is my personal and decidedly unapologetic Black meditation on and against the threshold concepts the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry, where I formerly taught has embraced as a means of addressing issues of social justice. Threshold concepts are a set of guide posts to enact change. Drawing on Black critical theory, this article argues that the concepts ignore Black suffering in and beyond K-12 schools and, thus, are anti-Black in nature. In so doing, I ask, When anti-Blackness is deafeningly silent and visibly missing from the threshold concepts, toward what justice and justice for whom is the department aiming? If threshold concepts are irreversible, transformative, integrative, troublesome, and bounded, what do they mean when the theorization of anti-Blackness is foregrounded within them? Recommendations are provided for teacher education broadly and the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry in the College of Education, Health, and Society at Miami University (Ohio).