Black Education Research Articles

White Christian nationalism in Black education: Breaking bread at the kitchen table

This kitchen table dialogue brings together two scholars, one Black woman assistant professor and one white male doctoral student, unified in our research interests in the history of Black education and our faith as Christians. We gathered on the Zoom video conferencing platform to “break bread,” engaging in a cultural and spiritual tradition to share and commune with each other. The purpose of the kitchen table talk was to discuss the current state of white Christian nationalism (WCN) and how it has been foundational to the structure and establishment of U.S. schools. We explicitly explore its implications on Black education across time and offer critical theoretical perspectives and liberatory theological insights. We are hopeful that this discourse furthers critical conversations, teaching, and scholarship at the intersections of education, race, and religion that move U.S. education toward constructing educational structures that recognize the sacred nature of our work and care for the spirit and souls of all students.

“We Will Just Have to Take It Underground”: A Black Studies Approach to Teacher Education and Critical Professional Development

In the context of contemporary attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and curricula that critically interrogate race and power, as well as the Eurocentric nature of traditional teacher education, out-of-school spaces for the critical development of teachers seeking to bring Black studies into their classrooms are necessary. Informed by the historical approaches of Black educators, the authors of this essay partnered with high school and university educators of color to engage in a collaborative process of teacher education, professional development, and curriculum design. The collaboration highlights the importance of curriculum codesign as a teaching method for developing educators’ content and pedagogical knowledge.

Deep in the heart of Texas

From my position as a Black social studies teacher educator and interdisciplinary historian of education who calls Texas home, I explore in this essay how critical educators might consider what some of Texas’s most recent “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” statutes signify about the effectiveness of critical Black social studies teachers’ work thus far. I underline what Nobel laureate Toni Morrison said about the heightened restriction she faced given her writing: that it can often indicate our work is indeed disrupting the ongoing, systemic project of white domination and antiBlack subordination. Then, I highlight how Black educators of the Jim Crow era navigated political atmospheres comparable to the one in which Texas educators, among others, now find themselves. Looking back at these educators’ subversive practices, which sought to undermine the status quo of white supremacy and antiBlackness, I suggest how their work might guide those engaged in similar projects today.

African American English: Perspectivas potencializadoras de identidades negras em aulas de língua Inglesa

This qualitative research, developed through a bibliographical study, aims at investigating African American English as an artifact to promote decolonial praxis of English language teaching, enhancing black identities. Put into practice, this means offering a theoretical and practical input so that black educators, who teach the English language, recognize how the target language may be taught and learned, valuing black identities, understanding and resisting the colonial ties which tend to make these bodies invisible throughout the process. Thus, the tensions among language, race and power and their influence on the emergence and resistance of African American English will be considered, focusing on some of its characteristics. From this, the pedagogical benefits which black epistemes can bring to English classes are taken as scope, considering their outcomes to promote a socioculturally significant teaching and learning process to black students, as well as the (de)construction and strengthening of diasporic black identities including the Brazilian context and its specificities underpinned by Amefrican perspective.

Who Really Represents Me? The Case of Afro-Latinx Bureaucratic Representation in New York City Public Schools

Who Really Represents Me? The Case of Afro-Latinx Bureaucratic Representation in New York City Public Schools

"The Pathway from Slavery to Freedom": Frederick Douglass and Black Education in Antebellum America

"The Pathway from Slavery to Freedom": Frederick Douglass and Black Education in Antebellum America

“That Fight Still Goes On”: Narratives of Integration and Activism

Discussions of Black history and school desegregation in many K-12 schools have been narrowed to a few heroic figures and moments. Historic representations are currently challenged by a nationwide movement to uphold White supremacy and deny the violent history of racism in the US. The revisionist claims are challenged in this qualitative narrative research project that presents stories gathered from 10 Black educators in Augusta, Georgia, who recount their stories of desegregating schools and institutions as students or educators. This oral history narrative project imagines these stories as the basis for engaging K-12 teachers and students in creating new curricula.

Femmenoir pedagogies: rescripting the reproduction of Black women’s marginalization in education

ABSTRACT Many Black educators have left the profession, a trend often linked to Black fatigue . This study presents findings from qualitative data seeking to understand how Black women STEM educators who stay, respond to the inherently antiblack nature of schooling . Participants of this study illuminate unique and creative approaches to effectively navigate racism and sexism while teaching within the constraints of the educational apparatus. Based on the results of this study, we introduce the term Femmenoir Pedagogies which hones in on three elements that serve to counter the antiblack conditions of schooling. It emphasizes the need to center Black women as experts using their socio-political location to harness their strengths and radically imagine ways to disrupt the oppressive reproduction of schooling. Drawing on the work of Black feminist scholars, we analyze data from personal narratives, in-depth interviews, and focus groups with six self-identified Black women educators.

When Race Matters: Black Men and Authority Figures

ABSTRACT Following the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arberry, and Breonna Taylor, Black folks sought refuge within its community to experience collective healing and demand justice. A 2020 study reported that Black students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) experienced racial microaggressions one to six times within 6 months time affirming the necessity for spaces that center the learning and development of Black students, like historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This article explores the impact of racism on Black men’s engagement with campus authority. The historic abuse Black men have faced by authority figures could have a direct impact on how they engage authority on campus. This study sought to identify if there were any significant mean differences in the likelihood of Black men engaging with Black authority figures versus White authority figures. An online survey collected data from 400 Black men assessing their preference in engagement with authority based on race. Analysis found a higher likelihood of engagement with Black authority rather than White authority regardless of the role they held on campus. This finding dispels the myth that Black men tend to be more disengaged from their academic pursuits and causes institutions to reflect on how representation effects students’ willingness to engage. With Black educators making up 60% of faculty at HBCUs, HBCUs can serve as havens for Black men to find a village and safely engage in their academic experience.

Young Black Teachers Taking to Social Media to Shame Black Students and Parents: A Narrative Review

Social media is a group of technologies that offers people avenues to engage with one another in a virtual and digital space through their computer or smartphone (Ober & Wildman, 2015) with young black Americans consuming social media more, proportionally, than any other demographic. As such, young Black educators are increasingly availing themselves to social media as a space to communicate and share their professional experiences with other black educators, and the world. In so doing, some young black educators opt to use their social media platform, and their institutional authority to shine a negative light on their black students and parents. In this narrative review, I explore social media consumption, shaming within the educational context, and black teachers as distinct from lower income black parents and students to argue that rather than using their positions as educators to protect their students and parents, young black teachers who have achieved middle-class status and use social media to display their professional frustrations with their black students and parents, only accomplishes the shaming of those with less power and agency - the very people black teachers traditionally protected from harm.

Reimagining Inclusive Music Education: Reflections from a Black Music Educator

Abstract: The Eurocentric canon remains the predominant focus of music education often excluding the role of music and experiences of Black individuals and people of color. This singular perspective creates an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of the comprehensive nature of music and the humans who create, perform, and engage with it. In this article, the author shares her experience as a Black music educator and her aspirations for a music profession that incorporates the full range of human music engagement and expression. The paper begins with a reflection on W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness followed by an exploration of the nuances, complexities, contradictions, and beauty of being a Black educator in a primarily white field. Subsequently, the essay presents four conceptual principles for a reimagined, inclusive music education approach, drawing inspiration from Sylvia Wynter’s “new science of the Word.” These principles advocate retelling the music education narrative to incorporate historically marginalized voices, reorienting music education to be human-centered, embracing interdisciplinary approaches to view music teaching and learning, and acknowledging the power of music in uplifting the human condition. Finally, this paper proposes a pathway for reconciling diverse identities prevalent in American culture with music education and academia.

Black Education as the General Strike: The Radical Origins of African American Teaching and Learning

Black Education as the General Strike: The Radical Origins of African American Teaching and Learning

Schooling the Movement: The Activism of Southern Black Educators from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Era

Schooling the Movement: The Activism of Southern Black Educators from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Era

Historicizing Black Educational “Choice”: Toward Black Educational Self-Determination

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education to advance neoliberal restructurings of the state. In this paper, I posit there exists a conceptual and political distinction between school choice and efforts of Black educational self-determination, an approach to challenge white dominance and supremacy. The paper engages in a historical analysis exploring the history of school choice and Black educational self-determination.

Good soil: The community cultural wealth of Black Seventh-day Adventist schools through the lens of Black males

Research concerning Black-led schools has centered around Black public schools prior to desegregation. Much of the data concerning these institutions is dated and the empirical data is limited concerning Black education under Black leadership. The data has found that Black schools under Black leadership had high-quality teachers, elevated principals as community leaders, rigorous academic standards, and developed a socio-political consciousness. However, there is limited knowledge concerning contemporary religious Black schools. This study fills this research gap by utilizing Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis on the reflections of Black males who attended contemporary Black-led Seventh-day Adventist schools. This study found that these Black-led Seventh-day Adventist schools served as producers of four distinct forms of capital. These four forms of capital are navigational, aspirational, religious, and joy.

“I Wanna be Bad”: Black Joy and Deviant Caretaking

The disciplining technologies of schooling overshadow Black women educators’ movement beyond the classroom and shape the logics of spaces meant to encourage their joy and pleasure. A group of Black teachers’ experience negotiating delight while at a strip club inspired the writing of this article. Black queer political theory and Black feminism re-territorialize this moment as both a signifier of Black educators’ erotic embodiment of Black Joy as well as their discursively produced subjectivities as careworkers within the disciplinary arm of schooling. Black Joy is a slippery concept subject to the perniciousness of antiBlack heteropatriarchal capitalism. As a result, conversations about Black Joy in education must include Black educators’ erotic embodiment to confront the traps of capitalism and assimilation that conflate Black Joy with the maintenance of the status quo. Ultimately, Black women educators can practice what I call deviant caretaking to embody new sites and practices of rebellion.

Racially Just Policy Change: Examining the Consequences of Black Education Imaginaries for K–12 Policy

This comparative case study examines two out-of-system education programs created by Black community organizers during the 2020–2021 school year. Applying a unique framework based on the Black radical imagination, I examine how the communities experienced these programs and the potential of the programs to shape advocacy and local policy reforms. This critical policy analysis expands our understating of how racially minoritized communities build political power in education systems and offers educators, policymakers, and researchers guidance for advancing racially just policy change at the local level.

Black Spatial Storylines: Connections of Black Space, Sound and Story as Pedagogy

Black education has interrogated race, context, and power questions, yet these practices spanning geographies and learning contexts have not always been valued as spatial knowledge. Further, Black scholars have carved out spaces that honor the communal and spatial sensibilities of Black students, educators, and communities. Black geographies thought can help us reshape how we understand and interrogate issues within education and learning with attention to anti-blackness, futurities, imagining, placemaking, and efforts to create a sense of belonging despite perpetual unbelongingness in dominant educational and learning spaces. Thus, our piece engages with Black Geographies to emphasize the Black radical traditions of space and freedom-making to reorganize our approaches to pedagogy and storytelling. We engage what we call Black Spatial Storylines through our shared and individual stories. We present multiple vignettes and examples to model the ways Black Sound, particularly hip-hop, invites us to engage Black Spatial Storylines as both methodological and pedagogical techniques that start at Blackness. Not only do we highlight and use our own stories as examples, we detail how this process shifts our understanding of Black urban life, and allows us to reorient our educational praxis through Blackness. We conclude with suggested pathways for future applications of a Black geographies framework to education and learning, including the abundance that is the interweaving of Blackness. Thus, we hope to honor and uplift Black communities’ spatial knowledge by formulating our foundational understandings of Black spatial knowledge and the role it plays in education and learning studies.

The Philosophy of Black Education and the Promise of Democratic Organizing

ABSTRACT: To progress toward fulfilling the “promise of democracy” articulated in the 1963 March on Washington requires America’s self-understanding as a diverse people full of tremendous potential and capacity to address our problems. To meet that challenge requires lessons from African American community and cultural organizing in the black freedom movement and the concept of pedagogical personalism from African American education, which affirms the inviolable dignity, worth, and potential of every person. The potential and the dignity of the people came alive in the Rosenwald schools and libraries, which were organized by a network called Jeanes Teachers, some of the most remarkable community organizers in American history. Most of them were educated in HBCUs. This legacy and its vision needs to be put into conversation with community organizing today.

Re(cover)ing Revelations: Formulating Black Ancestral Text Analysis in Education Research

Traditional research on Blackness in education often renders Black people nonhuman (Wynter, 1994). In this article, we formulate Black ancestral text analysis, a qualitative research method in which Black thinkers excavate the ancestral knowledges offered in intellectual texts. Our method rejects the white gaze of counting and condemning Black people in education research by reflecting on Black interiority and analyzing the texts that Black intellectuals produce. This article offers a set of research protocol questions to guide an analysis of how Black thinkers re(cover) un/seen, embodied, and alternative knowledges from multigenre historical and literary texts. Through this qualitative approach, we gather information about the texts, including knowledge about the story, the storyteller/storytelling, and the storage (the archival collection). Further, through deep meditation, we come to understand ancestral knowledge, or alternative forms of knowledge when reflecting on the un/seen and the silences in texts. Black ancestral text analysis emerged from a curiosity to explore alternative forms of knowledge and recovery in education research. We present an example of this ancestral knowledge excavation process using Wynter’s critique of the inner eye, school curriculum, student activism outlined in news articles, and Alvin Ailey’s (1960) “Revelations.” We conclude with a discussion of the communal obligations and ethical commitments of abstracting alternative knowledges within Black education research.