Black Scholars Research Articles

Justice & Joy: Transforming Healing Praxis in Counseling Psychology and Beyond

Amid today's polycrisis—marked by global violence, chaos, and uncertainty—there is an urgent imperative for healing. In this reimagined presidential address, I advocate for centering justice and joy as powerful forces for healing, which is a core value of the Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP). I share SCP's yearlong activities exploring personal and collective healing. Drawing from interdisciplinary research, critical dialogue, and my experiences co-teaching a course on this topic, I introduce a framework outlining six healing ingredients of joy: deep connection, existential recognition, flow, shared beliefs and actions, radical hope, and self-determination/freedom/liberation. Before presenting this framework, I examine Black joy as a counter to the epistemic violence that often erases the contributions of Black scholars. The proposed new framework portrays joy not only as a personal emotion, but as a collective assertion of humanity. I conclude with recommendations to advance healing practices in research, training, and practice.

Blackademics as prophetic witnesses and the continuing struggle for racial justice in higher education

ABSTRACT This multidisciplinary paper illuminates white supremacist ideologies that serve to disenfranchise critical Black scholars in the U.S. academy. We situate the work of what we describe as the ‘Blackademic’ within the theological tradition of the prophetic witness. The conceptualization of critical Black scholars as a prophetic witness illuminates how they traverse the increasingly neo-liberal academy while they also navigate anti-Black white supremacist racism in higher education. This paper seeks to identify practical crossroads between the study of the experiences of Black scholars in academia and Blackademics (e.g. critical Black scholars). This paper also extends our previous emergent theoretical understanding of the actions of Blackademics.

Bioarchaeological Approaches to African Diasporas in the Twenty-First Century: Intercontinental and Global Legacies of Displacement

ABSTRACT Bioarchaeological research offers a window into health and life experiences in the past, including the biocultural dimensions of social identities and structural inequalities experienced by enslaved and free Afro-descendants across the African diaspora. Given the long history of descendant communities and advocates contesting the authority of institutions to curate human remains in perpetuity, critical dialogues over the past several decades have stimulated new directions in the discipline of African diaspora bioarchaeology alongside increased engagement with Black scholarship and community and client-based collaborations. We build upon previous discussions and critiques to examine the current state of African diaspora bioarchaeology in global context in the early decades of the twenty-first century. We present a macro-level, chronological examination of published African diaspora and colonial African bioarchaeological research by region between 2001 and 2023 and conclude with a discussion of the current state of practices and engagement in the field and ethics of care.

Black Readings of Exodus

Most academic study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in North America has been done from a White European or North American perspective. Post-graduate schools have predominantly required students to read works written by White authors, and the vast majority of professors are White. However, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament also has a long history of interpretation by non-White and Majority World thinkers, and their contributions need to be more widely acknowledged and employed in studying the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. This article surveys the contributions of Black Hebrew Bible/Old Testament scholars on the book of Exodus. Black scholars employ a variety of methods and approaches as they engage with the biblical text. We consider these approaches by category, beginning with textual criticism and translation before exploring works that focus on Africa in the Bible, those that draw on African or African American context, and those that highlight issues of gender or the perspectives of liberation theology. We conclude with those employing multi-faceted or integrative approaches.

Beatriz Nascimento and the Erotics of the Quilombo in Times of Peril

In October 2018, the election of an extreme right-wing politician as president of Brazil laid bare the histories of antidemocratic practices that guided the policies and rhetoric of the newly elected government. Black, poor, Indigenous, Northeastern, and LGBTQIA+ people were positioned as threats to the stability of the nuclear family and public safety that the government claimed it would protect. The subsequent COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 also put into stark view the antidemocratic practices and the blatant disregard for life in Brazil, which was particularly acute for people who had been marked as a threat. “Beatriz Nascimento and the Erotics of the Quilombo in Times of Peril” revisits the work of Beatriz Nascimento, a Black Brazilian thinker and scholar who lived through the repressive and antidemocratic period of the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Nascimento’s work offers perspective to the current extreme right-wing project and underscores the significance of Black scholars’ interventions when the lives of marginalized people are at stake. Specifically, her concept of the quilombo (maroon communities) uncovers the histories, relations of power, and the possibilities of social relations for Brazilians living in precarity that antidemocratic governments have attempted to diminish and erase.

From Me-Search to We-Search: (Re)Imagining Mentorship and Intergenerational Relationships for Black Women in Leadership

This article examines the process of forming an intergenerational mentoring relationship among three Black women scholars at different levels of academic leadership in higher education. Over the course of a summer, we came together to critically examine how our collective journey as leaders shifted from “me-search” to “we-search.” In the spirit of Ubuntu or “I am because we are,” our we-search centers Black indigenous knowledge that honors a communal destiny and legacy where leadership and mentorship must be done in a collective. Thus, we used Black Feminist Action Research as a critical methodology that disrupts hegemony in inquiry, mentoring, and leadership. In a four-phased approach, we analyzed personal artifacts and narratives, grounded in radical Black feminist honesty. By conducting such qualitative “we-search,” we co-construct sites of healing and sanctuary and provide valuable insights and strategies for Black scholars and leaders.

Black Epistemologies and Music: A Dialogue with Emicida's Sobre crianças, quadris, pesadelos e lições de casa

Abstract: The arts have consistently been interlocutors for Black scholarship in the humanities. Poetry, literature, and music are sources of knowledge for theorizing social realities. This relates to two elements: (a) an epistemology that values the production and spread of oral, subjective, and aesthetic forms of knowledge; (b) the systematic exclusion of Black people from academic spaces, especially in Latin American contexts, which encourages alternative practices of reflection and registry. Many artists actively consider what is produced in the cultural margins to be a strong locus of political and intellectual creativity. In Brazil, the rapper Emicida has been trying to make his artistic projects catalysts for philosophical reflection. His album Sobre crianças, quadris, pesadelos e lições de casa resonates with Asian, African, Black Atlantic, and Latin American sources of knowledge including religious practices, pop culture, and philosophy. It discusses themes such as love, race, racism, history, family, environmental crisis, and work relations through the combination of musical styles from Brazil, specifically, and the Black Atlantic, more generally. This article establishes a dialogue with the theories and debates suggested by this album, thus situating its contribution to Black scholarship and epistemology.

Black Professional Ethos: Exploring Black Mentorship Through Narrative Ethnography in Technical Communication

ABSTRACT Black mentorship is key to the professional development of Black scholars in technical and professional communication (TPC) and writing studies. Blending narrative ethnography and grounded theory, this article extends existing investigations into mentorship among Black professionals, by exploring how mentorship and rhetorical kinship among Black TPC and writing professors enrich their professional development. With implications for both academia and industry, this article highlights how Black TPC scholars develop, negotiate, and sustain Black professional ethos.

Black Unsettlement: Embodied Blackness and Black Studies in the Irish Context

Reflecting the call for diverse opinions in knowledge production, this article is a personal perspective on the positioning of Black Studies in Ireland. Black Studies as praxi-theory foregrounds the inseparability of embodied experiences from epistemic subject, since the knowledge production process is inherently subjective. Within the Irish racial ecology, the specificities of being Black suggest using the term anti-blackness rather than racism to address systemic racial violence against the Black body. While the presence of blackness in Ireland challenges imagined narratives of racial homogeneity, anti-blackness is deeply entrenched within academic texts, materials and ideas, shaping knowledge production cultures and systems. To understand the nature of anti-blackness in Ireland, a number of concepts which inform the author's work will be introduced. Xeno/miso-phenotypic prejudice encompasses both bias and aversion in relation to the Black body. Unexpected Irishness reflects the dissonance in some imagined white spaces, discourses and epistemes when confronted by the onto-epistemological totality of blackness. The author, positioned as a Black academic teaching Black Studies, underscores the potential tokenisation of Black scholarship within Higher Education Institutions and the toll on Black academics’ well-being. The text calls for a genuine elevation of Black Studies, acknowledging its power to unsettle academic complacency.

The history of the Vienna Protocol on dealing with Holocaust era human remains and its resonance with ethical considerations in African American bioarcheology.

The Vienna Protocol on How to Deal with Holocaust Era Human Remains describes what to do when possibly Jewish human remains are found. Based on Jewish medical ethics, it responds to the 2014-2017 discoveries of human remains stemming from biomedical contexts of the Nazi period. Among the finding sites were the Dahlem campus of the Free University of Berlin, the Medical University of Strasbourg, and Max Planck Institute archives. The Vienna Protocol is unique among similar recommendations on Nazi era human remains in its representation of the voices of those who suffered violence and were targeted as victims by Nazi persecution. In addition to discussing the ethics of dealing with physical human remains, these recommendations address the use of images (i.e., visual data) from the bodies of victims of Nazi violence. This paper presents the historical background of the Vienna Protocol and its impact. It also offers a first analysis as to why, at the time of the protocol's formulation, its authors were unaware of its resonance with ethical considerations from African American bioarcheology and a new ethical culture in bioanthropology. Potential reasons for this disconnect may include the historic marginalization of the voices of black scholars in anthropology within the wider scientific community. However, more detailed studies are needed to analyze similarities and differences between the histories and continuities of antisemitism and racism in Europe and the U.S.A., and their ties with scientific theories and practices of disciplines that gain knowledge from human remains.

When We See Us: An Endarkened Autoethnographic Approach to Excavating the Extraordinary Literacies of Black Women

A frequent question amongst Black scholars and practitioners is how to succeed in institutions that thrive on our cultural erasure. How to unmask and survive. For Black women these questions are doubly significant. The questions we answer in our collaborative Blackgirl autoethnography have implications for how Black women scholars, and others navigating multiple social oppressions, must ritually turn inward to understand the rhetorical, spiritual, ancestral, and cognitive tools that we use to hold onto important parts of ourselves. Additionally, the field of qualitative research in education, steeped in its own complex settler colonial, and racially exclusive ideologies, has had little opportunity to be shaped by the extraordinary inner worlds of Black women. At the nexus of our orientations as Black and women, we utilize a collaborative approach to Blackgirl autoethnography, an endarkened feminist epistemological methodology, which insists on the epistemic shifts available to us when methodology is grounded in Blackgirl ways of knowing. Our autoethnographic excavation revealed the ways that our inner worlds offer blueprints for the kinds of social and pedagogical change necessary to agitate the colonial and carceral logics that mark the lives of Black women and girls in education.

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.

African (Area) Studies Experience

The idea of “Area studies” emerged before the Cold War. However, we must distinguish the genesis of the idea from its later institutionalisation in Western universities post-1945. Using African studies as a case, this paper examine the early origins of Area studies pre-1945, chiefly in England. We then trace the development of African studies in the USA, its connection to the changing political and economic interests after 1945 and its belated development in Brazil. This version of African studies largely reflected the evolving interests of countries who supported and funded it. It produced usable knowledge that primarily advanced their colonial and neo-colonial enterprises. Gatekeepers arose in the Global North, who founded well supported academic journals and African studies associations that, for a while, seldom engaged with black scholars in Africa. African studies scholars are still dealing with these fractured legacies and research agenda that favours funders from the Global North.

Past Is Prologue: Dismantling Colonial Legacies to Advance Black Health Equity in the United States.

Colonialism underlies the commodification of health care in the United States and continues to harm well-being among Black Americans. We present four recommendations for addressing its health consequences: (1) Investments in epigenetic research to improve our understanding of how systemic oppression becomes biology. (2) Centering Black experiences and knowledge traditions in education, practice, and policy. (3) Support for Black scholars, trainees, and practitioners when they critic disciplinary tenets and practices. (4) Expansion of preventive care. Our health care system is a for-profit industry that exploits workers and harms the most marginalized, much like colonialism. Advancing health equity requires dismantling colonial legacies.

African American PhD Social Work Students’ Perspectives and Experiences on Qualitative Research Methods

African American PhD students are severely underrepresented in the attainment of PhDs compared with their White counterparts and, therefore, underrepresented as PhD professors. Key factors contributing to the lack of African American students seeking doctoral education include financial hardship, racial discrimination, and a lack of mentorship. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the experiences and meaning of African American social work students enrolled in a PhD qualitative research methods course at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Results from this study will shed light on Black scholars’ experiences in obtaining a doctoral education, identify challenges and barriers in completing a doctoral program, and contribute to ideas on how to increase the number of Black scholars in HBCU PhD.

Transforming fear into rigor, love, freedom, and joy: A new paradigm of standards-based reform

In the liberatory spirit of Black scholars and honoring the pioneering work of motivation theorists dedicated to a democratic vision of education, this article calls for a new paradigm of standards-based reform. Specifically, we maintain that current standards largely reflect the interests of White, male elites and elevates the economic agenda above other important purposes of education. Moreover, we argue that the standards movement aims to motivate educators to improve the quality of teaching primarily through rewards or fear of public shaming—an approach that is unlikely to lead to a transformation of the system toward racial equity, lifelong learning, wellness, and citizenship. We call for a reframing of educational standards to also include outcomes that nurture and honor the whole human experience—a North Star rooted in the outcomes of rigor, love, freedom, and joy that can serve as a beacon for transforming education toward humanistic outcomes in a racially-divided world. This article is organized into three main sections. First, a historical review of standards-based reform movement is provided followed by an overview of the empirical research underlying the proposed North Star. Finally, we conclude with implications of this new paradigm for research, practice, and advocacy.

Horrifying Whiteness and Jordan Peele's Get Out

Abstract: Horrifying whiteness is a lens by which to read the paradox of white supremacists rendering Blackness as monstrous even as they terrorize Black people by executing physical and institutional attacks against them. As its name suggests, horrifying whiteness evokes the complex relationship between white supremacy and the horror genre calling attention to the violent white supremacist performances that are enacted on and off the big screen. In this article, I introduce my concept of horrifying whiteness which draws from previous Black scholarship on the gaze such as Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and bell hooks's Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) but distinguishes itself by rendering white supremacy and the gaze as horrific via the horror genre. As a case in point, Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017) epitomizes horrifying whiteness through its depiction of the Armitages and their clients who mask themselves as good innocent white people while they privately abduct and sell/purchase Black bodies and exploit them. By reading Peele's Get Out through the lens of horrifying whiteness, I consider how horror frameworks not only challenge white denial and white innocence, but provide a lens through which Black vulnerability can perhaps be most clearly seen.

“Oh, What a Way to Grieve the One You Love”: Black Families, Grief, and the Limits of Resilience Rhetoric for Positive Mental Health Outcomes

ABSTRACT This essay is a triple autoethnographic text written by three Black scholars with similar but uniquely positioned backgrounds with the purpose of exploring the ways that Black families negotiate and communicate about death (and in one instance) incarceration (social death), loss, and the existential cognates of grief and mourning that naturally arise in their wake. Singularly and collectively, each author reflects on painful experiences of losing brothers (both blood and bond) to build a case for how autoethnography provides a pathway to critically explore the communication that Black families have or do not have about the mental and emotional impacts that siblings may endure during these moments.

The State of Black Sociology: A Critical Reflection of Joyce Ladner’s The Death of white Sociology

On the fiftieth anniversary of Joyce Ladner’s The Death of white Sociology, we write this critical reflection to explore the discipline’s historical, often explicit oversight and investment in Whiteness. The historical roots of “mainstream”, white sociology are inundated with pathologization, dehumanization, and exclusion of Black people, the Black community, and Black scholarship. From graduate program training and conferencing to peer-review processes and the academic job market, Black sociologists are expected to center white hegemonic ideals of professionalism and academic rigor. We write this critical reflection exploring the edited volume’s implications for discussing anti-Blackness as well as the methodological and theoretical significance of Black sociology past and present. As Black sociologists and doctoral scholars, this reflection serves as a call to the discipline to grapple with texts such as The Death of white Sociology, the discomfort it may cause, and how the exclusion of such work directly harms the training and careers of Black graduate students.

Centering Black Perspectives Within the Social Studies Curriculum: Carter G. Woodson’s Textbooks and the Teaching of Black Critical Patriotism

One justification given by social studies teachers for avoiding teaching or incorporating race into their lessons is the absence of race from textbooks. Given that textbooks continue to play a significant role in social studies instruction, the authors analyzed how Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, a Black scholar of the early twentieth century, accounted for race in two of the textbooks he wrote for K–12 teachers. In this essay, we used the principles of Black Critical Patriotism as a framework to analyze two of Woodson’s textbooks—The Negro in Our History and Negro Makers of History. We concluded with a discussion regarding potential limitations while emphasizing the place for Woodson’s textbooks within social studies classrooms.