Playing in the Dark Blackness, Humanit...s of Black Life in Education 2012– (2025)

THE POLITICS OF LIFE AND DEATH IN THE SCHOOLING OF BLACK YOUTH

BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN, 2016

As an activist scholar, this themed edition of the Black History Bulletin focused on the " crisis in Black education " is deeply personal to me. My early and late childhood experiences in a home with a mother who was addicted to drugs and a father who was absent inform how I write and think about Black life and death. Therefore, this article will be an examination of schooling for Black youth from low-income families—an intersection between academic scholarship and an autobiographical account. Moreover, I highlight four critical aggressions that contribute to the crisis in Black education: (1) micro interactions between teacher and student within the broader context of macro relationships; (2) reproduction of oppressive systems resulting from anti-Black racist methodology; (3) extermination of the Black subject while maintaining the body for capitalistic exploitation; and (4) securitizing schools and criminalizing Black youth. I surmise that the dialectical nature of schooling exposes Black youth to life and death, and the current dialectical nature must be understood as one of the first steps to address the ongoing crisis.

Eradicating Anti Black Logics in Schools Transgressive Teaching as a Way Forward

Multicultural Perspectives, 2021

Black Critical Theory in Action: Analyzing the Specificity of (Anti)Blackness

Journal of African American Studies, 2022

Given authors’ Michael Dumas and kihana m. ross’ delineation of Black critical theory in the field of education, also referred to as BlackCrit, I extend this framework to areas of community practice to demonstrate its practical value for interpreting the mechanics of black social life beyond the discipline of education. To underscore its value as both a theoretical and analytical framework, mirroring Dumas and ross’ approach, I compare its content to more popular theoretical discourses—in this case, critical race theory (CRT) and intersectionality—that situate race at the center of analysis or treat it as its foci. Using Black fatherhood as a heuristic, I argue that Black critical theory, given the specificity of (anti)blackness, renders this framework more appropriate as an interpretive and analytical tool to make sense of the (anti)Black lived experience.

Black Minds Matter: Repression of Critical Race Theory and Racial Violence Against Black Students

Journal of Critical Race Inquiry , 2022

This essay argues that our conversations about Critical Race Theory (CRT) must move beyond criticism of conservative interpretations of CRT and instead advocate for Black youth, as they are the most vulnerable to these attacks. Moreover, I illuminate how conservatives strive to construct, and therefore repress, Black critiques of America as a threat to the national order. This essay is grounded in Derrick Bell's theory of racial realism.

Trayvon Martin and the curriculum of tragedy: critical race lessons for education

In what ways do the tragedies centered on the lives of black youth, particularly black male youth, inform teachers, education policymakers, and teacher educators about what knowledge is most worth knowing? In this counter/story, we will examine the details of the life and death of Trayvon Martin. From these details, we will extract and interpret a curriculum of tragedy that draws from Derrick Bell's particular contributions to critical race theory (CRT) applies its central tenets. This article will conclude with lesson for black education for teachers, education policymakers and teacher educators.

Sowing seeds of oppression for African American education: Destiny or design?

Teaching Black Lives Amidst Black Death

Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education

In this essay the author addresses the struggles of teaching a special topics course, Black Freedom Movement Education, in the midst of a global pandemic and Donald Trump’s proposed ban on anti-racist training and critical race theory. The educator framed the course under the conceptual lens of stealin’ the meetin’—a Black Antebellum practice of creating otherwise literacy practices under repressive circumstances. This form of educational resistance continued beyond enslavement as Black communities used the resources available to educate each other by any means necessary (Robinson, 2020). On a smaller scale, this class carried on the resistance through critical meta-cognitive engagement with Black education history. The author discusses how he navigated the course when, less than halfway through the quarter, a Black man was killed and burned in a trench. Using emails, lecture notes, student evaluations, texts, and reflections, the author shares vignettes of tension, Black affinity, ...

An Education System Built on the Pillars of White Supremacy and Anti Blackness a Collection of Autoethnographic Studies Depicting How Black Kids Never Had a Chance

2021

In this collection of autoethnographic studies, a group of five women with differing racial identities takes us through each of their deeply personal journeys of social justice awareness and transformation. Using the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies, these women share personal narratives of their lived experiences depicting how the education system in the United States is built on the pillars of White supremacy and anti-Blackness. Through their stories, we learn that schools are not meant for all students to succeed, and in actuality, Black students never had a chance. This collection of autoethnographic studies exposes how our school system perpetuates the larger agenda of White supremacy in our nation. The study concludes with implications of the work and suggestions for the future of multicultural education, hoping that one day we will have an education system that fosters the success of each student.

Reading: "The Crisis in Black Education" from a post-White orientation

Black History Bulletin, 2016

Theoretical discussion, relevant research, and a lesson plan are offered to school educators. This article is designed to shift teachers' and students' understanding of race.

From Morning to Mourning: A Meditation on Possibility in Black Education

Equity & Excellence in Education, 2021

This article insists on a reframe of mourning, away from a period of sadness or weeping alone, to a vision of its merits for discovering and unlocking possibility in Black Education. For example, mourning might be understood as involuntarily surrendered time necessary to properly grieve, concede, and embrace Black people’s subject position in the US sociopolitical con- text. Turning towards mourning, the dark moments that urge it and the dark(er) moments that it may produce, is argued as a launch pad to more fully understanding the depth and reach of Black people’s possibility. To make such an argument the author contemplates how mourning, and subsequent meditations on possibility, might have informed the activism of leaders in the Black radical tradition who urgently insisted that Black people’s human dignity be recognized and properly acknowledged. The article concludes with discussion of the significance of possibility to advance equity and excellence in education.