Affirming the Humanity of Black Youth Through Black Literacies

• In Event: 54.059 - Moving From Knowledge to Action Through Humanizing Literacy Curricula

Abstract

Objectives
America has an intimate history with racial violence. In many ways, the racial violence that transpires against Black youth in various communities seep into ELA classrooms. In this session, presenter #3 will (1) unpack the infliction of physical violence such as lynching, police brutality, and state and vigilante violence and how these are common threads that are nicely stitched throughout many historical time periods such as Reconstruction, Peonage, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement and are ever-present in our current historical movement of Black Lives Matter, (2) highlight when Black students’ prior knowledge, experiences, culture, literacies, and language are marginalized, ELA teachers are (un)intentionally enacting a curriculum of violence which stems from anti-blackness ideologies pertaining to Black life, and (3) offer a theoretical framework that centers on Black literacies that secondary ELA teachers can use to disrupt the violence and curricula and pedagogical inequities against Black youth in schools.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
As a counter-hegemonic tool, Morrell (2005) proposes that the field of English education need to increase its emphasis on critical English education in order to be “explicit about the role of language and literacy in conveying meaning and in promoting or disrupting existing power relations” (p. 313). Further, critical English education is intentional about the role that language and literacy play in the meaning making process based upon one’s historical, cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, and it is explicit about the deconstruction of existing power structures. Haddix (2016) argues that forward-thinking ideas such as multicultural education, culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy can fail to address issues of racism, whiteness, white supremacy, and power. As a result, this is why we need more intentional frameworks and pedagogies in English education and literacy that directly tackle race and racism (Haddix, 2016). Building from the work of Morrell (2005) and Haddix (2016), I propose that the field of English education and literacy adopt Critical Race English Education (CREE).
In this presentation, presenter #3 employs CREE as theory and pedagogy, “to explore the intimate history and the current relationship between literacy education and race. CREE explicitly addresses issues of race, racism, whiteness, white supremacy, and anti-blackness within school and out-of-school spaces” (Presenter 3, forthcoming). CREE is birthed from Critical Race Theory, which Bell (1992) states that examines how race, racism, white supremacy, and power are deeply-rooted within the American fabric and how these social constructs oppress the lived experiences of people of color. In many ways, CREE is a pedagogy that turns toward extrapolating the violence that stems from racism and anit-blackness and English education’s role(s) during this particular time. Therefore, educators must begin to (re)imagine ELA classrooms as revolutionary sites that disrupt racial injustice while striving to transform the world and humanize the lives of Black youth.

Scholarly Significance
This session will conclude with a text set that is centered on Black literacies and texts that ELA teachers can use to revolutionize, (re)imagine, and sustain the humanity of Black youth.

Author

• Lamar L. Johnson, Michigan State University