Critically Conscious Readings of Black Bodies and Pedagogies of Care

• In Event: Honoring Black Boys and Men in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter: Critically Conscious Reflections From Women Teachers, Teacher Educators, and School-Community Activists

Abstract

For some youth, labeling of their social and cultural practices – such as their choice of clothing, styles of interaction and postures, and the places they occupy – through the prism of suspicion - begins in childhood, long before they enter adolescence. As a result, youth, and black male youth in particular, begin to question whether they matter in and to the institutions to which they have membership, whether forced or not. The bodies of the Black male youth are repeatedly viewed, interpreted, and responded to as sources of suspicion, a pattern that has been documented and discussed across academic research and the popular press for decades (Blow, 2014; Ferguson, 2001; Youdell, 2003). In this paper, I draw on lenses of embodiment and embodied literacies (Enriquez, et al., 2016; Lewis & Tierney, 2013) to offer another set of readings of black male youth and adults engaged in pedagogies of care in an alternative to detention program. Of importance to their enactments of care toward and with one another were practices of laughter, playfulness, and joking around, all of which comprised a powerful counter-narrative to the tropes of suspicion that surrounded their daily lives. This analysis expands existing discourses about care (Noddings, 2003; Valenzuela, 1999) and cultural relevance (Knight, 2010; Watson, Sealey-Ruiz, & Jackson, 2014) in pedagogy by focusing on how Voices staff attended to Black youths’ affect and aesthetic experiences in making and reshaping a nurturing educational space with and for them.

Author

• Lalitha M. Vasudevan, Teachers College, Columbia University