34.045 - Healing Isn't a Metaphor: Centering Healing as Resistance Within Critical Racial Affinity Group Spaces

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this session, we describe a diversity of case studies from around the country that offer transformative healing possibilities through critical racial affinity group (CRAG) spaces. Each study highlights how CRAGs served as a space for marginalized educators and/or students navigating a racially hostile education system and society to: (a) center their truths and counter-narratives; and (b) engage in fugitivity (Harney & Moten, 2013; Patel, 2016) through critical-healing praxes (Cariaga, 2018). Collectively, our work explores the intersections of activism, healing and collectivism that de-centers whiteness and re-centers black and brown joy, as a form of resistance against white supremacy through a shared struggle for human being (Valdez, et. al, 2018).

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Chair

• Micia Mosely

Papers

• An Altar for the Living: Creating a Black Girl Sacred Space - Aja Reynolds, University of Illinois at Chicago

• A "Black Woman Oasis": A Healing Space for/by Black Women Navigating a Predominantly White University - Ree Botts, University of California - Berkeley

• For Us, by Us: Ethnic Studies as Self-Determination in Chicago - Cecily Relucio-Hensler, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Freedom to Learn From/for Ourselves: A Critical Racial Affinity Space for Educators of Color - Farima Patricia Pour-Khorshid, University of San Francisco

Discussant

• Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University