The Back of Blackness: Critically Examining the Construction of Blackness in Educational Research and Practice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together five educational scholars, practitioners, and policymakers who explore how Blackness is constructed within schooling and education. Exploring educational contexts within the U.S. and abroad, we question how Blackness is situated and leveraged within efforts to achieve educational justice. Theoretically driven by Black Transnational Feminist, Postcolonial, and anti-Black framing, we examine how, when, and where particular understandings of Blackness become centered and marginalized in schooling and education, and at what cost to youth and communities. Signifying on Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness,” we explore the experiences of youth on “the back of Blackness.” We consider how existing frames of understanding Blackness overdetermine the experiences of youth who are facing intersecting and overlapping sociohistorical processes of coloniality.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• H. Samy Alim, University of California - Los Angeles

Papers

• From Afro-Pessimism to Afro-Generativity: Theorizing African Continental and Diasporic Liberation Within Education - Mercy Agyepong, New York University; Casey Philip Wong, University of California - Los Angeles

• Making Moral Migrants? Black African and Caribbean Boys Negotiating Antiblack and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments - Derron Wallace, Brandeis University

• "She Asked If My Blood Was Red": Afro-German Diasporic Experiences in Education - Tanja Burkhard, Washington State University

• Arising Africans: Blackness, Identity, and Education in a Changing Italy - Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, 1991

Discussants

• Venus E. Evans-Winters, African American Policy Forum

• Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University