We Came Here to Breathe: Protecting the Intentionality and Sacredness of the Black Space

• In Event: The Writing Reunion: Surviving the Academy Through the Black Familial Tradition

Abstract

Objectives
We highlight here what it means to have a space that allows Black people to exist in their humanity, to be real Black (Dumas & Ross, 2016), and to be unfettered by Whiteness (Martin, 2019).

Perspective/ Theoretical framework
We situate our understanding of this protected Black space in a theoretical tradition that describes how Black people have always found ways to prioritize community members whom needed protection and uplift from a nation that was inherently antiblack. DuBois (1935) reminds us that in these spaces, we do not have to prove anything to White people, and that our intelligence and humanity is proverbial.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
While I have not utilized one form of a mode of inquiry for this theoretical investigation, we can say that the informal process in which we have engaged as early career and advanced doctoral students has given us a space to debrief and refine ideas and metaphors about what it means to grow in the academy. We have divided these elements up among one another, and in my session, I speak about the aspect that reckons with protecting this space. Collectively, we have brainstormed what this means and individually, I have developed this more formally to capture the group’s sentiments.

Data sources
We have aligned this model of HEKA after some of other more well-known spaces which have honored and cherished Black life, such as Black wallstreet. We imagine that the ways these spaces were sacred to Black people because of how they prioritized survival mirrors the way we think about survival in the academy, and the resources that scholars (e.g., Dumas & Nelson, 2016) claim we need access to.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions
One of our substantiated conclusions is that there is a need and benefit for cultivating a space that is strictly for Black people (Muhammad, 2012). In this regard we do not have to explain what it means to be human or means to affirm one another’s thoughts or feelings. We have communicated among each other why this space is crucial and does not develop out of the same goals of exclusion or subordination that are well-represented in the country writ large by White groups (Nyamekye, 2013; Purnell, 2016). For us, this is about making sense of the Black condition and sharing protective mechanisms while engaged in the work.
Scholarly significance
We describe how comradery and protection of the space has been accomplished in our own writing group and how this might be replicated for other scholars, particularly those from other marginalized groups. The significance of this endeavor is in large part connected to the work that we continue to engage in while working in our writing sessions. Personally, I have focused much on how to improve mathematics instruction for Black learners. I will use this time to discuss how my thoughts have been pushed on by this group and that what I have been developing more is this idea of an ontological Blackness through forms of capital. 

Author

• Nickolaus Alexander Ortiz, Georgia State University