When Black Lives Matter: On the Need for Joy in Social Studies Education Research

• In Event: Anti-Oppressive Social Studies: Pursuing Justice Through an Ethic of Incommensurability

Abstract

In the 17 years since Gloria Ladson-Billings (2003) first called on the field of social studies education to center issues of race and racism in research, there has undoubtedly been an increase in the amount of research that does just that. Researchers have studied race and racism in curriculum and state standards (Brown & Brown, 2015; Busey & Walker 2017; Hilburn et al., 2016), textbooks and curricular materials (Brown & Brown, 2010; King, 2014), social studies instruction (Rodriguez, 2018; Vickery, 2016), and the role race plays in the ways students perceive social studies content (Epstein, 2009; Woodson, 2016). Further, this body of work illuminates the ways in which the field of social studies silences narratives of racial violence, centers whiteness at the expense of BIPOC, and operates, in particular, as a tool of anti-blackness.
While this work is necessary in pushing the field to center issues of race and racism, one key aspect of Black life and resistance is missing from the conversation: Black joy. As Cynthia Dillard (2019) notes, the notion of joy “seems illusive in the articulations of struggles for justice, for freedom, for life” (p. 112), but joy is a critical sustainer, meaning that it is vital for racially marginalized groups to continue fighting in the struggle for racial justice. In this paper, we will examine the current state of the field and utilize Black feminist scholarship (e.g. Dillard, 2019; hooks, 2003) to conceptualize what Black joy looks like in social studies education research and why it is necessary. While the phrase “Black lives matter” has been popularized in the media and in educational research, we contend that Black lives cannot matter in spaces where the sole focus of Blackness is Black pain or other hindrances that impede progress towards racial justice. While we believe that scholarship that addresses the racial inequities in social studies education is undeniably important, it is imperative that researchers begin to understand what brings about Black joy in social studies classrooms, as cultivating such joy should be one of the goals of social studies education.

Authors

• Kristen Duncan, Clemson University

• Delandrea Hall, Georgia Southern University