Feasting on Blackness: Educational Parasitism, Necropolicy, and Black Thought

• In Event: Beyond the White Gaze: Centering Black Perspectives on Social Justice in Education

Abstract

In 1933, Carter G. Woodson wrote the Miseducation of the Negro, an essential—yet often overlooked—text in educational studies. In the text, Woodson documents the pervasive and subtle inequities that saturate schooling for Black people. Over 80 years later, the enumerated issues Woodson discussed remain and are reflective of and contributory to what Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) has termed the “education debt.” This conceptual article presentation aims to trace why efforts to address racial and social inequality in education remain on the hydraulics of elusiveness. In doing so, the researcher argues that a central issue debilitating transformative educational justice initiatives for Black people is what he terms “educational parasitism.” Educational parasitism is a form of racial capitalism that “funds” and supports the larger body of White supremacy by dispossessing and “eating away” at Blackness. As such, educational parasitism is a mechanism of profit accumulation, power solidification, and ontological sustenance for Whites; overall, it is a necropolicy that looms in the shadow of stated reform aims. While the phenomenon of educational parasitism is longstanding, the researcher centers neoliberal reform efforts to illustrate this phenomenon. Analytically, the scholar draws from Black Studies and Critical Race Theory to frame and situate the analysis. Lastly, the researcher ends with meditations and implications for practice, theory, and research.

Author

• Kevin Lawrence Henry, University of Wisconsin-Madison