Reproductions and Interruptions of Anti-Blackness During Play: Teacher Utterances With/in Playful Encounters in Unexpected Settings

• In Event: Reimagining Play: Critical Examinations of Gender, Race, and the More Than Human

Abstract

This paper analyses two moments in which the Black bodies of two boys in one school were policed by peers, and teachers [re]acted to/with those policings in disparate ways. Although the moments occurred in one school, one happened within a regular classroom itself policed by policies and practices that reinforce the striations of standards and control, whereas the other happened during a progressive summer program, founded upon choice and play-based encounters with recycled materials. Counterintuitively to those who reify the power of playful “choice”, the teacher action in the standards-based classroom possibly contributed to a ripple of interruption to antiBlack violence, and the teacher action in the play-based curriculum reinforced/reproduced this violence. Implications follow the analysis/contextualization of the two moments.

Author

• Timothy A. Kinard, Texas State University