Flexin' for the Fight: Criti-Flexible Postures of Black Educators Who Intend to Win

• In Event: We Don't Need No More Trouble: Reimagining the Educational System Using Perspectives of Black Teachers

Abstract

Objective/ Purpose
The intent of this conversation is to elucidate the criti-flexible postures (because criticality must be equally strong but not fundamentalist and adaptable but not pliable to the pressures and heat of opposition) that Black educators take as we fight for ourselves, our students, and our co-conspirators in these shifting educational “streets.” As a former classroom teacher, and current popular educator, I recognize that we strive for our mutual liberations through formal and popular education at the intersections of our shared philosophies, values, and tactics. Here I demonstrate those philosophical postures using Ytasha Womack’s definition of Afrofuturism which is an admixture of Black peoples’ collective imaginations, engagements with the future or alternative uses and metrics of time, creating, “pimping,” or unusing technologies, and unapologetically pursuing liberation/s or hosting liberative aspirations. I offer an example of those shared values using the structures of Womanist Praxis as explicated by Layli Maparyan, in her book The Womanist Idea. Using her construction of the “Womanist Triad of Concern,” I suss out the values of Black educators using the Islamic theological concept of shaheed or witness. Lastly, to explore the tactical postures of Black educators, I employ the Black Radical Traditional lenses of “solidarity, not charity” to emphasize educational tactics based on shared (but not essentialized) community cultural wealth theorized by Tara Yosso using Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Praxis. I combine Yosso’s community cultural wealth with my own theorizing around “ecologies of liberation.” As a narrative and framing artifice for this entire discussion, I offer supportive vignettes and quotes from the 2012 film, Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Perspective or Theoretical Framework
This piece engages at the intersections of three critical theoretical pedagogical frames: Afrofuturism, Womanist Praxis and Black Radical Traditions
Data Sources, evidences, objects, and materials
Data from this analysis derives from critical pedagogical theory, critical media studies, narrative inquiry through phenomenological sources and artifacts of liberative theological and philosophical practices.
Significance
This work wraps together seemingly disparate strategies and suggests that they are indeed intentional, connected and ecologically sound for the purposes of pursuing mutual liberations through educational philosophies, values, and tactics for ourselves as educators, our students, and co-conspirators.

Author

• La Trina Jackson, Highlander Research and Education Center