The Legacy of Antiblackness: Intergenerational Narratives of Black Students in Philadelphia's Public Schools

• In Event: Studying the Multidimensionality of Education Policy in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This proposed paper explores the research methods–both qualitative and historical–used in my dissertation research, which seeks to center the interplay of history, racial politics, and community sensemaking to explore how racism and antiblackness are reproduced over time and in different public school contexts within Philadelphia. It explores the educational experiences of students, past and present, as well as three generations of Black Philadelphians (current high school students, their parents and grandparents) in order to document their understandings of the different manifestations of antiblackness in educational policy and practice over several decades. It seeks to understand what it means (and meant) to be Black in different public school contexts during different time periods and will examine this meaning of Blackness over time and across school buildings through an exploratory qualitative research design consisting of semi-structured interviews with current and former Black high school students, followed by more in-depth portraits (Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) of three intergenerational families to understand how Black families’ memories of schooling shape intergenerational understandings of and experiences in schools. This paper contextualizes these interviews within the current historiography of Black education in Philadelphia from the postwar period to the present.

A growing body of education research explores how these present-day manifestations of educational inequity are a product and continuation of a long legacy of racial exclusion and inequality. In particular, recent conceptualizations of antiblackness within education (by way of Black studies) reveal the ways in which our educational system was built―and has been reproduced anew― through a lens that harshly defines Black students and their families as inferior. A theorization of antiblackness allows for an understanding of how racism affects the Black community both disproportionately and uniquely. Applying this framing to education reveals how antiblackness as an ideology that shapes the details of policy and practice has remained constant over time, while the various mechanisms of the racial inequality it fosters in schools and districts have evolved. Theorizing on antiblackness is not new, but there is little empirical research that draws on its framing and this study will contribute to such work by examining antiblackness through the experiences, memories, and narratives of current and former Black students across generations.

Finally, this paper builds on scholarship that demonstrates how racial histories loom large in contemporary struggles for educational equity. Widening the exploration of contemporary education to include a historical analysis can lead to a more robust understanding of contemporary contexts. In particular, this widening emphasizes both the continuation and evolution of racist educational structures, and it makes visible how many education reforms have inevitably reasserted the inequalities they were purported to tackle. Through exploring both archival materials and past and present student experiences, this paper documents the individual, familial and communal costs of such inequality, as well as the inextricable link between the structural inequality of Philadelphia and its schools and the human agency of Black students past and present.

Author

• Leana Cabral, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author