There Are Black People in the Future: Afro-Futurist Text Selection Toward Antiracist Futures

• In Event: Disrupting Dominant Narratives: (Re)Thinking Text Selection for Liberated Futures

Abstract

By definition, Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic in which Black authors create speculative texts that center Black characters in an effort to reclaim and recover the past, counter negative and elevate positive realities that exist in the present, and create new possibilities for the future (Author, 2022). Explicitly, Afrofuturism is a way of grappling with and understanding Black realities across time and space, giving educators a way to better understand Black freedom dreams (Kelly, 2002; Author, 2021b). It is a theoretical concept that asks us to consider what education might look like if we engaged in a brazen celebration of Black life, Black intelligence, Black love, Black power, and Black joy. It is a means to explore otherwise worlds and new suns (Butler, 1998) where the atrocities of our past and the horrors of our present are noted, but stripped of the power often bestowed upon them in educational spaces.
In expanding the term beyond the literary, Afrofuturism acquires new meaning. Black authors are the Black people who choose to write, speak, dance, sing, and story their experiences in this world while acknowledging the experiences of their ancestors and confessing their hopes for the next generation of Black youth (Author, 2020, 2021a, 2022). Speculative texts are the ways in which Black people have used their numerous literacy practices to envision their lives outside of the parameters of dominant ideals of success (English & Kim, 2013; Gaiter, 2018; Lavender, 2019). Reclaiming and recovering the past is a way to excavate Black history while elevating positive contemporary realities as a way to foreground the optimistic aspects of Black life in a world that thrives on Black pain (Holbert, Dando, & Correa, 2019; Nelson, 2000; Wozolek, 2018). Creating new futures centers how Black communities come together to collectively solve problems and create future worlds where injustice is no longer an issue (Barber et. al, 2018; Carey, 2020). Afrofuturism, then, is “a mechanism for understanding the real-world situations of oppression in the contemporary world in the context of the ever-present past, while charting the future” (Hamilton, 2017, p. 19).
Utilizing this expanded definition of Afrofuturism, this presentation asks: (1) In what ways can Afrofuturism enhance text selection practices toward anti-racist futures? To respond to this question, I engage in a systematic meta-ethnography of education studies centering an analysis of Black speculative fiction (n = 25). Using reflexive thematic analysis undergirded by Afrofuturism and womanism, I highlight the requirements of Afrofuturist text selection: the centering of the past, present, and future of Black life; the juxtaposition of pain and healing, trauma and resistance, violence and joy; and the focus on anti-oppression and worldly transformation toward anti-racist futurity. In a world that remains antagonistic toward Black life, Afrofuturist text selection is essential. It is a way to acknowledge that just because oppressionist forces attempt to erase Black people from the future, educators can make space for Black youth to dream anyway.

Author

• Stephanie R Toliver, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author