Carrying On the Tradition: Toward a Black Brilliance Praxis of (Re)Imagining Blackness in Education

• In Event: Transformative Pedagogies: Uplifting and Protecting the Genius of Teachers and Students of Color

Abstract

Objectives
Extant literature (e.g. Muhammad, 2020; Love, 2019; Baker-Bell, 2020) advocates for celebrating and engaging Black students through strategies that further anti-racist work and elevate Black Joy, languages, histories, and cultures. However, institutions aiming to become “anti-racist” via their “Black Excellence'' celebrations uncritically employ strategies through damage-centered (Tuck, 2019) and white-gazed (Howell et. al, 2019) applications. These applications ignore the specificity of (anti)blackness in education (Dumas 2016), because they fail to recognize how American educational discourse is built on a convoluted imagination that simultaneously perpetuates Black pain and trauma, while invisibilizing Black scholars' humanity. Given this, I carry on the tradition of BlackCrit theorization (Dumas and ross, 2016) by asking: What kind of work is required to affirm the brilliance of Black scholars and educators? How might the work cultivate a (re)imagination of Blackness within educational discourse and institutional contexts?

Theory
The act of being, knowing, teaching, and researching is deeply rooted in our identities, histories, and educational journeys as Black and African Diasporic peoples (Dillard, 2012). Grounded in this, as a Black-woman-teacher-praxisioner, I synthesize BlackCrit Theory in education (Dumas and ross, 2016), Revolutionary Pedagogy (Asante, 2017), Black Historical Consciousness (King, 2020), Historically Responsive Literacy (Muhammad, 2020), and endarkened feminist epistemologies (Dillard, 2000) to theorize a Black-Brilliance Praxis framework that addresses the specificity of (anti)blackness in education.

Methods and Data
I focus on three distinct, yet related sites where I examine my use of Black-Brilliance Praxis: an all-Black Advanced Placement English Class, an all-Black girl affinity sister space of 11th graders, and a teacher education course with diverse students working towards their credential. Drawing from student work, reflections, surveys, and self-reflection, I analyze embodied, placed-based racially transformative practices (Pham, 2019) to examine how I work to dismantle and heal from the traumatic effects of anti-Blackness, while also (re)imagining and (re)humanizing Blackness in my classroom. I combine desire-based research (Tuck, 2009), decolonial methodologies (Smith, 2013), auto-ethnography (Chang, 2016), and Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2017) to compare and contrast various strategies for affirming Blackness with students of various ages, cultures, and academic objectives.

Findings and Significance
My Black-Brilliance Praxis framework emerged as a theoretical and pedagogical tool for understanding the tensions within the internal work I needed to do as a Black Educator working towards affirming the genius of Black students, as well as my own. The work of advocating for, developing, teaching, and institutionalizing an all-Black academic and affinity sister space, alongside addressing anti-Blackness within a teacher education course, revealed the necessity of cultivating classrooms that (re)imagine Blackness as a practice of freedom and power (hooks, 1994), an educational instrument for environmental autonomy and self-determination (Akbar, 1998), and a site of liberatory fantasy (ross, 2019). I situate my Black-Brilliance Praxis framework within the larger contexts of institutional advocacy, curricular design, and Black Educator wellness, and provide implications for educators, administrators, and researchers looking to institutionalize the dismantling of anti-Blackness and uplifting of Black-Brilliance in all educational spaces.

Author

• Kiese Vita, California State University - East Bay
  Presenting Author