Africana Womanism as Radical Ethics of Care in Education

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: Interrogating Difference: Radical Ethical Frameworks for Social Justice in Education (Table 1)

Abstract

This paper examines the possibilities and potentialities of Africana Womanism as a framework for inclusive ethics of care in education with three foci in mind. Firstly, drawing upon the scholarship of Hudson-Weems (1997, 2006, 2029,) among other scholarship on Africana Womanism (Alexander-Floyd & Simein, 2006; Pellerin, 2012). This paper explains the characteristics of Africana Womanism, including family-centrality, Africana women as self-definers and self-namers, and genuine sisterhood, among others to frame how this ideological bent presents a more inclusive model for supporting not just Africana and Africana Melanated but rather all populations in educational communities. Next, the inclusive and belongingness nature of Africana Womanism presents an opportunity to envision an ontological shift in what, in education, we who we consider the educated, those we deem educatable, and the positionalities from which we educate. Lastly, using narrative inquiry, an epistemological heuristic of inquiry, we will illustrate how enacted and lived Africana Womanism resists structures of oppression and signifies a commitment to not only survive but also thrive in education settings. Tangentially, this paper challenges the tenets of Africana Womanism that relies on descriptive male and female nomenclature to underscore the fluid nature of flexible roles players in Africana Womanism and how, from an ethics of care in education perspective (Reed, 2001), such a vision of the evolution of the framework is additive at worst.
In focusing on these three themes, this paper further interrogates whether frameworks such as Africana Womanism and others that deviate from Western feminism exist to resist better the pitfalls of social justice-oriented ethics of care that can become dangerous tentacles of white liberalism. When faced with increasing segregated schooling communities (Rosiek & Kinslow, 2015), the growing educational debt among different schooling populations (Benning & Bowman, 2020; Ladson-Billings, 2006), and the rise of hate acts, crimes, and speech in Pk-12 settings (Hate in Schools Report, 2019), the nurturing and mothering characteristics of Africana Womanism dictates a distinct ethic of care. In mothering, Africana womanists do not feel restricted to the mother role but rather are committed to the craft of mothering which is symbiotic with the characteristic of nurturing. As part of mothering, Africana womanists are committed to loving and caring for their own. This “own” extends to the entire Africana and Africana Melanated communities (Hudson-Weems, 1993). Such a sense of connectedness and the idea that the success of one is the success of all contends with white liberalism that makes marginalized voices part of the conversation but not part of the process, accepts equal numbers or representation, and does not eliminate of inequity as oppression, and seeks to fix and save instead of nurture, protect, and empower.

Author

• Jean Swindle, East Tennessee State University
  Presenting Author