Finding My T(t)ruth(s): Re-Membering Using African Diaspora Literacy

• In Event: Our Truths: Interrogating Black Male Teaching and Teacher Education Experiences for Consequential Changes

Abstract

My recent research has centered around, “how does/can African Diaspora Literacy impact the experience of teaching and learning?” In this paper, I take a step back to interrogate my own re-membering of my T(t)ruth(s). I draw upon two major concepts, African Diaspora Literacy (ADL) and re-membering. African Diaspora Literacy (ADL) refers to becoming literate about African Diasporic peoples, histories, cultures, languages, epistemologies, cosmologies, and axiologies. Re-Membering refers to the piecing together of shared African diasporic knowledge bases (King & Swartz, 2014). In my re-membering, using ADL, I embrace my identity as a Black male even with its’ many intersections; my T(t)ruth(s). I acknowledge truth in its many forms therefore referring to all of them. Using autoethnography, I share my account, although ongoing, of engaging with ADL and how it transformed me personally and as an educator. This is the time that I became one with my Blackness and the strength, power, beauty, and brilliance that comes with it. Further, I explore what I do to ensure that future generations do not experience their ‘becoming’ as late in life as I did.

In this work, I draw on anti-Black frameworks (Dumas & Ross, 2016), pro-Black frameworks (Boutte et al., 2021), and Afrocentric Pedagogies (Asante, 1991). This work is an analysis of my position as a Black male classroom teacher, teacher educator, and as a scholar. This autoethnography explores how my teaching evolved, and learning and processing of information evolved as I ‘became’. King (2005), commissioned by AERA, outlined a research agenda for transformative research for Black education. Among the research noted missing is large and small scale research that “use culturally relevant schema to organize and enhance instruction in beneficial ways for students at all levels and for teacher and researcher learning and development” (p. 353), particularly identifying teachers who engage in culturally relevant instructional practices that benefit academic excellence for students. This autoethnography is a means of self examination of my practices, beliefs, and biases before engaging with others to identify practices that work to improve educational experiences for our students.

From this paper, I chronicle my experiences as a Black person and interrogate how that impacts my epistemological and ontological T(t)ruth(s) during the research process. I include a reflection of pondering how much different life would have been for me growing up had I understood the power in being Black and the contributions that African and descendants of Africa have had on this world. Instead, I internalized ideas based on stereotypes established by racism in our world. Understanding this and other T(t)ruth(s). This autoethnographic journey is a reflection but also it documents my T(t)ruth(s).

Author

• Jarvais Jackson, Georgia Southern University
  Presenting Author