Black American Muslim Parents and School Choice in Senegal as Educational Freedom Dreaming

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Justice and Freedom in Education (Table 15)

Abstract

Black parents make constrained school choice decisions in the U.S. (e.g., Posey-Maddox et al., 2021). This paper, however, explores the possibilities that emerge when Black parents have access to a schooling option abroad. It analyzes data from a project examining the educational decision-making of 13 Black American Muslim parents who enrolled their children in an Islamic school in Senegal. Findings suggest that parents’ school choice reflected educational freedom dreams (Kelley, 2002) of learning experiences free of the racial, religious, and gendered injustices that plague Black Muslim youth in the U.S. This research contributes to literature that centers Black people’s efforts to shift schooling from a site of suffering (Dumas, 2014) to places of possibility and joy (Muhammad, 2023; Warren, 2021).

Author

• Samiha Rahman, California State University - Long Beach