Dismantling the Anti-Black Citizenship of U.S. Schooling Through Black and Afrocentric Possibilities

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Refusing the “Magic” of Western Knowledge Systems: Toward Epistemic Justice in Black and Asian American Education (Table 33)

Abstract

Purpose
This critical ethnographic study is situated within a predominantly Black-led school and analyzes the philosophical and pedagogical commitments of a Black teacher along with the social interactions and discursive practices among her fourth grade students. The aim of this paper is to recognize that dominant ideologies around citizenship remain committed to racial injustice and exclusionary practices. It refuses hegemonic understandings of citizenship within education and reconceptualizes the construct and practice of citizenship through Black and Afrocentric notions of relationality and responsibility.

Perspective
This paper posits that dominant schooling is drenched in white supremacy and therefore inherently antagonistic to Blackness– African ways of knowing, being, and relating with one another and the world. This grounding rests in Black critical theory (Dumas & Ross, 2016) and demands the refusal of all forms of anti-black subjugation. Black feminist thought and its ethics of care (Collins, 2022) offer frameworks of refusal that expose the realities of differential power and oppression and emphasize the urgent need for Black children to belong and be well.

Work by Vickery (2016), Busey and Dowie-Chin (2021), Thomas (2022), and Yancy (2016) demonstrated how U.S. perceptions and enactment of citizenship are inherently flawed and oppositional to the ways of knowing and being of Black communities.These notions of citizenship fail to take into account historical and ongoing racial injustice, white supremacy, and differential power dynamics. Moreover, White and Eurocentric definitions of citizenship often rely upon individual responsibility and promote cultural and ideological assimilation towards whiteness while promoting alienation from one’s nonwhite racial, ethnic, and national commitments and backgrounds. However, Black communities have historically, politically, and culturally secured their survival and thriving through a quite different conceptualization of productive group membership.

Methods and Data Sources
This critical ethnographic study analyzes interviews with a Black fourth grade teacher (Ms. Diamond), field notes drawn from her student-teacher interactions and her students’ peer-to-peer conversations, and observations about the classroom and school climate and culture. Grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Charmaz, 2006; Bryant & Charmaz, 2007; Charmaz, 2014) and a constant comparative method were used to analyze multiple iterations of the interview transcriptions, code for thematic concepts, organize themes across the data, and draw conclusions using inductive reasoning.

Results
Findings reveal how Ms. Diamond and her school community respond to the gaps and limitations of dominant U.S. schooling through a refusal of anti-black citizenship and the centering of Black and Afrocentric relationality and sense of collective responsibility. These findings further demonstrate philosophical and pedagogical commitments that seek to redress racial injustice and social exclusion by recognizing power, racial membership, and historical and sociocultural context.

Scholarly Significance
In conclusion, reimagining citizenship from a Black and Afrocentric lens provides and protects educational agency and explicitly works to prepare students to traverse the inherent contradictions within and between social and racial contexts. This paper offers implications that may assist P-12 teachers, teacher educators, and school administrators in disrupting the racial injustice and exclusionary practices inherent within the assimilative purpose and process of dominant citizenship and U.S. schooling.

Author

• Bisola A. Wald, University of Minnesota