Understanding the Present Through the Past: Intergenerational Stories of Black Students in Philadelphia’s Public Schools

• In Event: Level Matters: Inter- and Intra- District Analyses Exploring Nuances in Racialized Power Across Space and Place Over Time

Abstract

This proposed paper explores the educational experiences of Black students in Philadelphia, past and present, as well as three generations of Black Philadelphians (current high school students, their parents and grandparents) in order to document their perspectives on their own educational journeys, as well as educational justice and inequity. My analysis centers history, racial politics, and community sensemaking in its exploration of their experiences while also considering how racism and antiblackness are reproduced over time and in different public school contexts within Philadelphia.
This paper contributes to a growing body of education research that explores how present-day manifestations of educational inequity are a product and continuation of a long legacy of racial exclusion and inequality (Buras, 2012; Dumas, 2016; Erickson, 2018; Ewing, 2018, Rooks, 2017; Shange, 2019; Todd-Breland, 2018). In particular, recent conceptualizations of antiblackness within education (by way of Black studies) reveal the ways in which our educational system was built―and has been reproduced anew― through a lens that harshly defines Black students and their families as inferior. A theorization of antiblackness allows for an understanding of how racism affects the Black community both disproportionately and uniquely (Dumas & ross, 2016; Hartman, 2006; Jung & Vargas, 2021; Sexton, 2016; Sharpe, 2016; Wilderson, 2021). Widening the exploration of contemporary education to include a historical analysis can lead to a more robust understanding of contemporary contexts and demonstrates how racial histories loom large in contemporary struggles for educational equity and justice. Importantly, situating this examination of Black students’ education within a historical and structural analysis allows for understanding contemporary educational inequality not as a separate phenomenon, but as part of the historical violence and dispossession experienced by Black people in America and schools.
Through use of both archival materials and past and present student experiences, this paper documents the individual, familial and communal perceptions of educational change, and the ways in which Black families’ memories of schooling shape intergenerational understandings of and experiences in schools. Through participant stories and memories, as well as the historic record, my work contends with what has changed (improved or declined) and what has remained the same. Finally, this paper considers what new avenues for inquiry emerge when researchers study educational experiences and inequalities through the memories and stories of Black families across and between generations.

Author

• Leana Cabral, Teachers College, Columbia University