Reclaiming Narratives of Healing and Love for Black Youth Amid Racial Trauma in K–12 Schools: An Intersectional Lens

• In Event: Reclaiming Narratives of Healing and Love for Black Youth Amid Racial Trauma in K–12 Schools: An Intersectional Lens

Abstract

Black youth need access to “homeplaces” to counter the persistent racial trauma that robs them of joy and a prolonged life expectancy in K-12 schools (Alvarez, 2020; Henderson et al., 2019). Drawing from hooks (1990) concept of homeplace, homeplaces are radical spatial acts and explicit reconfigurations of social spaces operating from outside and within whiteness-dominated spaces (Kelly, 2020). Black families and adults in schools and communities work to construct homeplaces that embrace Black youth’s bodies and identities in a space of healing and love. Researchers have worked across these communities and in schools to write and build narratives of healing and love (Griffin et al., 2022; Henderson et al., 2021; French et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2022). This engaging symposium brings together psychologists and educators, each pursuing a narrative of resistance, healing, and love in their work across Black communities and young people with intersecting marginalized identities. Attendees in this session will: 1) gain a foundational and operationalized understanding of racial trauma in K-12 schools, 2) participate in dialogue to name ways to reconstruct homeplaces for Black youth amid racial trauma, and 3) participate in dialogue to collectively identify ways to advance and operationalize healing and love in K-12 schools.

Authors

• Dawn X. Henderson, Village of Wisdom

• Naila A. Smith, University of Virginia

• Brandon Garrett Thornton, Bloomington High School

• Charity Brown Griffin, Winston-Salem State University