Seeking Black Joy in the Outdoors While Confronting Anti-Blackness: A Doctoral Candidacy Experience

• In Event: Racial Politics of Outdoor and Environmental Education

Abstract

Purpose: “All boundaries are White Supremacy boundaries because White Supremacy shows up and says, ‘these are the parameters’” (Hurst, 2020). Whiteness and coloniality are ubiquitous in both academia and outdoor education and outdoor recreation thus providing a single interpretation or story explaining what is or what should be (Agyeman, 2003; Finney, 2014; Martin, 2004; McLean, 2013). Utilizing critical autoethnography, I interrogate my qualifying exam journey as I was forced to confront anti-Blackness in academia and outdoor recreation in tandem.

Theoretical Frame: This paper draws on critical race feminisms (Alina, 2015; Collins, 1990; Dillard, 2016; Tuck, 2009) and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 1993; Delgado & Stefancic, 2017) to articulate how a Black female doctoral student confronts and disrupts hegemony in academic and environmental education spaces while seeking healing and joy.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources: This paper examines my doctoral candidacy experience where while addressing the questions of my comprehensive exam on the theoretical groundings of my research, I was asked to demonstrate specifically “How are Black people uniquely positioned to illuminate important aspects of outdoor recreation and education?”. The question created a profound confrontation with layers of anti-black racism and this paper addresses the experience of receiving, processing and responding to this question through autoethnography. The data include my written response, committee feedback, field notes, and individual committee conversations after I passed my written qualifying exam.

Substantiated Conclusions: Refusal of academic and environmental hegemonies is vital to the presence of Black bodies in those spaces (Nxumalo, 2020). Confrontation and refusal of academic and environmental hegemonies are vital to the presence of Black bodies who can imagine in those spaces. I observed tensions between confronting and evading my experiential journey in both academic and green spaces and how impact Black women and gender-expansive folks. For example, the lack of an anti-Blackness lens in doctoral programs results in the lack of nuance and understanding when designing program benchmarks just as it places a burden of proof of racial injustice on those same folks. In order to imagine educational and environmental spaces free of racial injustice, I must lean into the confrontation while creating a space for vulnerability.

Scholarly Significance: The 2024 AERA Call for proposals queries “What is required to imagine educational spaces free of racial injustice” (p. 2) and this paper illustrates the burden of confrontation, disruption, and refusal that some of us need to attend to before we are free to dream. There is a need to understand the racial politics at play and to ensure that we are stepping away from adding deficit framings of the Black body to the literature. Drawing upon the works of Robin M. Boylorn, Ti’era D. Worsley, Stephanie R. Toliver, Fikile Nxumalo, and Eve Tuck, my analysis provides insights for supporting Black doctoral students in the academy and for supporting Black people in fields of outdoor and environmental learning.

Author

• Charissa V. Jones, Oregon State University