Dietary (and Other) Restrictions: Community Dinners as Catalyst for Expanding an Articulation of Black Liberation in Research

• In Event: Collaboratives, Collectives, and Communities: Making a Home for Research Among the People

Abstract

Objectives and Purpose:
In late 2019, a collective of education researchers and practitioners began to coalesce around the shared imperative of Black liberation in their individual work in schools and educative settings. In the past few years, this collective has worked alongside their large, local school district and external funders to understand the challenges and successes that have unfolded within the context of the recent movement for racial justice and amid COVID. Although the work of the group has generated data, uplifted knowledge, and informed actions for school and community practitioners to reduce harm to Black students, the collective has had to grapple with a set of challenges that arise when multiple organizations with competing processes and missions come together to advance singular efforts within a specific educational context. Using this organization’s current Community Dinner project, the purpose of this presentation is to create a space to highlight, share, and reflect on the realities of multi-organizational work while pursuing avenues for liberatory and emancipatory practices in research.

Perspectives and Theoretical Framework:
In the course of organizational work, the collective has been guided by one central mission: to amplify Black experiences and stories through the research, practice and partnerships that result in Black liberation for the students, families, communities, and schools that support them. The organization’s mission is underpinned by a refusal to engage with pedagogical practices that stigmatize students of color, reproduce systemic racial inequities, and tacitly legitimize white supremacy as an educational approach (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014).

Methods, Techniques and Modes of Inquiry:
One way that the organization works toward its mission is through the use of community dinners, monthly gatherings that convene Black folks from all walks of life to discuss issues and experiences within education broadly, and within the local school district specifically. Participants in this project identify as Black students, teachers, community members, parents or alumni of the local school district.

Data Sources, Evidence, Objects or Materials:
During each month’s dinner, attendees share in relation to three questions that guide reflections on past and present experiences, and on hopes for the district’s future. Through this research process, the organization has articulated and codified a set of research values that widen traditionally narrow research definitions (i.e. rigor, trustworthiness, analysis, and protocol) by capturing meaning from Black community members, and then measuring the organization’s work against those definitions.

Scientific Or Scholarly Significance
While one facet of this organization’s work has been to relentlessly pursue accountability and legitimacy in the communities that they are enmeshed in, another important facet has been to advance the shared goals of collaborating entities. This presentation has deep potential to offer insights into the tensions of collaborative work, particularly when there is a clarion call to center Black liberation for students, families, educators, and communities.

Authors

• Gwendolyn Baxley, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Ja'Dell Davis, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Jacquie Forbes, Dickinson College

• Christian J. Kochon, New York City Department of Education

• Gloria Rosario-Wallace, New York City Department of Education