Cultivating Student Voices and Action in Social Movements Through the Black Radical Tradition

• In Event: Accounting for the Black Radical Tradition in the Heart of Black Pedagogy

Abstract

Social movements that do not include youth are unsustainable. Although the necessity of youth in social movements has been well-documented, student voices are often left out of social movement organizing. Furthermore, pedagogies shape how students speak truth to power and engage in the social movements of their era and geopolitical context. Indeed, the Black radical pedagogical tradition has played a crucial role in cultivating Black youth activists. However, Black students are often not invited to weigh in on the pedagogies they receive and desire (Dumas, 2014). Discussions of the educational contributions of scholars of the Black radical tradition must include Black student voices, particularly those who are most marginalized in schooling contexts.

Thus, this paper offers social justice literacy workshops (SJLW) as a tool and space where educators can embody the Black radical pedagogical tradition by following the lead of Black students who are labeled as “struggling” readers and writers in school. These students often have had first-hand experience with exclusionary and unjust schooling. Employing culturally diverse literature (Boyd et al., 2015) and other texts, SJLW is a dialogic space where literacy support, text creation, and justice-centered learning and action happen concurrently (Nyachae, 2019; Nyachae et al., 2019). This space offers an alternative to a society where Black people are deemed disposable, and a schooling system where the literacy and learning practices of minoritized communities are not valued (Au et al., 2016; The Literacy Futurisms Collective-in-the-Making, 2021). Still, even in SJLW, “What does literacy matter when we consider the material realities of our most structurally oppressed students” (Nyachae, 2021b)? In essence, analyzing the schooling context of Black students is not enough; such analyses must lead to action and Black radical pedagogies can cultivate action and acting for justice.

Social movements, one form of action and one space for acting, hold institutions, systems, and structures accountable for the oppression in which Black students are subjected. Students do in fact have a lot of insight on their communities and what they hope for politically. Therefore, I will discuss SJLW as a design-based research project that centers Black students by enacting a Black radical tradition. While learning scientists (e.g., Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) have notably used design-based research to provide equitable educational experiences to students from non-dominant groups, more attention should be given to how design-based research could be an intervention towards—and for enacting—justice (Booker et al., 2014; Philip & Sengupta, 2021). Such a turn married with the Black radical tradition, moves beyond supporting students to be successful within existing schooling structures and hierarchies. Specifically, Black student voices can/should be at the center of social movements and organizing. Additionally, SJLW reveals the possibilities of employing the Black radical tradition in a contemporary setting and how it strengthens analyses of race, gender, class, and material conditions in pedagogies for just educative experiences for Black youth today and in the future.

Author

• Tiffany M Nyachae, Pennsylvania State University