Mood 4 Eva Eva: Liberatory Pedagogies With Black Language Amongst My Sistas

• In Event: “America Has a Problem”: Sista Scholars’ Rebellion as Resilience

Abstract

Objectives
Language has and continues to render as a vehicle for sharing thoughts, ideas, and identity. When language pertains to marginalized groups it has served as another use of oppressive action and means to dehumanize. As Mukhopadhyay (2008) wrote, “Language is one of the most systematic, subtle, and significant vehicles for transmitting racial ideology” (p. 12). Having been one of the few languages created in this country, apart from American Indigenous Tribal languages, BL continues to seek justice and social legitimization (Baugh & Smitherman, 2007; Lanehart, 2023; Rickford & Rickford, 2000; Smitherman, 1977). This paper situates the use of Sista-circle Methodology (SCM) (Johnson, 2015) supporting the collaboration with eight Black Youth Scholars (BYS) toward a liberatory practice of teaching and learning with BL.

Theoretical Frameworks
Grounded in a combination of various theoretical framings, such as Black Feminist Thought (BFT) (Collins, 2000), Miseducation (Woodson, 1933), and raciolinguistics (Alim et al., 2016; Rosa, 2019), I developed a conceptual framework SOUL Expression. This conceptual framework represents how white supremacist ideology is internalized and projected to speakers and listeners through consistent misrepresentation of language variation and its use. By referencing the historical context of BL, the conceptual framework maps how BL speakers, specifically phenotypically Black speakers, are read as subhuman thus their words fall on “deaf ears” meaning they are not heard at all (Mills, 1998).

Methodology
In continuing the push for linguistic justice with BL (Baker-Bell, 2020), I leaned heavily on the support of my sistas to help guide me, they were of my north star (Love, 2019). My sistas constantly reminded me that the only way I could fulfill this project, through a liberatory lens, was to stand in my wholeness and remain true to the ways of knowing and being that got us here. By using SCM as a methodological step-back in the research, I was provided the means for reflection in and out of the study. In briefings through phone calls, Zooms, FaceTimes, and messaging, my alphabet sistas grounded me in (re)membering (Dillard, 2011). These were the moments of reflection to acknowledge the knowing of our truths in the not-so-traditional format of the academy, thus I was able to root in the tradition of fugitive (Givens, 2020) and abolitionist (Love, 2019) pedagogies that would allow for freedom dreaming (Kelley, 2002) with the BYS. The use of SCM empowered how I navigated working alongside BYS to best supply opportunities for their expression of opinions and identities through multiliteracies.

Scholarly Significance
As I worked through the collaborative data collection, crystallizing the findings, I developed a mosaic that represented the process of engaging in fugitive and abolitionist practices in terms of language pedagogy. Most significant was the finding that utilizing practices rooted in the tradition of fugitive and abolitionist approaches supported the multiliteracies of BYS, particularly regarding BL. This work was an ode to BL, for it has served so many and I am left wondering where the American English language would be without it.

Author

• Alexis J. Freeman, University of Florida