Confronting White Epistemology: A Counter-Storytelling Analysis of African American Graduates of a Predominantly White High School

• In Event: Interweaving Intersectional Biographical Vignettes Into Qualitative Research as Reflexivity Tools

Abstract

1. Nanny of the Maroons, Nyabinghi, Mary Peake, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Omar Ibn Said and Phyllis Wheatly. If you have no clue what these proper nouns or, more basely identified, words mean then you have now experienced the multiple ways in which my intersecting identities contribute to my knowledge of self, homeland, naturalized country, and faith. If you knew one of these names, then that knowledge might have afforded a guess of my Jamaican birth. If you possessed knowledge of multiple of these proper nouns, then you felt confident in your proclamation of my racial identity as a Black woman living in America. This is just a simple example of how knowledge can empower or disenfranchise. Now imagine the Black child who attends public school in the most racially diverse public-school population ever in American history.
2. “In fall 2021, about 33 percent of all public elementary and secondary school students attended schools where students of color7 made up at least 75 percent of total enrollment. This represents an increase from the 27 percent of all public school students who attended such schools in fall 2010" (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). Yet despite the growing diversity amoung students, black learners rarely see their funds of knowledge valued in k12 spaces. The purpose of this study is born from a need to see Black Epistemologies valued and taught in school, allowing Black learners to experience the success that comes from epistemic freedom (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018).
3. Valuing our students' funds of knowledge is strengthened by the pioneering work of Kimberly Crenshaw and intersectionality. This theory recognizes the struggles Black Feminists as they endeavored to recreate an analytic frame for Black women who sought legal redress, having been told they their gender and race we separate and distinct identities (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 141). As a Black and female and Muslim and immigrant and mother, I recognize the conjunctive power of these intersection which leads back to the need for including black epistemologies in K12 spaces of education.
4-6. My own intersectionalities have afforded me the opportunity to engage reflexively in my research by allowing “myselves,” my social context and my experiences to influence my research interests and studies. I do this early in my prospectus draft, and throughout, with the intentional inclusion of my intentionally placed biographical narrative, freeing me to allow my epistemological assumptions to drive my research focus (Meier, 1963, p. iv). The result of these biographical narratives and the encouragement of their use by my dissertation chair has empowered my research and scholarship, because I believe, entirely, that I can and will add value to the field of educational research. From this act of encouragement for more reflexivity in my research, my voice in our university’s doctoral program is appreciated and not simply tolerated (Ellis et al., 2021, p. 157). It is this level of appreciation that leads to “demonstrated success for traditionally marginalized student populations” (Ellis et al., 2021, p. 156).

Author

• Tamara Keisha-Ann Rodney, Webster University