They, Too, Love: Black Boyhood Love-Work as Liberatory Learning and Praxis in Schools

• In Event: Black Boys Dream of Love and Justice

Abstract

In response to an educational structure grounded in dominance and oppression that renders Black boys as inheritors of education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006) scholars point to the work of educators of color that ground their praxis of justice in an ethic of “politicized care” (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002; Daniels, E., 2012; Jackson, et al., 2015) for marginalized youth. Yet, scholarship that theorizes how Black boys learn to love-in-praxis with each other remains scant. This conceptual paper provides a nuanced articulation of pathways to excavate the learning of critical love inherent in Black boyhood. By bringing together critical theory and sociocultural frameworks for learning, this conceptual paper imagines liberatory educational experiences for Black boys who embody a love praxis that (re)imagines their humanity through their own eyes.

This conceptual paper leverages multiple frameworks to cogently explore Black boyhood lovework praxis. Advancements in Critical Theory of Love (Brooks, 2017) are used to explain the contours of what a social-justice orientation of love can afford the field, and how education might more humanely imagine Black boyhood. Additionally, socio-cultural frameworks for learning (Nasir & Hand, 2006) are employed vis-à-vis cultural ways of learning as a repertoire of practices (Gutiérrez, & Rogoff, 2003) in order to excavate and elucidate the complexities of what it means to love as learning activity. Black boys, then, are both progenitors and learners of critical love in educational spaces of (im)possibility. Further, Dumas (2013) considers how schools are sites of suffering for Black boys. Additionally, Author 1 (2016) offers a theoretical and analytical turn towards an imaginary of Black boyhood (Author 1, 2016). In concert, this paper offers a loving extension that Black Boy love-work in schools also worthy of “solemn reflection and remembrance” (Dumas, 2013, pp. 3) as a part of that turn towards imaginary.

This conceptual framework contends that Black boy love-work in schooling apparatuses is also a culturally informed learning activity (Nasir & Hand, 2006) that exists within a racially structured society (Omi & Winant, 1986). Culture inside the context of learning activity is not just a set of indicators by which to name certain populations in one group or another (i.e. Black boys and their Blackness), but rather as a repertoire of practices that signal both participation in a cultural group as well as a series of practices and proclivities that signify the inscription of certain habits, behaviors, and meaning-conferring processes associated with one or more cultural groups that may confer racial and ethnic ties (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003) of love.

Education has left the magic of Black boys' love-work–used to resist their indoctrination into certain nothingness–out of considerations of Black boyhood and schools. Yet, perhaps Black boy love-work can offer a way back to a future of educational equity and justice. In leveraging Black Boy Love-work scholarship might illuminate pathways of better theorizing the interlocking mechanisms that mediate the long-term developmental outcomes for Black boys who grow up to be adults in a society that struggles to care for them as humans (Johnson & Boutte, 2019).

Author

• Aukeem A. Ballard, University of California - Berkeley