Creating Educational Spaces for All to Thrive: Naming and Addressing Racism in Educational Institutions

• In Event: History, Hate, and Hope

Abstract

This presentation focuses on ways to name and challenge racism, and in particular anti-Black racism. Anti-Black racism is a form of racism directed against Black people and their resistance to such oppressions (Benjamin, 2011). The legacy of anti-Black racism and the ongoing denial of Black people of their basic humanity reflects the “afterlife of slavery” that continually situates Black peoples as objects of fetish and force (Sexton, 2015). Dumas (2016) argues that while educators acknowledge violence against Black people as examples of racism or (multi)cultural insensitivity, or the enactment of white supremacy, there has been little theorizing in education on the specificity of anti-Black racism, or the broader terrain of antiblackness. Anti-Black racism continues to be pervasive and systemic in education and schooling in many countries and affect students and their educational outcomes negatively (Feagin, 2013).

Addressing racism and all forms of oppression in education and schooling must be embedded in educators’ ongoing practice. Educators must draw on their agency to unlearn, learn, and relearn in order to be intentional with praxis. For this reason, racism must be named, addressed and strategies put in place to dislodge. Drawing on the NOFS (Name, Own, Frame and Sustain) framework conceptualized by Lopez and Jean-Marie (2021) participants will interrogate anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism and ways that it is manifested in education and schooling and collaboratively work through ways to disrupt within their own contexts. Educational institutions have a responsibility beyond performative statements to challenge racism, naming not only its historical roots, but its ongoing manifestations.

Author

• Ann E. Lopez, University of Toronto - OISE