Striving to Make Our Ancestors Proud: Buffalo Black Males Leveraging Rebellious Literacies for Educational Justice and Thrival

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

In this uniquely conceived presidential session, a multigenerational, multidisciplinary panel of Black adolescents and men who live, learn, and love in Buffalo, New York will share how we leverage what we refer to as rebellious literacies to challenge, trouble, and fight against both historical and contemporary forms of racism and anti-Blackness in educational spaces. Attendees will hear from a continuum of Buffalo Black males representing high school youth, recent university students, a high school English/ language arts teacher, a STEM researcher, and a literacy teacher educator to learn how literacy has been leveraged in one city to continue the fight of our anchor ancestors and contemporaries against white supremacy in all of its iterations. While we draw from the liberating literacy educational tradition of Black Americans and the extended emancipatory models of Black literacies, we argue that at the core of our individual and collective educational efforts is to use literacy to create other liberating learning spaces for, with, and by Black youth to support and ensure their thrival, a sentiment/concept used to illustrate minoritized young peoples’ joyful, visionary, and restorative pursuit of learning and growth as they negotiate their everyday lives despite an existence within the legacy and immediacy of white supremacy, its epistemologies, axiologies, ontologies, and agents of harm.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Jevon D. Hunter, Buffalo State University - SUNY

Participants

• Douglas L. Hoston, Buffalo State University - SUNY

• Jabari Blodgett

• Darren Cameron, Buffalo State University - SUNY

• William O’Neil-White, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Melique Young, University at Buffalo - SUNY

Discussant

• Jevon D. Hunter, Buffalo State University - SUNY