Mixed map-making: Conceptualizing critical racial topographies of Black mixed-race students’ schooling experiences

• In Event: Critical Racial Topographies: Methodological Tools and Key Concepts for Research and Practice in Education

Abstract

This conceptual paper is based on data across multiple research studies focused on Black mixed-race children’s experiences in schools. Drawing from findings in these studies, the author weaves together theoretical threads from MultiCrit (Harris, 2016), Black Geography (McKittrick, 2006), Critical Spatial Analysis (Annamma, 2016), Critical Place-based education (Gruenwald, 2004) to illustrate the connections between race and space in schools. Specifically, the paper poses the question: How do educators make procedural decisions? And how does this inform racialized place-making within schools in ways that uniquely affects Black mixed-race students?
This conceptual paper is based on findings from several studies conducted in the Northwest, Midwest, and Deep South. This included an 18-month ethnographic study in an elementary school, a case study of five Black mixed-race youth and their families, and a four-year collective poetic inquiry project. The author shares examples of educators’ decision-making that inform racialized place-making, or topographies. Specifically, racialized decisions about classroom placement, explaining the purpose of racial census data collected at the start of standardized testing, and interpreting racialized styles (e.g., shoes, hair styles) worn by Black mixed-race youth. The author takes the position that white supremacy and antiblackness create a racial topography where mixed-race identities are rendered impossible (Author, 2022), and young children are adultified into positions where they are forced to make (or accept) decisions that segregate them from their peers. Furthermore, reify boundaries and borders based on a racial imaginary that has determined Blackness as fugitive, whiteness as owning and dominating space, and mixedness as nonsensical at best and non-existent most often in American schools.
This conceptual paper makes contributions to diverse conversations about race and space in schools. Teachers’ decisions are mapped in concrete terms onto student experiences in ways that point to real-world applications of theory into practice. Furthermore, by centering the Black mixed-race body in a conversation about the connections of race and space, the author pushes the boundaries of commonly accepted borders and the oversimplification of race. At the same time, the author troubles the notion that critical spatial analyses of schooling are inapplicable to everyday schooling practices and/or youth today.

Author

• Joy Howard, Appalachian State University