On Becoming an Endarkened Spiritual Alchemist: (Re)Centering My Own Brilliance as a Blackness-Affirming Praxis

• In Event: Because We See Us: (Re)Claiming, (Re)Centering, and (Re)Affirming Blackness in Education

Abstract

Objectives
Educational institutions continue to uphold systemic antiblackness and anti-Black racism, by ineffectively addressing the deficit-based, anti-Black perceptions of, and dehumanizing language and actions towards Black Scholars. Such insufficient efforts contribute to Black Women Educators comprising roughly 5% of K-12 positions (Obaizamomwan-Hamilton, 2023) and 2.9% of college and university teaching and faculty roles (Walley-Jean & Grange, 2016, p. 3). This leads to educational institutions’ inability to understand how Black Women Educators—who were (or simultaneously are) also Black Woman Scholars—have both traversed anti-Black, racist experiences and used those experiences as a resource for dismantling the systemic antiblackness sustained and perpetuated within institutional contexts. Given the above, this paper explores the impact of systemic antiblackness, anti-Black racism, and white supremacy culture (Okun, 2021) on my doctoral experiences as a Black Woman Scholar attending a medium-sized state university. Specifically, I analyze how I endeavored to perform an endarkened spiritual alchemy to (re)member, (re)affirm, and give (re)birth to my own Blackness after a spiritual lynching.

Theoretical Framework
I theorize a Black-Brilliance Praxis framework that addresses the specificity of (anti-)blackness in education, by synthesizing antiblackness (Dumas, 2016), Endarkened Feminist Epistemologies (Dillard, 2000), and BlackCrit Theory in Education (Dumas and ross, 2016). A Black-Brilliance Praxis serves as a theoretical framework for understanding the tensions within the internal, spiritual work I needed to do to affirm my own humanity, and it illuminates the ways institutions can begin the internal heart-work needed to dismantle the anti-Black systems, structures, and practices that reify systemic antiblackness (Author, 2023) and uphold white supremacy within academia.

Methods and Data
I blend phenomenological methodology (Bhattacharya, 2017) and nkwaethnography (Dillard & Bell, 2011) to examine how my Blackness was (un)affirmed, (un)policed, and (un)welcomed. Drawing from my own student work, reflections, and other media/electronic communications, I use the above data points to answer the following question: How do Black Women Educator-Scholars take their anti-Black experiences, trauma, and pain and turn it into life-affirming, healing-centered, and regenerative pedagogy/ praxis?

Findings and Significance
The ultimate goal of (re)centering myself is to serve as a portal for (re)centering Black Scholars’ schooling and educational experiences, because until schools and institutions of higher learning address the human element—i.e., the cultural impact that anti-Black racism has on the perceptions, language, actions, community context, and enacted practices of institutions—Black Scholars will continue to be (re)positioned and (re)imagined as the problem, and educational institutions will remain the most prominent site of Black suffering (Dumas, 2016; Love, 2019; Love, 2023). Furthermore, as a (re)claimation and (re)affirmation of pro-Black identities and pedagogies, I shift and think of “research as responsibility” (Dillard, 2000, p. 5) to (re)center my experiences as a Black Women Scholar—who is also a Black Woman Educator—and to (re)illuminate a spiritual, pedagogical, and analytical approach for how Black Women Educators specifically, and non-Black educators, administrators, and institutions overall, could address systemic antiblackness and anti-Black racism, (re)humanize Black Scholars and Educators, and (re)center Blackness in Education.

Author

• Kiese Vita, California State University - East Bay