Black Child Emotionality: An Exploration into the Affective Lives of 20 Black Children

• In Event: Black Youth Ingenuity as Disruption Towards Bright and Just Futures

Abstract

During a two-year qualitative study exploring how 20 Black children (ages 4–9) understand emotions and feelings, in a brilliant fashion, each Black child articulated complex emotionally-laden experiences as they described what emotions are and ways to express and manage emotions. As a result, their narratives demanded a positioning of emotions and feelings as an entry point into understanding their everyday lives. Therefore, grounded in affect theory (Ahmed, 2010), this current study centers the guiding question: What can their narratives on emotions and feelings reveal about experiences of othering (disconnection) and belonging (connection) that move through and stick to their everyday lives?

Through semi structured, in-depth, and open ended interviews, findings reveal how: (a) affect theory (i.e., emotions as moving through and sticking to) and storytelling offer a nuanced understanding of the ways emotionally laborious and adverse experiences move through and stick to Black children’s everyday emotional lives; (b) Black children’s emotionality is influenced by relational and systemic conditions that perpetuate harm; and (c) Black children describe experiences that replenish, repair, and restore relational and systemic harm (e.g., people, places, and things that allow for them to heal and just be). Each of the student narratives demonstrates that emotions are not solely internal and private but collective, relational, and contextually situated—an ethos of being—that shapes how Black children understand the everyday worlds they move through (Camangian & Cariaga, 2022; Lozada et al., 2022).

This study carries implications for schools to be spaces of connection amid a growing youth mental health crisis, highlighting their role in closing the disconnection gap through healing-centered engagement. Rather than treating school-based supports like social and emotional learning as decontextualized skills, this study advocates for emotion-laden, culturally grounded, healing-engaged frameworks that foster belonging and human flourishing. By centering Black children’s voices and affective worlds, this research advances more holistic, humanizing, and healing-oriented approaches to mental health equity.

Author

• Demond Hill, University of Chicago