Black Youth Ingenuity as Disruption Towards Bright and Just Futures

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Research continues to highlight how Black students are deemed unworthy of the promise of educational excellence. Yet ample room remains to illuminate the visibility and voice of Black youth themselves. Bringing together scholars working across queer, disabled, gender, and emotional identities, the session explores how Black youth navigate educational contexts shaped by anti-Blackness and erasure. Through frameworks such as DisCrit, Black feminism, affect theory, and critical love, each paper illuminates how Black youth use imagination, joy, and intimacy as practices of resistance. Together, these papers move beyond deficit perspectives to center Black youth as theorists of their own experience. This session affirms that young Black lives are not just worthy of study but vital to the future of educational justice.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Ed Brockenbrough, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Black Child Emotionality: An Exploration into the Affective Lives of 20 Black Children - Demond Hill, University of Chicago

• The Art To Surrender: Creatively Writing about Black Girl Life - Kenly Brown, Spencer Foundation

• Nowhere to be Found: Young, Black, Queer, and Disturbed- A Systematic Literature Review - Jocardo E Ralston, University of Pennsylvania

• Black Boys Make Dreams of Love Come True - Aukeem A. Ballard, University of California - Berkeley

Session Organizer

• Jocardo E Ralston, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University