Channeling Queen Nzinga in the Fight Against Dysconsciousness at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• In Event: Black Mother Educators as Protectors of Black Students in Higher Education

Abstract

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have long been regarded as iconic cornerstones of African American education and lauded for providing nurturing environments that disproportionately produce African Americans in a wide array of academic disciplines and professions. These institutions have done so while combating the increasing demands for accountability through student performance indicators such as retention, graduation, placement, and default rates. Because HBCUs have been staunchly committed to providing access to traditionally underrepresented and often under prepared populations, these metrics have placed some institutions in the throes of enduring battles for viability and substantive recognition. The resulting organizational inertia has stifled curriculums, policies, and innovations, which has led some institutions to a state of dysconsciousness, concisely defined as an uncritical acceptance of the status quo. Such struggles beg the question of how can HBCUs construct transformative policies and practices that will bolster academic persistence and success?

Building on the legacy of Queen Nzinga the fearless, warrior Mother of Angola, this paper will discuss how two Black mother educators employ African Diaspora Literacy (ADL) as a pedagogical tool to address institutional dysconsciousness at HBCUs in the service of improving student learning outcomes, but more importantly, student living outcomes. The positionality of Queen Nzinga is critical to understanding the parallel contexts of two Black mother educators who are passionate and strategic. While some mothers in academia rightly reject the marginalization and patriarchal models of professionalism that pervade the academy (Nzinga-Johnson, 2013), the contributions of women in African and African American communities and the strong family cultures at HBCUs have often positioned Black mother educators as boundless sources of power and influence. Leading classrooms, departments, and institutions while navigating motherhood is commonplace and seemingly coded in their cultural DNA.

Boutte and colleagues (2017) explain that ADL critiques issues of racial injustice and pushes back against the implicit and explicit cultural ethnocide that erases the cultural memories and knowledge of African people. “Diaspora Literacy illustrates that people in the African Diaspora have indigenous knowledge and beliefs that can assist Black youth in their reclamation of their stories and cultural and ethnic identities” (Johnson, 2019, p. 9). As educators working with student populations that are largely first-generation and of low-wealth backgrounds, we regularly encounter students who have had to wade through years of microaggressions, inequitable policies, and unfinished learning. These students often experience cultural dissonance even on HBCU campuses as they attempt to traverse the chasm between the world of academia and their personal spheres (Author). ADL has provided the milieu for teaching our students about the indomitable spirits of our ancestors before and after colonialism, instilling an ubuntu (I am because we are) communalism that taps students’ moral purpose and illuminating the unjust power structures many educational settings continue to reinforce. Integrating ADL has given us the history, stories, and facts to help students “re-member” the cultural capital and funds of indigenous knowledge they unknowingly already possess. In doing so, we scaffold new learning, begin to heal old wounds, and reject the current hegemony.

Authors

• Gwenda Greene, Benedict College

• Damara Hightower Mitchell