Reenacting Oppression: Curriculum Violence, Power, and the Persistence of Antiblack Pedagogy

• In Event: Propaganda, Discourse, and Curriculum in the South

Abstract

Despite some literature addressing the impact of antiblackness in schools, little has been done to critically examining antiblackness in relation to curriculum and pedagogy and how they influence not only educational politics and practice, but also historical memory and trauma. I attempt to complicate the reading of antiblackness within curricula, arguing that fixating on the details of the curriculum itself obfuscates how embedded antiblackness and white supremacy is within the histories of the land, conception of time, the illusion of school choice, and multiculturalism as a framework. I use a counter storytelling method to investigate what shrouded, nested stories make up the collective experience of antiblackness. The constructs of curriculum violence and white time within a racial-spatial theoretical framework are necessary theoretical lenses through which antiblack curriculum can be critiqued. I conclude that these nested stories help to answer why antiblack curriculum is pervasive and recurring.

Author

• Stephanie P. Jones, Grinnell College