Dark Sousveillance of Black High Schoolers

• In Event: Black Vision for Black Politics

Abstract

To understand how dark sousveillance happens in a school setting, I explored how five Black high schoolers take charge of their own reality while in school, despite the inundation of social norms that favor whiteness. Dark sousveillance refers to the learning and action taken place by Black people to outmaneuver white supremacy. How a society disciplines individuals is not neutral. Notably, the racialized discipline Black students experience at school is excessive and unjust (Coles, 2021). In Dark Matters (2015), Simone Browne took guidance from Foucault’s (1979) panopticon to theorize about the constant racialized surveillance Black people experience in the United States. Black voices within this paper are necessary to make visible the concealment conducted by the larger society’s disciplinary methods that render Blackness as deserving of punishment. Accordingly, this paper’s purpose is to use Black students’ knowledge to extend dark sousveillance theory within education research.

Author

• Janelle Grant-Ashbaugh, Grand Valley State University