Community Catalysts: Resisting Hegemony

• In Event: Learning In And With The Community

Proposal

This study sets out to excavate hidden narratives to add more depth/breadth to the historical canon to impact local/ district/state policies/curricula enacted through integrating counterstories into social studies curriculum to unearth counter-narratives/parasocial mentors. This project supplants the miseducation of social studies curriculum that masquerades as authentic history but is plagued with a subtext of curriculum violence that excludes the lived experiences of underrepresented minorities (URMs) while inflicting psychological and intellectual trauma onto URM students. The dominant narrative combines a repressive state apparatus (RSA) and an ideological state apparatus (ISA) to champion oppressive ontologies that forcefully suppress liberatory ideologies using societal structures. Another goal of this project is to transgress the tacit racial contract that has permeated society to the detriment of URMs; it is in contrast to the social contract—a dehumanizing epistemological agreement that promotes whiteness as property and anti-blackness; where Blacks are chattel and their socio-economic status is negatively impacted.This epistemological ignorance is ubiquitous, invisible, subtle, but ever present and palpable. It is a unilateral contract that benefits the dominant society and simultaneously dispossesses URMs; it promotes a delusional sense of well-being among the dominant culture at the expense of URMs. Another aim of this project is to elucidate the contributions of five Black male healers in Florida (1528-1965) in medicine, such as Esteban de Dorantes, an enslaved Moroccan who accompanied the Narvaez expedition as an interpreter/scout/healer. Esteban and the other healers became catalysts for institutional change while deconstructing racism and bias. They engaged in intercultural collaboration while operationalizing actions of change. They also embodied and enlisted social justice to contend with hegemony to provide equitable representation and access to medical resources. This will engender a liberatory curriculum that incites/invites dialogue among educators/community members and students to dismantle oppressive/hegemonic curriculum policies and praxis while illuminating the contributions of Black male healers in Florida. This study aims to promote community cultural wealth and aspirational capital for Black males to pursue careers in healthcare. This project will be situated at Jungle Prada in Saint Petersburg, Florida: a historical site where Esteban de Dorantes landed as the first Moroccan to arrive in North America. This present study will elucidate the built environment of Jungle Prada and its significance as an emancipatory site for place-based heritage tours and transformative curriculum; memorial landscapes act as a stage; performances take place at these venues dramas, re-enactments, marches, protests, and or festivals; these performances authenticate the lived experiences of the natives and explorers who actually inhabited these spaces. These performances need to be done with fidelity and historic accuracy to properly convey the living conditions and daily experiences of the people being studied to enliven the performance landscape to accentuate the landscape that becomes a living text: a metaphor of the past. Accurate performances amplify muted voices of oppressive people whose voices have been silenced; performances needed to illuminate the living text of the built environment to mitigate inconsistencies that may have been embellished by hegemonic power structures who may have designed memorials to highlight their contributions while muddling the contributions of natives whose epistemology may have been erased by epistemicide and settler-colonialism; these spaces recreate memories and usher them into contested spaces. As Local history, it foregrounds everyday people's lived experiences and illuminates their need for interconnectivity in the collective memory of living as human beings.

Performances are particular to heritage tourism since host communities are concerned with portraying an authentic representation of their local history. They will unearth Esteban’s acquisition of indigenous Native American languages and healing ontologies to empower/heal Tocobagan Natives in Florida and numerous other Native American tribes from Florida to Mexico. The research questions are: How will the heritage curriculum history about Black male healers of FL provide a historical counter-narrative about Black men and their leadership in connection to health/medicine? How do historical counter-narratives about Black men support teaching about leadership through African history and healing narratives to resist oppressive education? How does an emancipatory skit operationalize transformative protest? Theater of the Oppressed and Critical Race Theory, and Critical Race Structuralism will be used as a framework to ground this project. This project will curate a skit to highlight the contributions of five historical Black male healers in Florida; this performance skit will illustrate the accomplishments of the five healers. Community attendees will be invited to reflect on the performance through dialogue. The performance will be videotaped for dissemination throughout Florida to supplement the existing social studies curriculum.

Author

• LaFrance Albert Clarke, University of South Florida