Black Educational Counterspace as Homeland: Liberatory Yearning, Imagining Citizenship, and the Death of the Subperson

• In Event: 33.078 - Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 33.078-3 - Fostering Activism: Young People Constructing Agency in School and Beyond

Abstract

This study explores the recent reappearance of what the author refers to as Black educational counterspaces in an urban district in Northern California, and the Black educational “crisis” these spaces are responding to. This qualitative study examines three distinct Black educational counterspaces in Northern California: 1) An all Black African American Studies class at an elite University; 2) An all Black, all male, manhood development class at five urban public high schools; and 3) An all Black, all female, young women’s empowerment class at an urban public high school. Preliminary findings suggest spaces that support Black students in an interrogation of their racialized experiences may be the catalyst for developing their will, desire, and capacity to change them.

Author

• kihana miraya ross, University of California - Berkeley