Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and Combating the Disposability of Black Bodies

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Educational Justice in a Changing World

Abstract

The number one thing Black youth learn from school and society is that their lives are disposable. From Ferguson to Staten Island and beyond, Black young people are given the very clear messages that their lives don’t matter (and this is true, of course, sometimes more subtly in through the curriculum, school norms, and discipline regimes). In this paper I detail the political movement of Black Lives Matter, documenting youth language, literacy, and justice struggles centered around the state sanctioned killing of unarmed Black young people. Through this documentation, I outline the ways in which educational institutions must marshal culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) as a means to combat pervasive and too often internalized notions of Black disposability. In the case of Black youth, CSP is literally about lives; about the pedagogies of I can breathe. I conclude the paper with a call for pre-K through university personnel (e.g. teachers, administrators) to commit to combating pervasive Black disposability and outline some tenets they can follow.

Author

• Marc Lamont Hill, Morehouse College