Run Dat Back: Situating the Race for Theory and Antiblackness in Education Through Black Women Theorizing

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session aims to speak to our current moment, but do so in a manner that refuses the “race for theory” (Christian, 1987). Calls to center antiblackness in educational research often contribute to the creation of neologisms or misappropriate extant critical theories of race. More importantly, we know that Black women’s theorizing is also muted, dealing only with the theoretical hegemony of the day while ignoring past works about which nothing [or very little] has been written. Our primary objective with this session is to run dat back, that is, to center Black women’s theorizings in our current discussions on antiblackness and to avoid the elite prescriptivism of theory that produces knowledge as novel and patriarchal. (116/120 words)

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Nafees Mohammad Khan, Clemson University

Papers

• Making Black Lives Matter: Black Women's Activism and the Afterlife of Slavery - Kristen Duncan, Clemson University; Ashley N. Woodson, Albion College

• We Fight for You, but Do You Fight for Us? Centering Black Women in Antiracism - Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, District of Columbia Public Schools; Natasha C. Murray-Everett, West Virginia University; Crystal G Simmons, SUNY - College at Geneseo

• Pervasive Antiblackness and Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade - Nafees Mohammad Khan, Clemson University

• Mule of the World: Gendered Antiblackness and the Invention of the Nonhuman Anti-Citizen - Tianna Dowie-Chin, University of Florida; Christopher L. Busey, University of Florida

Discussant

• Ashley N. Woodson, Albion College