"The Least We Can Do": From Critically Relevant Civics to Anti-Citizenship Pedagogy

• In Event: "As We Have Always Done": Resurgence, Resistance, and Fostering Educational Lifeways for Collective Liberation

Abstract

The history of civics education in the lives of Black students in U.S. schools is fraught with damning evidence that it has been a knowledge project rooted in coloniality; misleading Black students about history, their rights, and the central role that structural anti-Blackness has played in social and economic arrangements (King & Chandler, 2015; Quijano, 2000; Woodson, 1933/2006). Recent examples (e.g., the destruction of confederate statues in Richmond, VA) demonstrate that despite the destabilizing impact of school-based civics education, Black youth have a capacity to engage in critical political actions. In this paper, I raise the question, how might scenes of Black resistance from the current political moment help to inform a civics pedagogy that rectifies the legacy of traditional civics?

The tradition of civics education has functioned to pacify warranted Black rage and undermine Black student organizing. For instance, the Freedman’s Book (1865), a centerpiece in Freedman schools, pitched a version of morality to ex-slaves that suggested bodily sacrifice (for whites) and forgiveness and amicability (toward former masters) was reflective of an upstanding Black citizen in the Reconstruction era. In the 1970s, Los Angeles public schools invited police to teach civics classes wherein they misled Black youth about their rights, deceptively solicited information about Black organizing activity, and attempted to entrap youth and their families by distributing questionnaires asking about illicit drug use and attitudes toward law enforcement (Sojoyner, 2013). In 21st century civics classrooms, many have identified the preponderance of banal, irrelevant, race-neutral and/or racism-silent nature of texts, curricula, teaching, and pedagogy (e.g., Clay & Rubin, 2019; Loewen, 2008; Ladson-Billings, 2003).

Responding to the aforementioned challenges, many researchers have focused on improving rigor (or lack thereof) in Black civics classrooms (e.g., Levinson, 2012). Recently, scholars have put forward civics pedagogies that would support Black youths’ ability to grapple with their lived experiences and larger issues of political economy and inequality that shape those experiences (Clay & Rubin, 2019; Cohen, Kahne, & Marshall, 2018). Despite their needed deviation from the tendencies of traditional civics that protect white supremacy and assuage white guilt (Chandler & Branscombe, 2015), such approaches, at best, only come to terms with issues of Black student voice, relevancy to their experiences, and race/class salience. While these are crucial steps toward redressing colonial disinformation projects in school-based civics, they don’t necessarily respond to the destabilizing impact of its legacy on Black organizing.

Through critical narrative inquiry method (Webster & Mertova, 2007) and a critical media content analysis (Hijmans, 2015), I explore three recent cases, in Richmond, VA, Marion, VA (Travon Brown), and Washington, D.C. (Sunrise Movement) of Black youth activism and civil disobedience to more critically understand how we might learn from youth to inform a civics pedagogy that better rectifies the legacy of colonial civics in Black schooling. Findings from these cases illuminate the need for what I call a pedagogy of anti-citizenship, arguing that the least we owe to Black students is a civics pedagogy that encourages and facilitates grassroots organizing.

Authors

• Kevin L. Clay, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Ashley N. Woodson, Albion College