Radicality Toward "a Better Tomorrow": Critical Race Theory, Wu-Tang Clan, and the Need for Black Youth Development in Learning Science

• In Event: Supporting Underrepresented Learners in Schools

Abstract

In this essay, we advances a critique of academically branded, politically normative,
white gender binary definitions of Youth Development (YD) & Positive Youth Development
(PYD). YD & PYD are positioned as uncritical in their alterations of framework to fit the
educational and developmental circumferences of Black youth. In particular, Black research and
scholarship concerned with Hip-Hop culture & Critical Race Theory (CRT) are consistently
denounced and openly omitted on the grounds of being simple subjective lived experience.
Suggestion for expanding the field of developmental science toward the possibility of a Black
Youth Development perspective is made. Learning Science innovation is recommended toward
new lenses for challenges in data collection & interrogation, developing new research paradigms,
reducing educational inequities, and creation of next generation learning models. Using the lens
of CRT, Critical Race Feminism, QuantCrit, and e-CRT literature is reviewed to illustrate the
importance of transformative visions toward establishing Black Youth Development. Hip-Hop
specifically is positioned as a design theme for the developmental and foundational infrastructure
for the framework of Black Youth Development. Transformative revisioning of Social &
Emotional Learning, Social & Racial Justice, and education pedagogy in urban Black youth space
are recommended using Black youth experiential information of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Author

• Cortez Watson Jr, Northwestern University