Confronting Anti-Blackness in White Classrooms: Curriculum Analysis and Implications

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Toward a Just Black Educational Research Paradigm (Table 13)

Abstract

While issues of racism in education have long been recognized, neo-liberal efforts at improvement have done little to address the countless ways the US education system is intertwined with Black suffering. Although this problem occurs universally in education, it is exacerbated through unconfronted antiblackness in predominantly white spaces. I argue that if meaningful changes are to be made, new theorizations of curricula are needed. Using an Afropessimist framework, I analyze how antiblackness is perpetrated and perpetuated through explicit, implicit, and null curricula and reimagine curricula that instead confront and deconstruct antiblackness. The purpose of this work is not to provide concrete answers but to begin a conversation and imagination of actively anti-racist curricula that initiate change from within white classrooms.

Author

• Kiersten Guetlein, Pennsylvania State University