Blackness as intervention: Black English outer spaces and the rupturing of antiblackness and/in English education
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
ISSN: 2059-5727
Article publication date: 25 October 2021
Issue publication date: 23 November 2021
Abstract
Purpose
By engaging in critical literacy, participants theorized Blackness and antiblackness. The purpose of this study was to have participants theorize Blackness and antiblackness through their engagements with critical literacy.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a youth-centered and informed Black critical-race grounded methodology.
Findings
Participants’ unique and varied revelations of Blackness as Vitality, Blackness as Cognizance and Blackness as Expansive Community, served to withstand, confront and transcend encounters with antiblackness in English curricula.
Practical implications
This paper provides a model for how to engage Black youth as a means to disrupt anti-Black English education spaces.
Social implications
This study provides a foundation for future research efforts of Black English outer spaces as they relate to English education. Findings in this study may also inform existing English educator practices.
Originality/value
This study theorized both the role and the flexible nature of Black English outer spaces. It defined the multi-ethnic nature of Blackness. It proposed that affirmations of Blackness sharpened participants’ critical literacies in Black English outer spaces as a transformative intervention to anti-Black English education spaces.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “Anti-blackness in English curriculum, practice, and culture”, guest edited by Stephanie P. Jones and Rossina Zamora Liu.
We would like to acknowledge the youth in this study who allowed us to learn with them and from them over the course of this project. We also would like to acknowledge Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz for her role in the project.
Funding: This project was supported by a Fordham-Columbia Research Fellowship.
Citation
Coles, J.A. and Kingsley, M. (2021), "Blackness as intervention: Black English outer spaces and the rupturing of antiblackness and/in English education", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 454-484. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-10-2020-0135
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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