Critical Black women educators: Resisting the racial and ideological marginality of K–12 teaching through critical professional development

ABSTRACT

Black women educators are severely underrepresented and make up just 5% of US public school teachers. For critical Black women educators working in the hostile racial climates of schools, the ideological marginalization compounds the intersectional racial and gendered alienation they feel. In this article, we theorize the racialization critical Black women educators experience even working in schools that serve communities of Color as they work to disrupt the status quo, challenge racism, and serve students of Color. Through key cases of Black women educators, we describe how critical professional development spaces address these forms of isolation and support their personal and professional wellbeing. We specifically answer what they gain from having access to networks of like-minded peers as they navigate working within institutions fraught with racism. This paper ends with recommendations for developing, retaining, and supporting a teaching force inclusive of critical Black women.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional Resources

1. Dumas, M. J. (2016). Against the dark: Antiblackness in education policy and discourse. Theory into Practice, 55(1), 11-19.

This article conceptualizes antiblackness, describing how it shapes educational policy and inequity, as well as how it shapes social response to Black bodies and the experiences of Black people. The author uses school (de)segregation as an example to demonstrate how policy discourse is informed by antiblackness, and consider what an awareness of antiblackness means for educational policy and practice.

2. Skerrett, A. (2011). English teachers’ racial literacy knowledge and practice. Race Ethnicity and Education, 14(3), 313-330.

Skerret builds upon Lani Guinier’s (2004) article theorizing racial literacy. She applies this lens to K-12 teachers, demonstrating what it looks like to have various levels of racial literacy across a spectrum. This article is a resource for anyone attempting to understand what the theory of racial literacy looks like in practice.

3. Watson, D., Hagopian, J. & Au, W. (2018). Teaching for Black Lives. Rethinking Schools, Milwaukee: WI.

Teaching for Black Lives is a resource for teachers that grows directly out of the movement for Black lives. Throughout this book, the editors provide resources and short articles of how teachers can connect curriculum to young people’s lives and root their concerns and daily experiences in what is taught and how classrooms are set up. They also highlight student activism and collective action.

Notes

1. Names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

2. The term “of Color” is used to refer to racially minoritized peoples of the United States, which includes people who identify as Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, or Middle Eastern.

3. Racial literacy is a concept developed by Guinier (2004) to articulate one’s ability to name and disrupt institutional racism. For more detail on how this has been applied to K-12 teachers, see Skerret (2011) in the Additional Resources section.

4. Anti-Blackness has been defined as a condition that “renders people of African descent categorically unacceptable as human beings, irrespective of their intelligence, character, competence, creativity, or achievements” (Washington, 1981). It has been applied within education to be more specific about how white supremacy terrorizes Black students within school policy and practice (Dumas & Ross, 2016).