What Do Black Students Need? Exploring Perspectives of Black Writers Writing Outside of Educational Research

ABSTRACT

What does it mean to educate the Black student? How do education stakeholders committed to Black students and communities understand the role of teaching and teachers to help students meet education goals? In this analytical article, inspired by multiple traditions in Black intellectual thought, I explore how Black writers who write outside of education research discuss the teachers and teaching Black students need. I examine three pieces published between the mid-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois’, commencement speech, “Diuturni Silenti,” writer and activist James Baldwin’s speech and essay, “A Talk to Teachers,” and education journalist Melinda D. Anderson’s, “Becoming a Teacher.” I argue that because these authors speak from a different standpoint than academic research traditionally engages, they present a unique historic and contemporary vision of teachers and teaching for Black students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Keffrelyn D. Brown

Keffrelyn D. Brown (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Cultural Studies in Education at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also the co-founder and co-director for the Center for Innovation in Race, Teaching, and Curriculum (CIRTC). She holds faculty appointments in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the Center for Women and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on the sociocultural knowledge of race in teaching, curriculum, and teacher education, and the educational discourses and intellectual thought related to African Americans and their educational experiences in the U.S.