Using our voices, losing our bodies: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy

Abstract

The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in the streets of America by police but also are metaphorically gunned down in the academy. That is to say, white colleagues and students attempt to use what we call the bullet of rejection, the bullet of silencing, and the bullet of disrespect to destroy us and our academic agenda. We conclude with a call to action for teacher education programs as a way to deepen their understanding of the racialized experiences of Black males in the academy and Black males in America.

Keywords:

• Race
• critical race theory
• Black males
• teacher education
• racial violence

Acknowledgments

A big thanks to our Academic Mother, Dr. Gloria Boutte, for providing her intellect and mentorship to help bring this piece to fruition. Your unwavering devotion to Black education propels us to carry on the torch for racial and social justice.

Notes

1. P-20 refers to the organization of US public schools by grade level beginning with (P)re-school and continuing through higher education.

2. The term critical refers to the unveiling of beliefs and practices that demarcates equity and justice. Critical theory is an act of explanation – defining and acknowledging the voices that are silenced. Therefore, critical social theory critiques and challenges the various structures of power (Lynn, Jennings, and Hughes 2013). Critical theory brings privilege and non-privilege conditions to the forefront unveiling how the privilege has been racist, Eurocentric, masculine, heterosexual, and abled-bodied, etc. (Freire 1973).

3. Whiteness is not a biological category but a social/psychological construction (Harris 1995). It is a system (or ideology) where people are perceived to fit or pass as white. Thus, to be white is analogous with having collateral since it translates into accompanying privileges.

4. ‘But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1963).