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This research study focuses on fifth-grade African American students who attend an all-Black charter school whose administration and teachers are committed to providing Black history instruction throughout the year. To fulfill the school's mission, the teachers integrate additional resources into the curriculum that includes lessons and activities about Black history. Therefore, the study sought to answer the following question: How does learning Black history throughout the school year impact African American fifth-grade students' self-esteem and positive self-image? The authors examined student work, conducted observations and listened as the participants engaged in critical discussions about race and racism.

Way to Go (WTG) is a K-12 public charter school located in an urban mid-size city in Florida, with a 100% Black student population; all WTG students receive scholarships and free lunch. The 15 participants in this study self-identified as African American fifth-grade students. The authors conducted a qualitative research study that included 13 observations, an analysis of five student work samples and a focus group interview with seven students. They used interpretative phenomenology to gather African American fifth-grade students' experiences and their interpretations of these experiences (Moustakas, 1994) while acquiring information about Black history.

The themes that emerged are it's time to go, unsung heroes and Black history is exciting. In the first theme, they learned why Blacks migrated from the South to northern cities and understood why it was time for them to go. Next, they explored the history of unsung Blacks who inspired them to think about a variety of careers to pursue. Finally, they were excited to learn Black history because they understood the importance of learning this history in order to grapple with current events, and they recognized that knowledge of this history would improve their self-worth and life choices.

WTG charter school exemplifies what schools should attain for regarding the teaching of Black history. Since elementary school provides the foundation for learning, it is the best time to teach African American students about self-esteem and what it means to be proud of their Blackness. The fifth-graders in this study exemplified how African American students take pride in their history and have a positive sense of self-worth when taught Black history. Black history lessons and activities such as the ones utilized in WTG school will benefit African American students and contribute to their success as students.

As the First Lady, Michelle Obama stated that she had a number of priorities but that the first year would be mainly about supporting her two girls in their transitions to their new life in the White House. Her choice to be mom-in-chief drew unusually intense and rather puzzling, scrutiny. The chapter briefly discusses the range of reactions along the political spectrum as well as African-American feminists’ analyses of the stereotypes of Black women underlying those reactions. This analysis engages the debates from a different perspective. First, the chapter addresses the under-theorizing of the racialized gender norms embedded in the symbolism of the White House and the role of First Lady. It challenges the presumption of traditional notions of true womanhood and the incorrect conclusion that mothering would preclude public engagement.

Second and most importantly, this chapter argues that there are fundamental misunderstandings of what mothering meant for Michelle Obama as African-American woman. Cultural traditions and socio-historical conditions have led Black women, both relatives and non-kin, to form mothering relationships with others’ children and to appreciate the interdependence of “nurturing” one's own children, other children, and entire communities. Those practitioners whose nurturing activities encompassed commitment and contributions to the collectivity were referred to as community othermothering. Using primary sources, this chapter examines in detail Michelle Obama's socialization for and her practice of community othermothering in her role as First Lady. Attention is focused on her transformation of White House events by extending hospitality to more within Washington, DC, and the nation, plus broadening young people's exposure to inspiration, opportunities, and support for setting and accomplishing their dreams. Similarly, the concept of community othermothering is also used to explain Michelle Obama’s reinterpretation of the traditional First Lady's special project into the ambitious “Let's Move” initiative to end childhood obesity within a generation. The othermothering values and endeavors have helped establish the White House as “the People's House.”

This article looks at girls who fight in order to evaluate theories of education for marginalized girls. As oppositional culture and educational resistance theories suggest for boys’ misconduct in school, girl fights are found to be a product of deindustrialization, family expectations, and peer culture. Within peer groups of marginalized students an oppositional culture develops such that girls gain respect from their peers by fighting because they demonstrate a necessary toughness. Girls who fight have a complicated relationship to education. Contrary to oppositional culture theory, these girls value educational achievement. However, the girls’ relationships with teachers are strained. Teachers do not appreciate “tough” girls. Race, class, and gender together construct a student culture that produces girls who fight in school.

The #SayHerName movement aims to bring attention to the stories and lives of Blackgirlwomen who have died and/or been brutalized by the state/civilian “vigilante justice.” The culmination of the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and The Center for Intersectional Policy Studies (CISPS), as well as legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw #SayHerName argues that the inclusion of Blackgirlwomen's experiences within the larger discourse of antiBlack violence brings a much-needed gender inclusive perspective. Drawing on Black feminist thought, this chapter articulates the multiple and complex meanings of #SayHerName by bringing attention to Blackgirlwomen as theorists, athletes, and activists whose lived experiences and contributions have long been marginalized.

This paper grapples with a number of intersecting predicaments to frame a necropolitical question of who is allowed to inhabit and survive the locations of research, writing and the academy? Drawing on Lorde’s thinking about “historical amnesia” as an example of the mutually constitutive relationship between content and method, the purpose of this paper is to argue that putting a hypervigilant anti-racist remembering to work tells us that there is nothing contemporary about questions of: “why isn’t my professor black? And, why is my curriculum white?”.

The intersection of diverse theoretical frameworks demonstrate a transgression of disciplinary borders. This paper includes the use of conceptual frameworks such as the impossibility of hospitality, historical amnesia, habitation and location. The design of this piece also has detailed critical deconstructive discourse analysis of extracts from a published co-written chapter.

An ethic of research methodology must inhabit the aporia of the mutually constitutive relationship between method and content. Location is an intervention and method rather than a place to go or position.

There is a need to inhabit the tension of implicated necropower relations in research and writing practices.

Practical implications include rethinking methodology and applications of black feminist theory to ethical issues of research and writing with specific reference to co-writing.

There are social implications in regards to community engagement and political activism with refugees and asylum seekers.

This paper presents an examination of tension as methodology rather than methodology to resolve tensions based on deconstruction of issue of co-writing.

Research indicates that work in predominantly white professional settings generates stress for minority professionals. However, certain occupations may enable or constrain these race-related stressors. In this paper, we use affect control theory to examine the identity dynamics present in professions that explicitly require workers to highlight racial issues. We might expect that occupations that require attention to racial inequalities could produce heightened stress for these workers. However, our research on diversity officers indicates that the opportunity to advocate for disadvantaged groups and address racial bias explicitly creates emotions of satisfaction and fulfillment, and removes some of the common pressures to manage negative emotions that arise as a result of cross-race interactions. Importantly, these emotions are achieved when minority diversity workers perceive institutional supports that buttress their work. Thus, our findings offer a more nuanced assessment of the ways professionals of color engage in various types of emotional performance, and emphasize the importance of both occupational role and institutional support.

In the book “Shouldering the Third Burden: The Status of African-American Women,” Dr. Julianne Malveaux writes about how African-American women bear a third burden. As an economist and president of Bennett College, one of only two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States whose sole purpose is to nurture and educate black females, Dr. Malveaux has seen the third burden up close. She describes it as a dynamic interplay of race, gender, and class in ways that makes black women's lives and futures inseparable from that of black men.

This paper aims to argue that culturally responsive approaches to literacy instruction are necessary not only to celebrate Black girl literacies but to also expose, challenge and disrupt antiblackness in English education. However, without explicit exemplars to guide classroom practice, this type of instruction will remain elusive. The present paper expands upon the original conceptualization of Counter Fairy Tales (CFT) by further explicating the framework and providing recommendations to inform culturally responsive literacy practices to disrupt antiblackness.

The question that drives this study asks how can the CFT model be applied as a form of culturally responsive literacy instruction to best teach Black girls?

The CFT framework places value on Black girls’ ways of knowing and gives primacy to their voice and unique experiences through culturally responsive literacy instruction.

The larger implication of this research is for teachers to begin to create culturally responsive literacy instruction that honors the lived experiences of today’s Black adolescent girls, particularly those in young grades. Inclusive and affirming literary practices must be established, an environment in which Black girls can share their voices and visions as they explore themselves through writing.

This conceptual paper is one of few that specifically focuses on how teachers can use CFTs to facilitate the inclusion of Black girls’ experiential and communal ways of knowing to support culturally responsive literacy instruction in younger grades.

This chapter examines the connections between race and class divisions and examines how they shape racial inequities in the distribution of resources, power and privilege. Throughout history, racial identity has been a key factor in determining a person's position in modern capitalist societies. As such, issues of race and class have preoccupied sociologists and other scholars with diverse ideological orientations. This is highlighted in debates around the nexus of race and class in the production of racial structures, laws and institutions that legitimate and perpetuate the normalisation and centrality of whiteness. This chapter summarises some of the historical and ongoing debates, providing a synthesis of how race and class divisions continue to shape contemporary intergroup relations and social policy. It delves into racial capitalism and how race intersects with other social identities to determine socio-economic hierarchy in many western countries.