Search results

This paper aims to contribute to a growing body of work (re)imagining the future for Black girls by calling Western notions of time into question. At its core, this paper argues that all Black girls are imaginative beings and that it is essential that Black girlhood imagination as a mode of future-making praxis be considered an integral component in the pursuit of Black liberation. To do such the author engages Black feminist futurity Campt (2017) and Black Quantum Futurity Phillips (2015) to illuminate ways a reconceptualization of time provides us with an analytical tool to amplify Black girls’ liberatory fantasies.

A literature review was conducted to synthesize Black girls’ freedom dreams (Kelley, 2002) across time in an effort to demonstrate that Black girls, despite their conditions, are experts in self-defining their dreams of the future. It also highlights methods that researchers use to elucidate the freedom dreams of Black girls years past.

This paper underscores the urgency in applying future-oriented research practices in the attempt to create a new world for Black girls. It also demonstrates that Black girls have always been and always be, imaginative beings that engaged in future-making dreaming.

The author offers a conceptual framework for researchers committed to witnessing Black girl imaginations and in an effort to work in concert with Black girls to get them freer, faster.

This paper makes the argument that studying the imaginations and freedom dreams of Black girls requires the employment of future-oriented theories that have a racial, gender and age-based analysis.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the first major federal education policy, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the most recent federal policy, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) lens to understand better how these educational policies have served as antiblack projects. Furthermore, this study locates examples of educational Freedom Dreams in the past and present to imagine new possibilities in Black education.

By analyzing education policy documents and history through BlackCrit methods, the authors expose how education policy is inherently an antiblack project. Freedom Dreams catalyze possibilities for future education.

The data confirms that while these policies purport equity and accountability in education, they, in practice, exacerbate antiblackness through inequitably mandated standardized testing, distributed funding and policed schooling.

This paper applies BlackCrit analysis of education policy to reimagine Black educational possibilities.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to effectively end race-conscious admissions practices across the nation, this paper highlights the law’s commitment to whiteness and antiblackness, invites us to mourn and to connect to possibility.

Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Cheryl Harris, Jarvis Givens and Chezare Warren, as well as the wisdom of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion, this paper utilizes CRT composite counterstory methodology to illuminate the antiblack reality of facially “race-neutral” admissions.

By manifesting the impossible situation that SFFA and the Supreme Court’s majority seek to normalize, the composite counterstory illuminates how Justice Jackson’s hypothetical enacts a fugitive pedagogy within a dominant legal system committed to whiteness as property; invites us to mourn, to connect to possibility and to remain committed to freedom as an intergenerational project that is inherently humanizing.

In a sobering moment where we face the end of race-conscious admissions, this paper uniquely grapples with the contradictions of affirmative action as minimally effective while also radically disruptive.

This study aims to present radical abolition studies, which encourages us to (re)member that the abolition of institutions and systems is incomplete without the abolition of their attendant epistemes of domination. The authors draw on the etymology of the word radical to encourage abolitionist praxis to grab systemic harm at its epistemological roots. Within radical abolition studies, this study presents Black abolition theory, which aims to make explicit a theorization of Blackness and works to abolish the episteme of anti-Blackness.

This paper offers Black abolition theory within radical abolition studies to reground abolition in its Black theoretical roots and to interrogate the concept of anti-Blackness and other epistemes of domination in abolitionist study and practice. Using a close reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction, and subsequent books and articles in abolition studies and educational studies that reference it, the authors highlight Du Bois’ original conceptualization of abolitionism as an ultimate refutation of a racial-social order and anti-Blackness. The authors then put Michael Dumas and kihana ross’ theory of BlackCrit into conversation with abolitionist and educational theory to push forward Black abolition theory.

Radical abolition studies and its attendant strand of Black abolition theory presented in this paper encourages scholars and practitioners to go beyond the dismantling of current instantiations of systemic harm for Black and other minoritized people – such as the school as it currently operates – and encourages the questioning and dismantling of the epistemes of domination sitting at the foundation of these systems of harm.

Black abolition theory contextualizes abolition in education by rooting abolitionist educational praxis in Black lineages. More generally, radical abolition studies encourages further research, study and collaboration in partnership with others who have historically participated in the fight against being labeled as subhuman to upend all epistemes of domination.

The American Dream is tightly woven into the American culture and way of life. Despite the importance and ubiquitous nature of the American Dream, the topic is difficult to define and belief in the attainability of the American Dream changes over time. Because of the little academic research on the topic, this study aims to fill this gap and investigate what people think about the American Dream and what factors influence the perception that this concept is outdated among different two generations – Baby Boomers and Millennials.

An online survey containing both open-ended and close-ended questions was conducted in two age groups via Qualtrics – 245 Millennials (born 1980–1996) and 253 Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964). Open-ended questions were analyzed using NVivo and closed-ended questions were analyzed using SPSS. Items on the online survey measured the definition of the American Dream, factors in defining it, the relevancy and attainability of the Dream, whether it was outdated, as well as Schwartz’s list of values (Lindeman and Verkasalo, 2005).

Three research questions were investigated. First, the results show that Baby Boomers and Millennials define the Dream similarly in terms of a house, family, happiness, freedom and equality. Second, they differ, however, in whether they believe that the Dream is relevant and attainable. Specifically, only Baby Boomers believe that the Dream is still relevant, but both generations believe that it is harder for younger generations to achieve the Dream. Third, the authors found similarities and differences in terms of demographics and values predicting whether the two generations believed that the Dream is outdated, and new values should be added. For both generations, values were more likely to predict the belief that the Dream was outdated. Using Schwartz’s values, those high in universalism were more likely to believe that the Dream was outdated and that new values should be added to the definition of the Dream for both generations. The values of security, self-direction, achievement and benevolence differed between the generations in believing that the Dream was outdated and that new values should be added.

This research provides insight into how these macrolevel beliefs influence people at the microlevel and how businesses or public policymakers can use these concepts to influence attitudes or behaviors.

The question of whether the words “American Dream” point to something of substance is at the heart of the authors' inquiry. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1933 book The Epic of America as a way to re‐establish a sense of optimism decimated by the Great Depression. Adams' contribution was to move the public discourse from that of individual effort to a sense of a collective identity. The American Dream is an element of the “cultural stuff” whose singularity (“dream”) rapidly breaks down into a variety of interpretations about the American nation (“dreams”). The popular press suggests that the Dream proposes to balance collective membership in a national identity with the individual freedom to achieve prosperity and success. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Dream and the construction of an American identity by examining the accounts of men who surely represent the American Dream: US Presidential candidates.

In order to analyze the candidates' accounts of themselves as committed to their American identity and to the American Dream, the authors view the tax returns and speeches of Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney through the lens of the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and locate the American Dream as a construct of the imaginary and symbolic orders, as they are defined by Jacques Lacan. The inspirations for the authors' analysis are twofold. One is a 1953 report in which Lacan said, “The unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the other”. The authors argue that the American Dream is the “discourse of the other” and suggest that the American identity is decentered: i.e. a signifying construct (the American Dream) substitutes for identity. The second inspiration is a 2009 paper titled “No one is perfect” by John Roberts, who argues, “The ideal of a transparency pretends to a mere making visible […] [But] transparency works to advertise an ideal against which we will always fail”.

It was found that the candidates' efforts to be transparent advertise an ideal: in this study, the ideal is the ideal of a “perfect‐able” American who lives the American Dream. It is an ideal against which the candidates fail because it is the “discourse of the other”.

This study has limitations. The subjects are two American citizens and the authors' interpretation might not be appropriate to other American citizens and residents.

The authors are aware of no other study that uses Lacanian psychoanalytic views to examine the American Dream.

The purpose of this paper is to further theorize BlackCrit to include a deeper focus on the framing idea of Black liberatory fantasy via Afrofuturism.

To develop the theoretical connections, the author revisits their previous scholarship on Black girls’ Afrofuturist storytelling practices to elucidate how the girls used their speculative narratives to critique the antiblackness present in their schools and the world at large and to create future worlds in which they have the power to create the world anew.

This paper discusses the relationship between BlackCrit and Afrofuturism by considering three interrelated ideas: how Afrofuturism acknowledges the antiblackness embedded in the USA; how BlackCrit makes space for liberatory Black futures and otherwise worlds; and how each theoretical idea inherently complements the other.

This paper creatively uses a hip hop album as a foundation for the portrayal of the intricate connections between Black pasts, presents and futures. As a conceptual paper, it pushes educators and researchers to consider the call and response between antiblackness and Black futurity.

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural dependency of newly independent countries (NICs) on ex-colonizers as pointed out by neocolonialism, dependency theory, and postcolonial theory, respectively. Instead, Pakistan is presented by extant liberal academic literature as a “failed nation” and a state dominated by the military and plagued by religious extremism. As opposed to this, through the literary and activists writings of Aziz-ul-Haq, this chapter will try to illustrate how cultural contestation of the nation-building project postindependence from British rule was a lot more complex and interesting in Pakistan. This was so because the nation-building project of Pakistan was, on the one hand, an amalgamation of Indo-Persian, Arab, Indian, and Western colonial and civilizational influences and, on the other hand, entailed suppression of resilient local and national cultures of its constituent nationalities developed over centuries. This was later expressed in ethno-nationalist politics. However, when it came to the politics of the marginalized in the late 1960s, there were important political, theoretical, and literary insights which caused a change in the direction of political practice in Pakistan, which paralleled the politics expressed by writers like Fanon and early Subaltern Studies influenced by the Naxal Movement in India. The contestation and confusion arising from this dialectic also entered Pakistan's literary and cultural sphere. This chapter not only tries to give a different postcolonial critique of the failure of nation-building project in Pakistan but, though at a preliminary level, is an attempt to separate the original postcolonial theory in its radical tradition from contemporary postmodern/poststructuralist postcolonial theory marked with pessimism and resignation.

The purpose of this study is to explore the means, rationale, challenges and opportunities of shifting focus from anti-racist to pro-Black educational practice. The authors argue that while anti-racism is necessary, it is insufficient in addressing the deeply entrenched anti-Blackness in US society. The instructor and three student members of a graduate course on Black girlhoods reflect on their time together to better understand the process of developing a classroom specifically for Black students.

Through a process of collaborative autoethnography, the authors used their reflections as data to identify the practices that served to establish their space as pro-Black and consider how these practices may apply to other contexts.

The data presented indicate that co-construction, intentionality and care and love are integral to developing a pro-Black classroom. The implementation of these practices in the authors’ graduate course allowed the students to feel seen and affirmed, which contrasts with their previous experiences in higher education.

This paper introduces the concept of the pro-Black classroom space as a pedagogical transformation aimed at preserving Black lives. The authors’ insights demonstrate how concrete practices that not only constitute anti-racist practice, but further challenge anti-Black bias, help to dismantle structural and systemic inequities in academia.