Social death and ontology must be challenged in academia and education

In society at large as well as institutions, Black people are subject to oppression in the form of anti-Black racism, perpetuated through antiblackness within spaces. Dumas (2016) argues that antiblackness does not signify a mere racial conflict that might be resolved through organized political struggle and appeals to the state and to the citizenry for redress. Instead, antiblackness marks an irreconcilability between the Black and any sense of social or cultural regard. The aim of theorizing antiblackness is not to offer solutions to racial inequality, but to come to a deeper understanding of the Black condition within a context of utter contempt for, and acceptance of violence against the Black. (p. 13) Wilderson (2010) suggests that the question of being Black revolves around two fundamental questions: “What does it mean to suffer?” and “How does one become free of suffering?” (p. 126). As Black scholars who embrace the embodiment of Blackness, claim to the fullest of our African ancestry, walk in the spirit and light of our ancestors as descendants of the enslaved, live and work in spaces that continue to harm and traumatize Black people, we understand what it means to suffer. In this article however, we focus on ways to become free and more specifically ways for Black students to become free in the spaces that they learn. In the ontological polarity of the West, antiblackness draws its energy from the positioning of Blackness situated at the bottom of the polarity (Kline, 2017). In many ways, Black people are positioned as having no history prior to slavery and this myth is perpetuated through pedagogy and curriculum, thereby cutting off Black students from the rich history and knowledge which they come from. Kline (2017) argues further that antiblackness is also about power and is revealed through practices, forms, and apparatuses; and ways that “antiBlack racism have historically developed, changed, and reassembled/reterritorialized in relation to state power, national identity, philosophical discourse, biological discourse, political discourse, and so on” (p. 66). Some scholars argue that as discourses of equity, inclusion, and diversity abound in the United States and other Western countries trying to grapple with their racist histories and current demographic shifts, there is a strain against the dark (Busey & Coleman-King, 2020; Sexton, 2008; Wilderson, 2010). In this social and political contexts, Black youth, families, and communities struggle to make sense of what are widely regarded in Black cultural spaces as cases of (anti-)Black suffering and death are on the rise (Dumas, 2016). The killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery in 2020 in the United States, as well as the killings of Black people in Canada and other countries is furtherance of the fear that Black people experience in these spaces. Over 400years of injustice in the United States, Canada, and other Western countries there is a collective rage about social injustices that continue to plague society. The world has been transfixed by the unrest in the United States amid video footage of brutal clashes between the police and protesters during marches and vigils in Mr. Floyd’s memory. Dumas (2016) argues that while most educational researchers and practitioners acknowledge and lament the killing of and violence against Black people as examples of racism or (multi)cultural insensitivity, or the enactment of white supremacy, there has been little theorizing in education on the specificity of anti-Black racism, or the broader terrain of antiblackness. Tackling antiblackness is about challenging the position of Black person as socially dead, in other words, denied humanity thus ineligible for full citizenship and regard within the polity (Patterson, 1982). Anti-Black racism is a form of racism that is directed against Black people and their resistance to such oppressions (Benjamin, 2011). The legacy of anti-Black racism and the ongoing denial of Black people of their basic humanity reflects the “afterlife of slavery” that continually situates Black peoples as objects of fetish and force (Sexton, 2010, 2015). Dumas (2016) argues that analyses of racial(ized) discourses and policy processes in education must grapple with cultural disregard for and disgust with blackness. Doret and Gordon (2018) suggest that the fear of Blackness is implicated in the day-to-day practices of education and schooling. Dumas (2016) notes: theorization of antiblackness allows one to more precisely identify and respond to racism in education discourse and in the formation and implementation of education policy…. I contend that deeply and inextricably embedded within racialized policy discourses is not merely a general and generalizable concern about disproportionality or inequality, but also, fundamentally and quite specifically, a concern with the bodies of Black people, the signification of (their) blackness, and the threat posed by the Black to the educational wellbeing of other students. (p. 12) The continued fear of Black youth reveals the persistence of anti-Black racism that continues in the new millennium to plague the socio-political body (Doret & Gordon, 2018). Anti-Black racism is not limited to particular time periods or projects. AntiBlack racism is systemic, pervasive, and productive (Feagin, 2013). As we examine the impact of anti-Black racism Sexton (2010) calls for the disruption of the Black/White binary and suggests that anti-Black racism is not just about White on Black racial oppression, but also includes the relationship that other groups have to Black people. Education and schooling continues to be site of antiblackness and anti-Black racism. Black students and families are often constructed as the problem, pathologized, students bear the brunt of harsh school discipline, and families are not perceived as resourceful and knowledgeable. In the United States, some fought against integration of schools; and most recently we have witnessed the under-resourcing of schools in predominantly Black communities.