by Dr. Kristen Duncan
Happy Black History Month! This year marks the 100th anniversary of what began as Negro History Week, which evolved in to Black History Month. Founded by Carter G. Woodson, these Black celebrations are intended to help us celebrate the achievements of Black Americans as well as help us understand the ways Black Americans have contributed to the progress of the nation.
Black History Month has an amazing purpose—a purpose that is often not fulfilled in K-12 classrooms in any month. Michael Dumas has argued that schools are a site of suffering for Black students, and I contend that social studies classrooms often serve as sites of suffering for Black students. In traditional social studies curriculum, the only times Black people are present are slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow/Civil Rights Movement. What do these historical eras have in common? Dehumanization. Black people were seen as less than human during slavery, had their rights stripped as Reconstruction ended, and suffered through the oppression and dehumanization of the Jim Crow Era. Even in the Civil Rights Movement, as Black people fought for their rights, they were subsequently dehumanized by various arms of the government, including being assaulted with firehoses and dogs and losing their jobs for joining the NAACP amongst other things.
When students only see Black people appear in curriculum while being dehumanized, they come to associate Blackness with dehumanization. For Black students, there is the possibility that they internalize this association, but it is important to note that non-Black students may also begin to associate Blackness with dehumanization after seeing this reflected in social studies curricula year after year.
This is why Black joy is a necessity. Black joy is a form of resistance, as finding joy in the midst of oppression and dehumanization is, as Bettina Love has noted, the ultimate form of resistance. Black people have been able to find and create joy amidst some of the worst circumstances the U.S. has ever created, and it is that joy that has sustained Black people through oppression and dehumanization. Although Black joy has been present as long as Black people have been on North America soil, it remains largely absent from K-12 classrooms.
Teaching about and with Black joy requires an understanding of context and nuance. If we are to teach students about Black joy, we must position it as an act of resistance. We don’t want students to think that historical Black actors did not understand the pain of the oppression they endured. They absolutely understood their circumstances and sought joy despite their despair—that is what we need our students to see.
How do we go about this? We begin this work by incorporating Black joy in the curriculum in any place where there is Black pain. Enslaved people found ways to steal away and create joy away from the oppressive gaze of their enslavers. Black people in the Jim Crow South found numerous ways to experience joy in their segregated communities. And even when fighting for freedom, Black people found ways to create some joy for themselves, away from the arms of the state that sought to harm them for believing themselves equal to white people. Including Black joy in the curricular locations where Black pain is centered is a critical starting point.
We need students to understand that Black people are more than vessels of pain. Incorporating Black joy in classrooms helps students, both Black and non-Black understand the full range of Black humanity.
