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In this article, the authors argue that the racial violence that unfolds against Black youth in various communities seeps into ELA classrooms. They contend educators must begin to reimagine ELA classrooms as revolutionary sites that disrupt racial injustice while striving to transform the world and humanize the lives of Black youth.
America has an intimate relationship with racial violence. To explicate, Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz posits the historical process of European colonization was an act of violence against Black1 bodies, which included the physical and mental abuse that frequently transpired during the slave trade. More importantly, the legacy of racial violence has been ongoing and problematic since that time. The work of Henry Louis Gates and Frantz Fanon delineates the experiences Black youth, men, and women encountered during chattel slavery. As such, the infliction of physical violence such as lynching, police brutality, and state and vigilante violence are common threads that are nicely stitched throughout many historical time periods (e.g., Reconstruction, Peonage, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement). We are in agreement with Cheryl E. Matias that, "although the state of colonization, as framed by Memmi, is above all, economic and political exploitation, it is also a spiritual, emotional, and humanistic exploitation" (165). Therefore, the past and ongoing legacy of racial violence that is wrapped in colonization degrades, dehumanizes, and brings trauma to the hearts and minds of Black people and the generations to follow.
It is a staunchly held myth in American society, in particular public education, that the horrific acts of violence (lynching, rape, etc.) are relegated to the dark annals of history. Therefore, society cannot become comatose to racial incidents from the past; instead, we must understand how America's violent past currently haunts and informs the recent racial attacks against Black bodies (LA Riots, Jena Six, stop-and-frisk, racial profiling, mass incarceration, #SayHerName, and Black Lives Matter Movement, just to name a few). As such, "our work today is evidence of the unfinished status of planetary struggles for equality, justice, and freedom" (Davis 82).
We argue the racial violence that unfolds in various communities seeps into English language arts (ELA) classrooms. To be clear, the physical violence that stems from racial discrimination transpires from the (mis)reading of Black people's bodies. Furthermore, the notions...