Black Space Matters
The Readers to Leaders program is an intentionally made Black Space. I define Black Space as a site of development and creativity that centralizes the existing strengths of Black and POC students and their varying lived experiences in consideration of social and economic climates perpetuated by white supremacist standards. White supremacist standards are still glaringly perpetuated through IQ tests and other standardized intelligence and performance tests. In the early 1900s, the Stanford-Binet IQ was developed to justify the segregation of POC students and the lack of sufficient education for the. Anthony G. Allen uses his dissertation to examine the history of these tests and quotes Green et al.’s research on the tests. The creator of the Stanford-Binet IQ test “wanted to establish a “gradation of innate ability that could sort all children into their proper stations in life” (Green et al., p. 83). Additionally, he suggested that, because of their poor test performance, Mexicans, Indians, and Negroes should be educated in segregated, special classes focusing on making them resourceful workers. This notion was widely accepted and thus, used as justification for segregated schools for African Americans and other disenfranchised groups deemed innately incapable of becoming educated” (Allen, ).
This type of segregation and exploitation of racially-founded inequity is still seen today as schools such as Westview and C.W. Jeffreys continue to get less resources, insufficient number of teachers for ESL classes, and less funding than TDSB schools where the majority of schools are White. The continuous excuse for these inequities is that the urban students won’t have as much need for more resources which reads that minority students aren’t as “teachable”. The maintained views of teachability within White-dominated society not only centralize and consider their own values and standards when educating students of colour but continue to use these standards to justify deficit models of addressing and teaching BIPOC students (Black, Indigenous, Peoples of Colour).
Readers to Leaders is a type of segregation where only BIPOC students are the majority but rather than perpetuate the systemically-racist models of education, what is introduced is Black Space. Black Space pedagogy is founded in desire-based frameworks which does not gauge intelligence on a standardized scale but locates students’ strengths and builds constructively from where students at. This also considers the years of possible intellectual neglect or oversight by teachers using deficit frameworks to educate.
How to create Black Space can also be used as a mobile pedagogy to be implemented in any BIPOC space to instill confidence in students’ existing knowledge base as well as amplify and build on existing skills. As students begin to strengthen their own knowledge base individually, what is also taught is learning from each other’s strength and knowledge bases or cross-pollination. This counter-educates students around intellectual competition which would be instilled under White-supremacist standards of educating. Black Space from a desire-based perspective centralizes community cultural wealth which “is an array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression” (Yosso, 2006).
Although Readers to Leaders is a program to prep students for the OSSLT standardized test, students are educated within Black Space which gives students a chance to develop knowledge and skills outside of standardized and are taught how to actively resist intellectual violence and marginalization by being introduced to multiple forms of literacy. Allen, A. G. (2010). A critical race theory analysis of the disproportionate representation of blacks and males participating in florida's special education programs (Order No. 3438342). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (845694302). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/845694302?accountid=15182 Tuck, E. (2009), “Suspending damage: A letter to communities,” Harvard Educational Review, 79(3). Yosso, T. (2006). Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth. In A. Dixson & C. Rousseau (Eds.), Critical Race TheoryIn Education (pp. 167-189). New York: Routledge.