Tacit curriculum of Black intellectual ineptitude: Black girls' perspectives on Texas school desegregation implementation in the 1970s

Abstract

PurposeThis paper uses former Black girl students' experiential knowledge as a lens to examine Black students' experiences with formal and informal curriculum; it looks to the 1970s during Waco Independent School District's desegregation implementation process.Design/methodology/approachGuided by critical race theory, I used historical and oral history methods to address the question: In newly desegregated schools, what does Black females' experiential knowledge of the academic and social curriculum reveal about Black students' experiences within school desegregation implementation process? Specifically, I drew on oral history interviews with former Black girl students, local newspapers, school board minutes, legal correspondence, memoranda, yearbooks, and brochures.FindingsBlack girls' holistic perspectives, which characterized Black students' experiences more generally, indicate Waco Independent School District's implementation of school desegregation promoted a tacit curriculum of Black intellectual ineptitude.OriginalityMy main contribution is the concept of tacit curriculum, which I identified through the lens of former Black girl students, whose experiences spoke to Black students' experiences more widely. It also offers Black females' firsthand perspectives of the school desegregation implementation process in Texas, a perspective, a process, and a place heretofore underexamined in history of education scholarship.

Structural acuity: Black women undergraduate students in cross-racial intergroup dialogues.

“…Not having to consider another group's perspective indicates how the room's crookedness serves those whose identities were centered upon its construction, a group that excluded Black women. Kendraya explained that her anxiety was amplified by her awareness that she must outperform her peers in an attempt to disprove derogatory assumptions about her intellectual ability, which presumed her ineptitude (A. D. James-Gallaway, 2021). Situating these assumptions within the logic of misogynoir (Bailey & Trudy, 2018) enabled Kendraya to not place blame on herself for the failings of her White classmates, whose confusion and surprise are reflective of society's crooked perceptions of Black women.…”

“…Not having to consider another group’s perspective indicates how the room’s crookedness serves those whose identities were centered upon its construction, a group that excluded Black women. Kendraya explained that her anxiety was amplified by her awareness that she must outperform her peers in an attempt to disprove derogatory assumptions about her intellectual ability, which presumed her ineptitude (A. D. James-Gallaway, 2021).…”

“…Instead, many IGD scholars have emphasized that cross-racial IGDs offer numerous benefits to all participants (Aldana et al, 2012;Gurin et al, 2013;Rodríguez et al, 2018;Zúñiga et al, 2012). Examinations of students of color (SOC; Ford & Malaney, 2012), however, have yet to investigate empirically Black women undergraduates as a disaggregated group of IGD participants, a multiply oppressed group with salient insight on social dynamics (A. D. James-Gallaway, 2021;Robnett, 1997).…”

“…This acknowledgement led us to contemplate whether cross-racial IGDs and similar DEI efforts centered on dialogue are an appropriate and ethical setting for Black women. Given the centrality of dialogue to Black feminist thought (Collins, 2000) and that Black women's insights that can clarify mechanisms of social oppression (A. D. James-Gallaway, 2021), we posit that focused consideration of Black women's experiences is necessary to understand the racial and gendered dynamics at play within social justice education.…”

Introducing Curricular and Pedagogical Resuscitation (CPR): A Black Approach to Reviving the Self and Collective through Social Studies

“…The first is how social studies intimately related to Black civic participation ranging from teaching of democratic tenets to strategies of resistance but primarily as a way to accentuate and display Black patriotism (King et al, 2020;Snyder, 2018). Secondly, the mining and cultivation of initial Black history and social studies efforts laid the groundwork for the interdisciplinary field of Black/African American studies thus rejecting inferiority and insignificance of African American past (Hines, 2017;James-Gallaway, 2020). Thirdly, early formations of Black social studies education merged academics to work outside the classroom involving members, organizations, and institutions of the community (King et al, 2020;Snyder, 2018).…”