3.1.17: Isn’t She Lovely? Anti-Blackness and the (Im)Possibility of Black Childhoods, a lecture by Michael J. Dumas

Isn’t She Lovely? Antiblackness and the (Im)possibility of Black Childhoods

Michael J. Dumas, Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley

March 1, 2017 4-6 (Start time 4:15)
Swarthmore College, Science Center 101 (Chang Hon Hall)

Stevie Wonder’s (1976) song to his newborn baby girl, Aisha, offers a departure for this discussion on the (im)possibility of Black childhoods in the afterlife of slavery. Given the vicious anti-Black assaults on Black children in schools, at swimming pools, sitting in cars at gas stations, walking home with candy and iced tea, resting in their mothers’ arms, and taking into account the devastating effects of structural material inequities on the lives of Black children, the question “isn’t she lovely?”, which might be said such as to emphasize the negation, “is she not lovely?” invites us to consider what conditions are necessary so that Black children can be lovely, can be loved, and then, necessarily, to identify the ways that antiblackness—the social disregard and disdain of the Black as antihuman–makes such love impossible within the broader social world. Drawing on critical childhood studies and theorization of antiblackness, Dumas will describe Black childhoods as they might be and must be lived in fugitivity, the place not so much of freedom as of possibility. More practically, Dumas offers some thoughts on the deeply impossible work of insisting on Black childhoods in public education.

Michael J. Dumas is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education and the African American Studies Department. He earned a Ph.D. in Urban Education with an emphasis in social and educational policy studies from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research sits at the intersection(s) of the cultural politics of Black education, the cultural political economy of urban education, and the futurity of Black childhood(s).

For questions, please contact: Dr. Joseph Nelson (jnelson2@swarthmore.edu)

Sponsored by Swarthmore:
Department of Educational Studies
Intercultural Center
The Black Studies Program
Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility

Directions:

By car: I-476, exit 3 (Swarthmore/Media)

Continue on E Baltimore Pike. Take Walnut Ln to Whittier Pl (and Elm Ave) in Swarthmore

Parking is available in the DuPont Parking Lot

Train: SEPTA Regional Rail (Media/Elwyn line) stop at Swarthmore Station