ABSTRACT
The recent killings of Black people by a predominantly White police force have prompted critical educators in teacher-preparation programs to challenge the dominant narratives in education literature, policy, and practice that pathologize Black students and teachers. This chapter explores how the relevant knowledge and discourses about racial injustice and oppression in teacher preparation inform and impact how Black teacher educators teach about Black life. Drawing from Wynter’s (1994) notion of “no humans involved” and K.D. Brown’s (2013) framing discourses, I propose that the narratives of inevitable struggle, violence, and death related to Black education and life experiences are manufactured into the consciousness of predominantly White teacher-education programs. These images impact the treatment of and responses to not only Black students but also Black teacher-educators. Highlighting the ways by which the author’s Black male body is enclosed by these narratives, he argues for pedagogy of Black educational life as a teaching method and theory for embracing actual being: struggle, resistance, and future instead of a pedagogy centered on Black educational death: imminent failure, violence, and premature death.
