ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses from the notion of anti-Black racism as a pervasive and mutable construct in US society. It argues that one of strongest promoters of historically defined anti-Black racism is the American school curriculum. The chapter also discusses two key tenets within Black critical theory for understanding how anti-Blackness manifests in school curriculum. The first is that the construct of Blackness—as sub-human and deviant—coupled with practices of institutional racism are indelible aspects of American society. The second tenet is the idea that African Americans have consistently fought, challenged, and sought to redefine discursive and material realities of Black life. School curriculum is a key site for understanding how anti-Black racism was anchored as a construct of white supremacy. The chapter conceptualizes school curriculum as any text that conveys academic knowledge in a learning environment—whether in textbooks, children’s literature, poems, nursery rhymes, maps, etc. The specific context of schools informs the effectiveness of curricular spaces to reproduce anti-Black racial ideologies.
