ABSTRACT
The author aims to challenge how school officials, researchers, policy makers, and society think, talk, write, research, and engage Black boys. Such a shift requires reimagining schools and classrooms where authentic care and equity are central to teaching, learning, and schooling. Guided by reimagining schooling, this chapter is a departure from “subtractive schooling,” a state in which Black boys’ identities are engaged from deficit perspectives in which compliance and stillness are considered acceptable and appropriate. This way of engaging Black boys has become a stubborn practice that tends to circumscribe their experiences in and outside school. Drawing on the (re)imagining of Black boyhood and the anti-deficit achievement frameworks, this chapter disrupts deficits toward humanizing and centering the brilliance and possibilities of Black boys in the early grades (Pre-K-3).
