Black Women in Education

In this chapter, I articulate why I center the institution of education. Although the educational apparatus has been harmful to the mind, body, spirit, and humanity of Black women, we have also used education as a subversive pathway to liberation. Looking at Black hair through the lens of education allows me to frame it as a racial identifier that determines how Black women might exist within the institution. Situating Black hair within the frame of Afro-pessimism (Wilderson, 2016), it becomes clear that the beauty standard is set to uplift white and Eurocentric ideals in the same way education is set up to uplift white centered history and knowledge in an attempt to make us forget who we are. Both are an affront to our minds and bodies, and both only exist in opposition to the natural aura and brilliance of Blackness.