AFROFUTURISM & POSSIBILITIES FOR DECOLONIZING THE ACADEMY

Resumo

Historic and contemporary acts of racial oppression has made casual abuse against black and brown bodies more visible, which carry implications for higher education & student affairs. In addition, a Eurocentric lens often dominates pedagogy and curriculum in U.S. higher education. Those who are in the struggle for equity and racial justice need to imagine that liberation is possible. This essay reviews and examines conceptual issues, definitions, and possibilities that center Afrofuturism and racial oppression. Afrofuturism can serve as a medium of techno-culture to explicitly create an anti-racist future that engages the changing relations of speculative fiction, concerns of the Black community, and society as a whole (Anderson & Jones, 2016). Afro-futurism is a channel of science fiction that provides a means for new possibilities free from the restraints of racial oppression for Black life in the academy. Higher education professionals in the West Region of the U.S. will be surveyed surrounding the topics of afro-futurism and racial oppression in higher education. Responses will be analyzed using Indigenous Projects from Smith’s (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies, and the five Promising Practices for Inclusive Excellence (Salazar, Norton, & Tuitt, 2010), a culturally-responsive tool for transforming pedagogical approaches.