Co-making against antiBlackness

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on how Black girls counter the antiBlackness that pervades the culture of STEM/making through their STEM-rich, community-engaged co-making practices. As youth engage each other, their communities, and the world, they make in ways that respond to a critical awareness of the world as it is, and with a desire to agentically author a world that could be. Using participatory critical/relational ethnography and lensed through ideas on antiBlackness and Black feminist inquiry, we documented what, how, and why the girls co-make in their maker clubs. Findings explore how the girls negotiate antiBlackness in STEM and their social worlds through community-engaged co-making. We show how the girls’ co-making involves radically-open margin work stemming from their occupation of the liminal spaces between antiBlackness STEM/community margins, enacted in solidarity with each other and their communities towards desired futures. Implications for supporting justice-seeking cultures of STEM-rich making are offered.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We do not use the name of the 45^th president of the U.S. in solidarity with Nila who specifically asked her maker mentors not to mention his name in her presence, and use #45 or “the Orange Duck.” While she did not name it this way, we view her request as one of shutting down an act of symbolic violence.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #2021587

Notes on contributors

ReAnna S. Roby

ReAnna S. Roby, PhD, is a postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College in the Department of Teaching and Learning with the Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge Program Regional Center of Excellence in Broadening Participation. As a first-generation scholar, Roby’s background as a Black Southern woman in science greatly informs her praxis. Her research has been published in the Journal of Negro Education, Science Education, and Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, among others.

Angela Calabrese Barton

Angela Calabrese Barton, PhD, is a professor in STEM Education and the Learning Sciences in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on issues of equity and justice in STEM education in both school and community settings. She is a Fellow of the American Education Research Association and currently Co-editor of the American Educational Research Journal. Her research has been published in Teachers College Record, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, and Journal of Research in Science Education, among others.

Edna Tan

Edna Tan, PhD, is a professor of Science Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her collaborative research investigates what constitutes equitable and consequential science and engineering learning for historically underrepresented, minoritized youth, including recently resettled refugee youth, across learning contexts and over time. Her research has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Teachers College Record, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Journal of Research in Science Education, and Science Education, among others.

Day Greenberg

Day Greenberg, PhD, is a postdoctoral research Fellow at University of Michigan. Her work focuses on critical participatory STEM and maker research and design with youth, their families, and community organizations. Her research has been published in the Educational Researcher, Teachers College Record, and the Journal of the Learning Sciences, among others.