Papers by Kenjus Watson
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, May 9, 2024
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Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, May 9, 2024
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Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, May 9, 2024
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Education sciences, Mar 7, 2024
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PloS one, Feb 27, 2024
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PubMed, Mar 1, 2022
As Black people, our everyday existence invites us to remember that anti-blackness is the foundat... more As Black people, our everyday existence invites us to remember that anti-blackness is the foundation of modern civilization and has metastasized throughout every construction of civil society (Sharpe, 2016). Our existence within schools unveils them as self-replicating enclosures spawned by the plantation to undermine Black life (Sojoyner, 2017). In this paper, we use an Apocalyptic Educational framework (Marie & Watson, 2020) to share research on the biological (telomere) impact of schooling and anti-blackness. We aim to distinguish education from schooling and disrupt normative beliefs that more Black children accessing better schools will lead to their social, economic, and physiological wellness.
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Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, May 9, 2024
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Education Sciences, 2024
This paper critically examines American schooling systems, challenges their subtractive nature, a... more This paper critically examines American schooling systems, challenges their subtractive nature, and juxtaposes it with the culturally sustaining potential of education. We problematize the current tools for evaluating trauma and stress in young people of color and emphasize the need for a comprehensive understanding of indigenous medicines as a remedy. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories, we elucidate the pervasive and evolving nature of anti-blackness, reinforcing the sociohistorical structure of inequity within schools. As a response, this study presents a unique wellness survey (comprising two newly validated wellness scales) developed from a previous four-year longitudinal study investigating the relationship between culturally relevant teaching practices and improved health outcomes for children. We found a strong correlation between exposure to our culturally relevant intervention and several health indicators. Particularly, sustained telomere growth (protection of cells) was observed in over 90% of the participants in the intervention group, indicating a potential biological mechanism through which culturally informed interventions might contribute to improved health outcomes. We use these findings to argue that proactive measures centered on cultural and community contexts can serve as crucial protective factors, thereby potentially mitigating negative health outcomes related to racialized stress.
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Journal of Futures Studies, Mar 1, 2022
As Black people, our everyday existence invites us to remember that anti-blackness is the foundat... more As Black people, our everyday existence invites us to remember that anti-blackness is the foundation of modern civilization and has metastasized throughout every construction of civil society (Sharpe, 2016). Our existence within schools unveils them as self-replicating enclosures spawned by the plantation to undermine Black life (Sojoyner, 2017). In this paper, we use an Apocalyptic Educational framework (Marie & Watson, 2020) to share research on the biological (telomere) impact of schooling and anti-blackness. We aim to distinguish education from schooling and disrupt normative beliefs that more Black children accessing better schools will lead to their social, economic, and physiological wellness.
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Nature Computational Science, 2021
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Author(s): Howard, Tyrone C; Woodward, Brian; Navarro, Oscar; Haro, Bianca N; Watson, Kenjus T; H... more Author(s): Howard, Tyrone C; Woodward, Brian; Navarro, Oscar; Haro, Bianca N; Watson, Kenjus T; Huerta, Adrian H; Terry, Clarence L, Sr | Abstract: While the educational plight of Black and Latino males persists as an area of interest, the challenge for scholars is to examine young men of color without reifying a singular narrative. The primary goal of the study was to identify people, programs, and practices within the home, school, and community that have had a positive impact on Black and Latino males in Los Angeles County. The theoretical framework guiding the study was Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth, which is utilized to disrupt deficit based depictions of people of color. The authors sought to recognize the cultural capital possessed by Black and Latino males across six diverse high schools in LA county. There were a total of 201 participants, including: 113 Latinos, 67 Blacks, and 21 mixed male students. Participation in the study was contingent on teacher and or ad...
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Strong, positive racial identification and group status have been linked to psychological health ... more Strong, positive racial identification and group status have been linked to psychological health (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Racial labels significantly influence the social connotations associated with the groups described. Self-naming is one way that Blacks work to gain a positive racial identity. However, racial labeling has inspired conflict, controversy, and confusion. The evolution of endorsement of African, Colored, Negro, Afro-American, Black, African-American, and Nigger/ Nigga has left Blacks wondering, ?What shall we call ourselves?? This study explored patterns of social identification among Blacks to learn a) which social identities are endorsed by group members, 2) whether identities cluster into meaningful dimensions, and 3) how such dimensions relate to age, gender, and one another. Participants were 27 Black individuals from community groups and educational institutions in California. Participants completed a survey assessing endorsement of 39 social categories. A factor analysis produced 6 indexes of racial dimensions: Colorism, Prototypic Power, Historically Significant Naming, Political Resistance, Community Bonds, and Other Social Groups. Results show that Black identity is multidimensional, encompassing political, economic, and religious themes; that Community Bonds and Political Resistance indexes are significantly positively related (p\u3c. 03); that Historically Significant Naming and Prototypic Power are marginally related (p\u3c.08); that the participants ranging in age 24-39 are significantly more likely to identify with labels that denote Political Resistance than participants over 40 (p\u3c.02); and that despite not identifying with labels from other ethnic groups, participants did identity with broad status labels (such as Minority, Person of Color, Underrepresented). Further work will explore the bases of these patterns
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Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2019
Background/Context An ongoing challenge for scholars who examine the educational experiences of y... more Background/Context An ongoing challenge for scholars who examine the educational experiences of young men of color, particularly Black and Latino males, is to illustrate the complex nature of their experiences and to call into question the dichotomous narrative that these students are either successful or unsuccessful. There is a responsibility for scholars to present a balanced, more nuanced analysis and to highlight that, while a significant number of these young men are underperforming compared to their peers from other backgrounds, there are many students who are doing quite well in school. While interrogating the notion of success can be a complex task, one of the concerns in the professional literature has been that the definition is frequently limited to narrow or conventional standards (i.e., high GPA, high test scores, etc.). While these examples of success are indeed important, we maintain that they do not capture the full spectrum of favorable educational and social outco...
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Root Work Journal , 2020
We write, individually and collectively, as Black educators attempting to survive the ravages of ... more We write, individually and collectively, as Black educators attempting to survive the ravages of schooling. Along with a host of Black people, we too believed our schooling was a means toward liberation – a saving grace and way to honor the resilience of our people and their resistance to national investment in their undoing. We conflated our humanization with matriculation in schools. We now recognize the inextricable link between our social death and the function of schools. We have witnessed and experienced the social reproduction of Black death that schools rely upon for national order. As survivors, we lay to rest the schooling project, engaging Christina Sharpe’s (2016) mournful meditation on the Wake to exhume how even critical education work can reinforce the very projects it seeks to fight against. We hold ceremonial space for prospective and veteran educators across the K-20 continuum to re-conceptualize their curricular posture and join us in a final farewell to schools. From Shujaa (1993), we distinguish schooling from education and propose the Root Work of Apocalyptic Education, a meditation, a posture, an epistemological stance rooted in African ancestral ways of knowing (Ani, 1994; Fu- Kiau, 2014) to help us make sense of our loss and usher us into new ways of existing and being beyond the afterlife of schooling.
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Journal of Futures Studies , 2022
As Black people, our everyday existence invites us to remember that anti-blackness is the foundat... more As Black people, our everyday existence invites us to remember that anti-blackness is the foundation of modern civilization and has metastasized throughout every construction of civil society (Sharpe, 2016). Our existence within schools unveils them as self-replicating enclosures spawned by the plantation to undermine Black life (Sojoyner, 2017). In this paper, we use an Apocalyptic Educational framework (Marie & Watson, 2020) to share research on the biological (telomere) impact of schooling and anti-blackness. We aim to distinguish education from schooling and disrupt normative beliefs that more Black children accessing better schools will lead to their social, economic, and physiological wellness.
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Racial microaggressions are a form of systemic racism that (a) are verbal and non-‐verbal assaul... more Racial microaggressions are a form of systemic racism that (a) are verbal and non-‐verbal assaults directed toward People of Color 1 , often carried out automatically or unconsciously; (b) are based on a Person of Color's race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and c) are cumulative, taking a physiological, psychological, and academic toll on those targeted by them (Pérez Huber & Solórzano, 2015a; 2015b). In 2014, college students across the US thrust the concept of racial microaggressions into public discourse with social media campaigns 2 to call attention to the everyday racism Students of Color encountered on their college and university campuses. Racial microaggressions quickly became a term to explain experiences with racism in a " post-‐racial " era. Since then, numerous scholars and columnists have challenged racial microaggressions to argue that this concept attributes to the " coddling " and " hypersensitivity " of U.S. college students that can create a " vindictive protectiveness " that impedes student learning in higher education (Gitlin, 2015; Lukianoff and Haidt, 2015). The characterization of racial microaggressions as " vindictive " illustrates the lack of understanding about the theoretical origins of this concept, developed over 40 years ago by African American psychiatrist, Dr. Chester Pierce. Pierce first coined the term " micro-‐aggression " over 40 years ago in 1970, to describe the " subtle and stunning " forms of racism encountered by People of Color. Pierce explained the " unimaginable magnitude " of racial microaggressions that have " cumulative " and negative effects for People of Color over ones' lifetime. In fact, Pierce used the terms " torture, " " terror, " and " disaster " 3 to describe the dire consequences of the accumulation of everyday racism that frequently target People of Color (Pierce, 1995). Thus, it is quite ironic that racial microaggressions has been misconstrued by some as a form of " vindictive protectiveness " 4 when this concept was theorized to acknowledge the harm everyday racism can cause People of Color—those groups whose rights have been the least protected throughout U.S. history (Takaki, 2008). We extend the original theorizing of racial microaggressions by Dr. Pierce to address the serious consequences of systemic cumulative everyday racism. Macroaggressions is a term some use in order to more accurately align the nomenclature of everyday racism with its detrimental impact on Communities of Color. We strongly support the sentiment behind this renaming and know intimately that there is nothing literally " micro " about these harmful moments. In fact, we do not include the words " brief " or " small " in our definition as Pierce never CCR S at U CL A
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Monographs by Kenjus Watson
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Papers by Kenjus Watson
Monographs by Kenjus Watson