Solidarity, Resistance, and Liberatory Action: Toward a Black Feminist Citizenship Education Framework

Dominant forms of citizenship education remain tied to anti-Black character education that reinforces the hegemony of racial liberalism and white supremacy. Drawing on the concept of racial literacy, this conceptual paper critiques existing conceptualizations of civic education and constructs a framework for an anti-oppressive citizenship education grounded in Black feminism. Using Black feminist scholarship, this paper explores three pillars of a Black feminist citizenship framework: solidarity, humanizing resistance, and action toward liberation. This framework offers K–12 teachers the opportunity to move away from citizenship education programs that emanate from and perpetuate anti-Blackness and instead allows for citizenship education to be reimagined ideologically and in praxis using a Black feminist epistemology to take civic education to horizons yet unseen.