EMERALD_EDI_EDI601847 736..750


Culturally sustaining pedagogy
in higher education: teaching
so that Black Lives Matter

Courtney E. Cole
Communication Program, School of Business and Communication,

Regis College, Weston, Massachusetts, USA

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how the principles of Black Lives Matter can be used to enact
a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in higher education settings, particularly in small colleges that serve
significant populations of students who are underrepresented in higher education.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on examples from college courses in media and society,
organizational communication, and interpersonal communication, the case study shows application of the
principles of Black Lives Matter in the college classroom at two different institutions in the urban Northeast
USA, where the majority of the students are young people of color and/or first-generation college students.
Findings – The paper shows how founding principles of Black Lives Matter, particularly diversity,
intersectionality, loving engagement, and empathy, can be used to guide concrete pedagogical practices.
It provides examples of how to use Black Lives Matter as a framework to enhance and improve college
teaching to make it more diverse and inclusive.
Research limitations/implications – This case study is based on the author’s experiences teaching at two
majority-minority colleges in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This paper is not the result of a systematic
research study.
Practical implications – This paper has significant implications for how to enact CSP in higher education
settings. This paper is valuable to those looking for specific strategies to include more diverse and inclusive
teaching strategies. This research also shows both the utility and impact of Black Lives Matter when applied
to higher education.
Social implications – This paper improves public understanding of Black Lives Matter as a social
movement.
Originality/value – Since the Black Lives Matter movement is fairly new, there is limited academic research
on it. Further, there has not been attention to how Black Lives Matter provides insight into pedagogy,
particularly in higher education.
Keywords Teaching, Higher education, Organizations, Diversity, Black Lives Matter
Paper type Case study

Introduction
I had barely walked through the classroom door when my students shouted, “Did you see
halftime last night?” “Did you see Bae? She was amazing!” “Why was Coldplay even there?
The night belonged to Beyoncé!” It was the Tuesday after the Super Bowl, and their staccato
questions and comments focused intently on Beyoncé’s halftime show. Viewing the show at
home, through the lens of the students I teach at a small college serving majority-minority
undergraduate students in a large city in the Northeast USA, I was ready for these questions
and comments. Beyoncé is a hero to many of my students. Given the interest, I led a
discussion of her performance briefly that day. We discussed the significance of the outfits
worn by Beyoncé’s dancers, which echoed the Black Panthers. Many students were
unfamiliar with the group’s commitments and activism, so I shared clips from a
documentary about the group (Nelson, 2015). The students made connections between Black
Panthers and earlier class discussions of the Black Lives Matter movement. The topic for
that Media & Society class was the impact of politics on media, so we discussed racialized
and gendered aspects of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson’s 2004 performance in relation
to political regulation of media (Eko, 2016; Billitteri, 2012).

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:
An International Journal
Vol. 36 No. 8, 2017
pp. 736-750
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2040-7149
DOI 10.1108/EDI-01-2017-0005

Received 13 January 2017
Revised 16 May 2017
19 July 2017
Accepted 1 August 2017

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

736

EDI
36,8



This anecdote from my teaching is an example of how I have attempted to enact
culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) through the application of the guiding principles of
Black Lives Matter (Ladson-Billings, 2014; Gay, 2010). This pedagogy is founded upon
affirming the dignity, relevance, and importance of students’ cultures to the process of
learning. I have used the principles of Black Lives Matter as a way to apply this pedagogy
to my teaching in media and communication courses. Black Lives Matter was founded by
Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza in 2013. The movement resists the
endemic racism in our society, highlights the continuing oppression of black people, and
affirms the dignity and resilience of black people (Black Lives Matter, 2016). Because of its
genesis in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin, as well as police killings of
Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, BLM is often viewed as a resistance
movement to police brutality. Further, because the movement began with the hashtag
#blacklivesmatter, many assume that it is an online activist group. While both of these are
important aspects of its roots and ongoing work, Black Lives Matter is now a black
liberation movement with chapters in communities across the USA that work on a range
of issues that affect black people (Taylor, 2016a, b). A particular focus of Black Lives
Matter is “to center those that have been marginalized within Black liberation
movements” (Black Lives Matter, 2016).

Beginning in 2015, student-led activism inspired by Black Lives Matter became an
increasing presence on college campuses (Hartocollis and Bidgood, 2015; Somashekhar, 2015)
and even spread to public school systems (Anderson, 2015). In contrast to this uptick,
I was curious that on my own campuses, in which students of color make up a significant
percentage of the overall student population, there was little engagement with Black Lives
Matter beyond programming for Black History Month. The students did not bring it into their
everyday conversations, on-campus activism, or classroom discussions.

From a faculty perspective, Marcia Chatelain and Frank Leon Roberts led the way in
a small but growing number of Black Lives Matter college courses around the USA.
The movement is also a burgeoning area of academic research (Bailey and Leonard, 2015;
Ransby, 2015; Rickford, 2016; Taylor, 2016a, b). Given the dearth of discussion around
Black Lives Matter on my campus, I began the process of engaging the movement as part
of my pedagogical orientation to teaching at a majority-minority college. Although I was
not sure that it was the proper role for me as a white faculty member, it seemed
increasingly imperative that I incorporate Black Lives Matter – the contemporary struggle
for equality and dignity amongst black people in the USA – into my pedagogical practice.
Doing this was a small but significant way to support underrepresented students in my
classroom teaching.

As an educator, I have always valued learning that is engaged and relevant to my
student’s lives. This means that the classroom should be a place where all people’s
backgrounds are seen as valid to the course subject matter. When I began teaching at more
diverse institutions, I had to consider how to do this more effectively. This led me to
culturally responsive pedagogy, which spoke to the student populations I taught at these
institutions (Gay, 2010). However, I was less clear about what this theory might look like in
practice and how to enact these values. The application of Black Lives Matter guiding
principles has transformed my commitment to culturally responsive pedagogy into teaching
that better reflects equality, diversity, and inclusion and, perhaps more importantly,
prepares students for their future careers and communities. In this paper, I discuss my
experience teaching at two different diverse colleges in which a majority of students are
underrepresented amongst college students more generally. These two institutions have
percentages of black students that are double to triple the national average of black
students, who currently comprise 14.5 percent of all college students in the USA (National
Center for Education Statistics, 2015).

737

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy



Goals and motivation
In this essay, I reflect on the development of my teaching over the last three years, as a white
professor at majority-minority colleges who has sought to make my teaching relevant to my
students’ lives. In reflecting on these experiences, I show the utility of Black Lives Matter
guiding principles in enacting a CSP in the college setting. This reflection is also fueled by
conversations about the importance of white people standing up for racial justice. As Susana
Morris of Crunk Feminist Collective wrote after the 2016 US Presidential election, “White
people – so-called liberal, progressive, radical, dare I say “woke” white people – it’s time for you
to do your motherfucking work. Organize, mobilize, and strategize with and for your people.
Work on uprooting white supremacy at your job, place of worship, and at the Thanksgiving
table” (Morris, 2016a, b). I am a member of several online academic discussion groups where
people of color forthrightly pointed out the needs for white people to educate themselves and
take responsibility for racism so that the burden of the emotional labor of fighting racism does
not also fall on those who are most harmed by racism. As a college professor, one of the most
important places I can do this is in my classroom and on my campus.

Further, this is an attempt to enact allyship for racial justice. Allies are people who fight
oppression by advocating with and for those who are oppressed (Washington and
Evans, 1991). Being an ally requires that members of dominant groups give up their privilege
to ignore race and work to challenge oppressive practices and assumptions (Wildman, 2014).
Interestingly, many campuses that I have worked on have extensive ally training programs to
support and affirm LGBTQ students. However, in my experience, there are no similar
college-wide programs to support students of color. Higher education remains a space of white
privilege, which Black Lives Matter aims to disrupt (Bender, 2017). Thus, allyship in this
context requires, as Morris exhorts, that I do the work to figure out how to be an ally to the
Black Lives Matter movement in my role as a professor.

One of the most impactful ways that I can do this is, first, to create courses that are
founded upon and demonstrate racial equality and inclusion. Second, I can also write about
how movements articulated and built people of color (including culturally relevant and
sustaining pedagogy and Black Lives Matter) can provide guidance. This is not to
co-opt the meaning of these movements, but rather it is my attempt to put them to use through
one of my primary daily contexts – teaching. The idea that people, particularly white people,
might learn from the organizing and leadership of black people, is unfortunately uncommon.
My adoption of Black Lives Matter’s principles as CSP attempts to make this more common.
This essay is about what I have learned from Black Lives Matter and the generative
foundation it has provided to re-construct my pedagogy. The principles of Black Lives Matter,
particularly diversity, intersectionality, loving engagement, and empathy, provide concrete
strategies for more inclusive, effective college teaching.

In short, Black Lives Matter offers a way to constitute a CSP, particularly for and about
those historically marginalized within US institutions of higher education and communication
and media industries. To begin, I survey research on culturally responsive pedagogy, as well
as CSP. In doing so, I consider the way that my location in higher education settings builds
upon and extends theorizing about CSP. I then discuss how guiding principles of Black Lives
Matter offer a way to enact CSP. Next, I explain how I apply this pedagogy in higher
education. I provide examples from different courses to show both obvious and less apparent
ways to shift one’s teaching so that Black Lives Matter. Finally, I close by offering more
general insights about how to enact a CSP based in Black Lives Matter, no matter the
institution in which one works or the disciplines in which one teaches.

Literature review
Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), theorized by Ladson-Billings (1995), includes three
components: academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness.

738

EDI
36,8



The theory has focused mostly on settings in which all or most of the students were
underrepresented minorities (Hefflin, 2002). The vast majority of research in CRP is focused
on application in primary and secondary schools, particularly in urban and minority
neighborhoods (Gay, 2010; Hefflin, 2002; Milner, 2011; Young, 2010). CRP does not separate
academic success from success in social contexts (Ladson-Billings, 1992). Thus, teachers
themselves work to identify and include educational content relevant to students
(Hastie et al., 2006). The focus of CRP is often about lesson planning and making decisions
for students (Young, 2010; Milner, 2011). Another concern is how to bring in culturally
responsive teaching materials within the stringent mandates of required curriculum and
assessment (Hefflin, 2002; Sleeter, 2012).

As a pedagogical framework, CRP aims to preserve students’ cultures and counter
negative effects of mainstream messages about those cultures (Ladson-Billings, 1992).
The goal is to empower students “with knowledge and practices to operate successfully in
mainstream society” (Osborne, 1996, p. 292). In order to sustain students who come from
backgrounds very different than a teacher’s own, engaging students’ cultural capital is
central (Goldenberg, 2013). CRP is an invitation to re-vision teaching practices to better align
with students (Lopez, 2011). In critically assessing CRP, there is a danger that teachers may
inadvertently use “stereotyped ideas about how and what […] [students] should learn”
(Dutro et al., 2008, p. 37). Even with preparation and knowledge, teachers cannot predict how
and whether students will relate to the material. Therefore, developing teachers’ cultural
competence is important rather than solely focusing on students’ cultural competence
(Milner, 2011). The practice of CRP requires critical reflection by the educator to examine
assumptions and biases.

A perhaps less prominent part of this theory is to challenge racism and other issues of
social injustice (Young, 2010). Ladson-Billings (2014) expressed dismay that this critical,
activist aspect of CRP has not been as widely adopted. This means engaging students to
examine issues that affect their lives and communities. Using the pedagogy to create
sociopolitical consciousness “allows them to critique the cultural norms, values, mores, and
institutions that produce and maintain social inequities” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 162).
Students engage the relationship between dominant cultures and the cultural groups of
which they are a part (Hyland, 2009), which can help them to identify and respond to
inequities in their local communities and the larger culture (Milner, 2011).

Building on this, Paris (2012) calls for a CSP. This shift emphasizes cultural pluralism
and equality as specific pedagogical goals, resisting political and educational practices that
emphasize uniformity and homogenization. Thus, teaching should not just relate to
students’ diversity but “support young people in sustaining the cultural and linguistic
competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural
competence” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). As recognized by the scholars of CRP, this sustenance
supports both traditional, evolving, and hybrid forms of cultural expression, whether
mainstream or marginal, which should be the foundation upon which effective teaching is
built (Au, 2011; Paris and Alim, 2014). This relates to concern, discussed earlier, about not
relying on stereotypes in an effort to acknowledge culture in the classroom.

The original motivation of CRP was to improve student learning and achievement in schools.
Since minority students continue to be underrepresented and underperform than their white
counterparts in college contexts, this goal is equally relevant to higher education. Overall, black
students earn only 10 percent of college degrees in the USA (Naylor et al., 2015). Hurtado and
Ruiz (2012) demonstrated that the underrepresentation of students of color creates a negative
campus climate for them. Their research shows that underrepresented minorities report higher
rates of both overt and subtle bias and discrimination, even at institutions that are not
predominantly white (Hurtado and Ruiz, 2015). This translates into negative learning
environment and retention. The authors argue, “Race still matters, and students need

739

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy



opportunities to learn about and experience diversity in college if higher education is to advance
the social progress of diverse communities and produce diverse leaders for the nation” (p. 4).

Further, black undergraduates face structural issues of endemic racism, which often
translates into a curriculum that does not relate to them and does not support their success
on campus (Harper et al., 2016). This undermines their persistence to graduation and overall
academic achievement on college campuses. Given this racial inequality in terms of
retention, graduate rates, and academic achievement, it is imperative that professors do
more to support the success of black students. Further, while academic achievement is
important in college, my goal as a professor is to prepare students for their workplaces and
communities. Therefore, it is important to help students understand their future careers and
communities, while also preparing them to both contribute to and change them to be more
diverse and inclusive. A CSP is perfectly suited to this.

Another important difference in applying CSP at the college level is control over
curriculum. I have greater latitude to choose the materials I include in my courses, as well as
the ability to change them in response to current events or student interest. A CSP in college
understands learning as a co-constructed process between students and professor as
co-learners. One way of enacting CSP is “centering culture and difference in the teaching
process” (Gay, 2013, pp. 48-49). In my teaching, this means that I address the complex
contexts in which media and communication are created, including political and economic
influences, as well as the implications for people’s identities. In addition, I highlight the
extent to which communication, including media, is a part of dominant culture, reflecting
white, upper middle class, masculine, heterosexual identities and values. Further, CSP offers
the opportunity to have students identify how they respond to a particular text.
Thus, I work to have students (and myself) articulate how their backgrounds and
experiences – which often differ from those who created and/or are represented in the texts
we are discussing – relate to their interpretations of these texts and their approach to
creating media and crafting communication themselves.

One criticism of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy is the difficulty in
applying it (Young, 2010). Although the theoretical commitments of the pedagogy are
clear, it is less clear what they actually look like in terms of concrete teaching practices.
For the answer, I looked to the burgeoning movement for black dignity and autonomy,
Black Lives Matter. In translating the theoretical commitments of CSP into the concrete
context of college classes in media and communication, I have adopted the principles of
Black Lives Matter, as articulated on the group’s website (Black Lives Matter, 2016), as a
way to enact CSP. These principles, formulated by the movement in 2016, are diversity,
globalism, restorative justice, unapologetically black, collective value, transgender
affirms, black women, black villages, empathy, black families, living engagement, queer
affirming, and intergenerational.

Culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy began as a movement to center the
backgrounds of minority students in a school system that generally treats their identities as
irrelevant, if not inimical, to formal education. In expanding this pedagogy to higher
education, we must reconfigure understanding of CSP as not just adding on to existing
curriculum but requiring a radical commitment to pedagogy that is culturally sustaining, no
matter the identities of students in our classrooms. Positioning Black Lives Matter as a
tangible way to enact CSP has transformed my teaching. In using Black Lives Matter to
inform my curriculum and classroom teaching, the movement’s principles of diversity,
loving engagement, empathy, and commitment to intersectionality help guide how
I construct my courses and work with my students in the classroom. In essence, these are
concrete principles through which I strive to enact a culturally relevant, sustaining
pedagogy as a college professor. In the next section, I discuss what this looks like with
specific examples from my teaching.

740

EDI
36,8



Black Lives Matter as CSP in college teaching
Diversity
According to Black Lives Matter, the principle of diversity is stated as “We are committed to
acknowledging, respecting and celebrating difference(s) and commonalities” (Black Lives
Matter, 2016). In translating this principle into a CSP, I have diversified perspectives and
ideas that I engage with on a daily basis. This reflects the importance, within culturally
relevant and sustaining pedagogy, of teachers working to develop their own cultural
competence. Black Lives Matter’s focus on diversity has affected my teaching through a
broadening and deepening of media I consume regularly. I have worked to seek out media
written by and about black people, other people of color, as well as people with different
religions, ethnicities, social classes, sexualities, and gender identities. My intent is not only
to improve my understanding of experiences and perspectives different from my own but
also as an important way of preparing courses that are culturally relevant. I regularly read
and interact with writers from The Root, Crunk Feminist Collective, and Africa is a Country,
as well as people of color in mainstream publications. By diversifying who I follow on
Twitter to reflect diverse races and ethnicities, I aim to enact the Black Lives Matter’s
principle of diversity, which is evident in my curriculum choices.

BLM’s guiding principle of diversity was a clarion call to radically transform standard
course content and existing curriculum templates. I no longer looked to what colleagues were
doing or materials shared with me in graduate school. I moved beyond prepared textbooks
and instructional materials. Rather, I looked to my students as the starting point for course
development. I considered their situations as fully and completely as I could, and I developed
my courses from there. As I widened my consumption of diverse perspectives and consciously
included the work of women and scholars of color, I also built in student engagement and
participation as fundamental to my courses. I did a lot of work before the semester to find and
organize content that reflected diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, geographic
location, sexuality, gender identity, and class. This effort paid off as students came to see
themselves – and people like them – represented in their college curriculum.

My 100-level Media and Society is a standard course that addresses industries,
audiences, and effects. Nonetheless, the exemplars we engage in that class reflect a broad,
deep commitment to diversity as articulated in the Black Lives Matter platform. We begin
the course with an article that examines the role of social media in #BlackLivesMatter’s
creation and ongoing work (Stephen, 2015). Rather than a standard overview of course
content and the first textbook chapter, this article serves as an interruption rather
than introduction to mainstream curriculum. In my upper-division Organizational
Communication course, Black Lives Matter also serves as a case study for organizing for
social change. While Black Lives Matter is a well-known hashtag, students are often
unfamiliar with its organizational culture and strategy. Thus, for homework, I assign my
students to read and listen to interviews with the movement’s founders (Garza, 2014;
Shapiro, 2016), talks by leaders of the movement (Taylor, 2016a, b), as well as the website of
the movement itself (Black Lives Matter, 2016). In a short writing assignment, and then class
discussion, I ask students to connect the movement to important concepts in organizational
communication such as identification, culture, and leadership. In my experience, students
are particularly engaged to see how these issues manifest in a less typical organization that
is focused on social change rather than corporate profits. Further, this focus also allows
students to make connections between the values of Black Lives Matter and the way that
these are enacted in the organizing of the movement itself.

Making Black Lives Matter an object of study does two important things in the
classroom. First, it de-centers organizational communication as a managerial discourse that
is racist, sexist, xenophobic, and heterosexist. Second, it centers Black Lives Matter as an
important exemplar of organizing for social change. As a result, for black and non-black

741

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy



students alike, this case study takes the experiences, and resulting organizing, of black
people seriously as something from which we can learn and which is applicable to
movement building in other contexts. This, again, demonstrates a culturally sustaining way
of teaching organizational communication through the principles of Black Lives Matter.

The BLM principle of diversity enacts CSP in college courses in three distinctive ways.
First, it ensures that non-white and other non-dominant media texts and mediamakers are at
the heart of our study of media and communication. This means that students will discuss
work about, and made by, as wide a variety of different kinds of people as possible, some of
whom look like them. Also, this approach is committed to the representation of issues and
experiences beyond those of importance or interest to white, male-dominated, upper class,
heterosexual, cisgender media institutions and leaders. In other words, the experiences of
my students matter, and I work hard to find media that engages and addresses their
experiences. Finally, a true commitment to diversity, as articulated in the Black Lives Matter
platform, requires not simply more balance and representation in terms of what is included
on the syllabus, but also the syllabus must work to help the students understand and
articulate the contributions of those considered marginal as important and valuable for all
people. Issues of importance to so-called minority people and communities have insights and
information important to all communities, and therefore deserve a place in mainstream
media and communication courses.

Another easy, and perhaps obvious, way to enact a CSP is to make students’ diverse
experiences and identities central to learning in the course. In my Media and Society and
Interpersonal Communication classes, I do this by having students contribute to the media
texts we use in my courses. For both of these classes, students select media texts through
which to apply their burgeoning knowledge in the course. For ease of analysis, students
usually choose an advertisement, music video, episode of a television show, or scene from a
feature film. This allows students to select a media text that they relate to and to provide
serious analysis of its themes and apply relevant theorizing about media or interpersonal
communication. This also flips the normal relationship between student and teacher
regarding course content. When I share this assignment with students, I tell them that those
who make the best case for their text – both its value as a media text or in illuminating
interpersonal communication and their ability to connect their chosen text substantively
through application of course concepts – will likely have their texts included in future
iterations of the course. I discuss this further below.

In the last year, some examples of student work included music videos such as “If I Were
a Boy” by Beyoncé and Lupe Fiasco’s “Bad Bitch.” In terms of television shows, students
analyzed episodes of Power, Orange is the New Black, Master of None, and Basketball Wives.
Students have also analyzed scenes from Furious 7, Straight Outta Compton, Zootopia, and
12 Years a Slave. These media texts reflect Black Lives Matter’s commitment to the
centrality of black lives and experiences. In presenting these texts to the class, many
students discussed both the importance of seeing people like themselves, their family
members, and their friends as central to their selection of the text, as well as how these texts
reflected and resonated with their own experiences of growing up black and/or in diverse
neighborhoods. In some cases, students did not connect or agree with the representations in
the media text. In either case, this provided the opportunity for class discussion about whose
experiences are included in mainstream media, how, and why. In order to show the
importance of representing the complex diversity of lives and experiences – especially black
lives – I push students to reflect on how their identities are shaped by the media available to
and about them.

Although these were not media texts I would have selected for analysis, they provide as
good or better illumination of course themes. In addition to empowering students’ critical
consumption of media texts and application skills, this assignment also provides a diverse

742

EDI
36,8



selection of texts to use in future teaching. From a CSP perspective, this values my students’
insights about media and communication and application of course concepts. The texts they
choose then become part of the mainstream curriculum we discuss in subsequent courses.
This assignment, and the discussions that stem from it, intervenes in a media landscape
that often serves to diminish or distort the value of black lives through representations that
marginalize or oppress. This provides the opportunity for students and teacher to disrupt
this tendency somewhat, affirm the contributions of black lives to the media landscape, and
underscore the importance of diverse representations.

Enacting diversity also means seeking out and sharing media texts with which they may
not be familiar. Most of my students are from in or around Boston. Thus, media
representations of Boston are a point of discussion. Movies like Mystic River, The Town, and
Black Mass focus on Irish-American communities in Boston, mostly in relation to mob activity.
These representations ignore the large and vibrant communities of color around Boston.
In order to remedy this, I introduced my students to a web series, Pineapple Diaries, that
focuses on a young Dominican-American woman living in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of
Boston and how she negotiates family, friends, and daily life. This was not a show that any
of my students had heard of, but for many of them it resonated with their sense of self and
place. In addition, I included clips from the television shows Fresh off the Boat, Blackish,
Transparent, and the movie Moonlight to introduce them to perspectives and characters to
which they may relate and to provide diverse representations to contemplate.

Intersectionality
While diversity is important, it also requires attention to how issues of difference intersect.
A second way that Black Lives Matter’s principles can be used to enact CSP is through its
commitment to intersectionality. Originally articulated by Crenshaw (1991), intersectionality
acknowledges that systems of domination and subjugation by race, ethnicity, nationality,
gender, sexuality, and religion are connected. Although not a specific guiding principle of
Black Lives Matter, taken together, many of the movement’s guiding principles –
unapologetically black, queer affirming, black families, black women, transgender affirming,
intergenerational – reflect an understanding of racial justice and uplift as intimately
connected with other aspects of identity and the political movements for black liberation
(Taylor, 2016a, b). The movement’s founders articulate an approach to understanding the
struggle for the dignity of black lives as interconnected with gender, sexuality, religion, class,
and other identity markers (Chatelain and Asoka, 2015). I use this intersectional approach in
crafting CSP for the college classroom.

Because the BLM platform is inherently intersectional – highlighting gender, sexuality,
dis/ability, age, and class – it thus offers the opportunity to talk about issues in complex,
interconnected ways. In the case of “Formation,” we used an intersectional approach to
examine how identities overlap in Beyoncé and her media. Students worked in small groups to
identify how issues of race and ethnicity, gender, national identity, economics and class, and
marriage and family were represented within the video and performance of “Formation.”
They then brought their insights to the whole class. Their discussion focused not only on her
critical messages about black nationalism, policing, and brutality against people of color, the
students were also able to articulate that the reasons for Beyoncé’s success were likely not,
or not only, because of her black womanist message. Her relationship with Jay Z and her body
both conform to social norms associated with able-bodied femininity. So, even as her message
in “Formation” supports a black nationalism, it does so in a form of conventional
heterosexuality and gender identity.

The relationship between Beyoncé’s music and capitalist commerce was another
important aspect of our unpacking of the Formation video and performance. The Super
Bowl performance, in particular, was part of the Pepsi halftime show, a company with which

743

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy



Beyoncé has a $50-million contract. Further, Formation was a surprise release available for
download exclusively on Tidal, an online music platform founded by Jay Z and co-owned by
Beyoncé. Beyond monthly subscriptions in order to listen to the artist-owned platform,
the platform offers access to tickets and merchandise. Beyoncé’s tours are a worldwide
phenomenon, the most recent of which was 108 shows that grossed more than a million
dollars per show. The case of Beyoncé is a compelling one for my students. She is
unabashedly a huge role model and economic force. She is successful, and her success is due
in part to her cisgender, heterosexual identity. At the same time, she is – in the terms of
Black Lives Matter – unapologetically black. Thus, “In affirming that Black Lives Matter,
we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a
necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others” (Black Lives Matter, 2016). In the
case of Beyoncé, we discussed how her transgressive and progressive message –
particularly in the face of white supremacism – is possible in part because of her self-
representation as straight and feminine. Because of her mainstream sexuality and gender
identities, she is able to push the envelope in terms of race and representation.

Loving engagement and empathy
The principles of diversity and the intersectionality of Black Lives Matter’s platform provide
important focus for my preparation for classes. In terms of the daily work of teaching, CSP
and the principles of Black Lives Matter have also made me committed to spontaneous and
critical engagement with the world outside of the classroom. Two principles from Black Lives
Matter are essential here – loving engagement and empathy. Black Lives Matter (2016) defines
loving engagement saying, “We are committed to embodying and practicing justice, liberation,
and peace in our engagements with one another.” In terms of empathy, the guiding principle of
Black Lives Matter (2016) states, “We are committed to practicing empathy; we engage
comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.”

This approach to teaching treats the classroom as a “beloved community” that aims to
enable and empower all members. The students’ presentation and analysis of media texts,
discussed in the previous section, provides opportunity to build this beloved community
through loving engagement and empathy. Because of the critical nature of the course
content, as well as its place in the curriculum as an introductory course, the media and
society course is one where students tend to develop critical approaches to the consumption
of media texts for the first time. Because of this, they are often both quite critical of and
disheartened by the lack of representation of diverse experiences and identities in the media.
In their analysis of media texts, as well as class discussion of them, I aim to help them
identify the ways in which media texts such as Power, Basketball Wives, and Straight Outta
Compton provide both important representations of black lives as well as stereotypical and
problematic representations of black experiences. This also includes discussion of why
these texts are popular amongst black people and in US society more generally. We discuss
how no media text represents people and their experiences perfectly, and that being able to
identify what is powerful and problematic about these texts is an important media literacy
skill. Earlier in the course, we also discuss the barriers people of color face in participating in
and controlling the creation of media, which I then bring to discussion of how this impacts
the representations we see in the student-selected media texts. Thus, I try to temper
students’ critical impulse with compassion for those attempting to represent black lives and
experiences in an industry that is often hostile or ambivalent to such diversity.

In order to develop my classroom as a beloved community, I design assignments that
encourage students to see one another as valuable collaborators who can help each other
improve their work. For example, I have Media and Society students present initial analyses
of their media texts before the final paper is due. Thus, the presentations are of their work in
progress. This makes the presentations valuable to the presenter, who gets ideas and

744

EDI
36,8



feedback for the analysis. It also makes the audience an integral part of the presentation, as
they are called upon to provide constructive, specific input to help students develop their
analyses. In preparing students for this assignment, we spend time talking about how texts
have many meanings and readings, and that we can create better work by incorporating
diverse perspectives into our analyses. This reflects Black Lives Matters’ commitment to
diversity. Drawing on BLM principles of loving engagement and empathy, we discuss both
the vulnerability and importance of sharing ideas orally, as well as the difficulty of hearing
ideas with which we may disagree. We also discuss the importance of offering feedback in a
way that affirms and humanizes. This frames the presentations as important moments of
professional growth, both in terms of doing something that may be difficult and also
providing useful, effective feedback.

I have also become more comfortable with letting the class help to dictate what we spend
time on and how we proceed in the course. An example of loving engagement as
pedagogical flexibility, as I discussed in the opening paragraph, was responding to intense
student interest in Beyoncé’s Formation. Because of this and the cultural controversy it
created, I integrated study of it later in the course. Students were assigned to view
Formation, the halftime show, and read articles about its impact on black storytelling
(McFadden, 2016; King, 2016). One student watching on a computer in the college’s learning
commons was told to turn it off since it was not related to school. It was with no small
amount of self-righteousness and indignation that she said, “This is my homework. I am
watching this for class.” When the student recounted the story to us at our next class
meeting, I could see and hear the pride she felt at being able to devote serious time and
attention to the study of Beyoncé and the messages she created about black womanhood.
This pride was the direct result of treating student interest, experiences, and context with
loving engagement.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, my commitment to CSP and its
application through the BLM guiding principles of empathy became even more urgent.
In the semester following Trump’s election, and the week of his inauguration, I began
teaching an interpersonal communication course. Interpersonal communication is often
taught in an apolitical manner and emphasizes romantic and family communication. Yet, it
was impossible for me to ignore the larger political environment in which I was teaching.
The guiding principle of empathy requires attention to others and their contexts
(Black Lives Matter, 2016). Thus, approaching this course through the lens of CSP, it was
important and even imperative to enact this empathy. I realized that my teaching has been
ineluctably changed through my commitment to CSP and application of BLM principles. It
was no longer an add-on to enhance my teaching, but rather an integrated commitment (of
course imperfect and always ongoing) to centering experiences other than my own within
my teaching, in order to reflect and enhance diversity in my courses.

From a pedagogical perspective, this means always pursuing justice, liberation, and
peace as goals of my teaching. As I worked to craft an assignment to synthesize the first
unit of the interpersonal communication course, including foundational concepts such as
self-concept and self-esteem, perception of others, and diversity, I knew that I had to
address the difficulty of post-election interpersonal conversations. I wondered, what does
it mean to have caring, thoughtful interpersonal conversations with one another after this
divisive election? How can we use the skills provided by an interpersonal communication
to engage this personally difficult political context in which we find ourselves? I realized
that this is an important way to make interpersonal communication – a course that can
become myopic and self-absorbed if one is not pedagogically careful – align with CSP,
particularly Black Lives Matter’s principles of loving engagement and empathy. Although
not necessarily the most obvious fit, I viewed this course as another opportunity to enact a
CSP through the application of Black Lives Matter founding principles. These two

745

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy



principle of loving engagement and empathy led me to create an assignment that
contextualizes interpersonal communication foundations, and thus the course itself, as
relevant to the political moment.

Conclusion
In the previous section, I provide examples of using Black Lives Matter to enact CSP in my
college teaching. I critically engage in teaching so that students with marginalized identities
see themselves, their experiences, and their futures as central to the study and practice of
media and communication. I make an explicit effort to engage issues of identity in courses
that, in their titles and descriptions, do not focus on diversity, equality, and inclusion.
I applaud courses focused solely on Black Lives Matter, as well as area and ethnic studies
courses, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and disability studies courses, which provide
focused spaces to learn about diversity and identity. However, attention to diversity and
identity must not be relegated only to these specialty courses, which students may
inadvertently or purposefully think are not relevant to them. Thus, a CSP approach is
important in general education and major courses in primary, secondary, and post-secondary
contexts that do not, on their face, necessarily require such attention.

A foundation of many media and communication classes is that forms of shared meaning
(whether mediated, interpersonal, or organizational communication) do not necessarily reflect
reality. From the perspective of Black Lives Matter, in my classes, they learn how media tend to
distort our perceptions through mistaken and mendacious representations of black people
(Brooks and Hébert, 2006; Taylor, 2016a, b). As such, it is important for students, no matter
their background, to consider ways to make media and communication reflect the realities of,
and be responsive to, people and experiences outside of dominant groups. While the examples I
include here are focused on media and communication, the articulation of CSP through
application of the principles of Black Lives Matter has great relevance beyond these disciplines.

Nearly all college courses, whether in the liberal arts or in professional programs, can be
approached through the lens of CSP. The examples that I have provided here are not expensive
or difficult and do not require specialized training. Faculty members have the opportunity to
cultivate CSP to prepare students to work and live in communities that are diverse and to
flourish and help others flourish in such settings. For example, a class in biology, from the
perspective of CSP and the principles of Black Lives Matter, could engage the way that medical
care routinely marginalizes black people, through not attending to their pain, not addressing
diseases that disproportionately affect black people, and other issues of racism in medicine. In a
philosophy class, classes in ethics or epistemology offer the opportunity to consider how
canonical thinkers ignore and/or subjugate the dignity of black people and their experiences.
Whether in biology or philosophy, just as in communication, it is both essential and easy to give
students the opportunity to consider how universal perspectives often reflect the point of view of
white, cisgender, upper middle class, straight men. Further, as with communication, classes in
biology and philosophy can also integrate more diverse perspectives through the inclusion of
black authors in course readings. I hope that future work will articulate how a CSP, through the
principles of Black Lives Matter, can be enacted in other disciplines.

CSP is obviously important in higher education institutions where a majority of students
belong to groups that are underrepresented on college campuses. However, this approach
is also important in predominantly white institutions (PWIs). The fact that an institution is
predominantly white does not change the fact that the world, and the USA, is increasingly
diverse and therefore students need to engage with and be prepared to understand this
diversity. The problem that professors using CSP in predominantly white institutions may
face is the mistaken perception that such content is not relevant to white people and also
that it represents a political and ideological pedagogy. (Of course, all pedagogy is political
and ideological, but pedagogy that aligns with existing power structures is more likely, and

746

EDI
36,8



mistakenly, to be viewed as apolitical and neutral.) In such institutions, it will be more
difficult to work with students to reflect and create the diversity that CSP entails. Though
not the focus of my work here, future scholarship should consider how best to apply CSP in
such settings. Nonetheless, it is critical that faculty members and students at PWIs reckon
with the contributions of non-dominant groups and they challenges they face.

In addition, it is important to consider how the lessons of CSP and Black Lives Matter’s
principles might also be relevant beyond the classroom, whether college or K-12. The insights
that I have shared here also provide the opportunity to consider how we might create
organizations that better reflect and respond to the realities of black people and their
experiences. A culturally sustaining approach, through the application of Black Lives Matter’s
principles, offers a new way to consider possibilities for radical revisioning of work, government,
community, and other contexts through application of diversity, intersectionality, empathy, and
loving engagement, as discussed in this manuscript in the context of the college classroom.

Finally, although inspired and guided by the principles of Black Lives Matter, the
examples and insights I share here are not only about black lives. The principles respond to
how those with identities that fall outside dominant groups are devalued and erased from
institutions of cultural and political power. Although not the focus of this paper, the
application of CSP through the application of Black Lives Matter’s principles has also
allowed me to teach non-black students, whose identities are marginal within higher
education, more effectively. The principles discussed here speak to those who do not speak
English as a first language, who have a disability, who are the first in their family to go to
college, who are immigrants, and those who are gay, lesbian, and transgender. Further,
because many of my students fit into more than one of these categories, the principles of
diversity and intersectionality are particularly important in terms of practicing a pedagogy
that acknowledges and celebrates their identities.

A recent interview with the award-winning director of the music video Formation and
the television show Insecure, two important texts representing women of color in 2016,
asked Melina Matsoukas, about her goals in her work. She responded, “to change the world,
you know? To really make the voices that we don’t get to hear heard, and the images and the
stories that we don’t get to see seen. I would like to normalize that” (Morris, 2016a, b).
The statement was startling to me because it so closely resonates with why I choose to teach
and, especially, why I am committed to enacting CSP through the application of Black Lives
Matter’s principles. The teaching that I do attempts to change the world by normalizing
those considered marginal to the study and practice of communication and media.

In the last three years, Black Lives Matter has become an increasingly powerful force in
my teaching, as I have attempted to enact in CSP in a higher education setting with large
numbers of students who identify as marginal in terms of class, gender identity, ethnicity,
sexuality, and/or race. Black Lives Matter’s principles serve as important inspiration for the
texts I choose, the discussions I facilitate, the assignments I give to my students, and
the media and scholarship that I consume. This led me to create courses that are more
diverse and inclusive and that help students to live and work in diverse contexts. While my
journey to teach so that Black Lives Matter is ongoing and imperfect, the principles of the
movement provide trenchant guidance to enact CSP.

References

Anderson, M.D. (2015), “The other students activists”, The Atlantic, November 23, available at: www.
theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/student-activism-history-injustice/417129/ (accessed
May 5, 2017).

Au, K.H. (2011), Literacy Achievement and Diversity: Keys to Success for Students, Teachers, and
Schools, Multicultural Education Series, Teachers College Press, New York, NY.

747

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy

www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/student-activism-history-injustice/417129/
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/student-activism-history-injustice/417129/


Bailey, J. and Leonard, D.J. (2015), “Black Lives Matter: post-nihilistic freedom dreams”, Journal of
Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 5 Nos 3/4, pp. 67-77.

Bender, M. (2017), “Black Lives Matter”, Critical Education, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 11-16.

Billitteri, T.J. (2012), “Indecency on television”, CQ Researcher, Vol. 22 No. 40, pp. 965-988.

Black Lives Matter (2016), “Guiding principles”, available at: blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles
(accessed May 12, 2016).

Brooks, D.E. and Hébert, L.P. (2006), “Gender, race, and media representation”, in Dow, B.J. and Wood, J.T.
(Eds), Handbook of Gender and Communication, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 297-317.

Chatelain, M. and Asoka, K. (2015), “Women and Black Lives Matter”, Dissent, Vol. 62 No. 3, pp. 54-61.

Crenshaw, K. (1991), “Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against
women of color”, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43 No. 6, pp. 1241-1299.

Dutro, E., Kazemi, E., Balf, R. and Lin, Y.S. (2008), “ ‘What are you and where are you from?’
Race, identity, and the vicissitudes of cultural relevance”, Urban Education, Vol. 43 No. 3,
pp. 269-300.

Eko, L. (2016), The Regulation of Sex-Themed Visual Imagery, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY.

Garza, A. (2014), “A herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter movement”, The Feminist Wire, October 7,
available at: www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/ (accessed March 8, 2016).

Gay, G. (2010), Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, Teachers College Press,
New York, NY.

Gay, G. (2013), “Teaching to and through cultural diversity”, Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 43 No. 1,
pp. 48-70.

Goldenberg, B.M. (2013), “White teachers in urban classrooms: embracing non-white students’ cultural
capital for better teaching and learning”, Urban Education, Vol. 49 No. 1, pp. 111-144.

Harper, S.R., Smith, E.J. and Davis, C.H. III (2016), “A critical race case analysis of black undergraduate
student success at an urban university”, Urban Education, pp. 1-23.

Hartocollis, A. and Bidgood, J. (2015), “Racial discrimination protests ignite at colleges across the US”,
The New York Times, November 11, available at: www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/racial-
discrimination-protests-ignite-at-colleges-across-the-us.html (accessed May 5, 2017).

Hastie, P.A., Martin, E. and Buchanan, A.M. (2006), “Stepping out of the norm: an examination of praxis
for a culturally-relevant pedagogy for African-American children”, Journal of Curriculum
Studies, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 293-306.

Hefflin, B.R. (2002), “Learning to develop culturally relevant pedagogy: a lesson about cornrowed
lives”, The Urban Review, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 231-250.

Hurtado, S. and Ruiz, A. (2012), The Climate for Underrepresented Groups and Diversity on Campus,
Higher Education Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA.

Hurtado, S. and Ruiz, A.A. (2015), Discrimination and Bias, Underrepresentation, and Sense of
Belonging on Campus, Higher Education Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA.

Hyland, N.E. (2009), “One white teacher’s struggle for culturally relevant pedagogy: the problem of the
community”, The New Educator, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 95-112.

King, J. (2016), “With two performances, Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar change black storytelling forever”,
February 16, available at: https://mic.com/articles/135348/with-two-performances-beyonc-and-
kendrick-lamar-changed-black-storytelling-forever#.FIx2xiIVo (accessed February 20, 2016).

Ladson-Billings, G. (1992), “Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: a culturally relevant
approach to literacy teaching”, Theory Into Practice, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 312-320.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995), “Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy”, American Educational
Research Journal, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 465-491.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2014), “Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a/k/a the remix”, Harvard Educational
Review, Vol. 84 No. 1, pp. 74-84.

748

EDI
36,8

www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/
www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/racial-discrimination-protests-ignite-at-colleges-across-the-us.html
www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/racial-discrimination-protests-ignite-at-colleges-across-the-us.html
https://mic.com/articles/135348/with-two-performances-beyonc-and-kendrick-lamar-changed-black-storytelling-forever#.FIx2xiIVo
https://mic.com/articles/135348/with-two-performances-beyonc-and-kendrick-lamar-changed-black-storytelling-forever#.FIx2xiIVo


Lopez, A.E. (2011), “Culturally relevant pedagogy and critical literacy in diverse English classrooms:
a case study of a secondary English teacher’s activism and agency”, English Teaching, Vol. 10
No. 4, pp. 75-93.

McFadden, S. (2016), “Beyonce’s Formation reclaims America’s narrative from the margins”, February 8,
available at: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/08/beyonce-formation-black-american-
narrative-the-margins (accessed February 20, 2016).

Milner, H.R. IV (2011), “Culturally relevant pedagogy in a diverse urban classroom”, The Urban Review,
Vol. 43 No. 1, pp. 66-89.

Morris, M. (2016a), “Get your people”, November 9, available at: www.crunkfeministcollective.com/20
16/11/09/get-your-people/ (accessed November 10, 2016).

Morris, W. (2016b), “Melina Matsoukas touched nerves from behind the camera”, available at: www.
nytimes.com/2016/12/28/arts/music/melina-matsoukas-beyonce-formation-interview.html
(accessed December 29, 2016).

National Center for Education Statistics (2015), “Percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in degree-
granting postsecondary institutions, by level of institution and sex and race/ethnicity of student:
1970 through 2014”, available at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.60.
asp (accessed May 11, 2017).

Naylor, L.A., Wyatt-Nichol, H. and Brown, S.L. (2015), “Inequality: underrepresentation of African
American males in US higher education”, Journal of Public Affairs Education, Vol. 21 No. 4,
pp. 523-538.

Nelson, S. (2015), The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the revolution (film).

Osborne, A.B. (1996), “Practice into theory into practice: culturally relevant pedagogy for students
we have marginalized and normalized”, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 27 No. 3,
pp. 285-314.

Paris, D. (2012), “Culturally sustaining pedagogy: a needed change in stance, terminology, and
practice”, Educational Researcher, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 93-97.

Paris, D. and Alim, H.S. (2014), “What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining
pedagogy? A loving critique forward”, Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 84 No. 1, pp. 85-100.

Ransby, B. (2015), “The class politics of Black Lives Matter”, Dissent, Vol. 62 No. 4, pp. 31-34.

Rickford, R. (2016), “Black Lives Matter toward a modern practice of mass struggle”, New Labor
Forum, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 34-42.

Shapiro, A. (2016), “Black Lives Matter founders describe ‘paradigm shift’ in the movement”, July 13,
available at: www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/07/13/485895828/black-lives-matter-
founders-describe-paradigm-shift-in-the-movement (accessed August 8, 2016).

Sleeter, C.E. (2012), “Confronting the marginalization of culturally responsive pedagogy”, Urban
Education, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp. 562-584.

Somashekhar, S. (2015), “How Black Lives matter, born on the streets, is rising to power on campus”,
Washington Post, November 17, available at: www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-black-
lives-matter-born-on-the-streets-is-rising-to-power-on-campus/2015/11/17/3c113e96-8959-11e5-
be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html?utm_term=.60a45b22b1ae (accessed May 5, 2017).

Stephen, B. (2015), “Get up, stand up: How Black Lives Matter uses social media to fight the power”,
November, available at: www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-
fight-the-power/ (accessed January 10, 2016).

Taylor, K.-Y. (2016a), “From #BlackLivesMatter to black liberation”, February 2, available at: www.
youtube.com/watch?v=nyE5nI1nRJI (accessed on August 13, 2016).

Taylor, K.-Y. (2016b), From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL.

Washington, J. and Evans, N.J. (1991), “Becoming an ally”, in Evans, N. and Wall, V.A. (Eds), Beyond
Tolerance: Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals on Campus, American College Personnel Association,
pp. 195-204.

749

Culturally
sustaining
pedagogy

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/08/beyonce-formation-black-american-narrative-the-margins
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/08/beyonce-formation-black-american-narrative-the-margins
www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2016/11/09/get-your-people/
www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2016/11/09/get-your-people/
www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/arts/music/melina-matsoukas-beyonce-formation-interview.html
www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/arts/music/melina-matsoukas-beyonce-formation-interview.html
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.60.asp
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.60.asp
www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/07/13/485895828/black-lives-matter-founders-describe-paradigm-shift-in-the-movement
www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/07/13/485895828/black-lives-matter-founders-describe-paradigm-shift-in-the-movement
www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-black-lives-matter-born-on-the-streets-is-rising-to-power-on-campus/2015/11/17/3c113e96-8959-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html?utm_term=.60a45b22b1ae
www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-black-lives-matter-born-on-the-streets-is-rising-to-power-on-campus/2015/11/17/3c113e96-8959-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html?utm_term=.60a45b22b1ae
www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-black-lives-matter-born-on-the-streets-is-rising-to-power-on-campus/2015/11/17/3c113e96-8959-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html?utm_term=.60a45b22b1ae
www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/
www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyE5nI1nRJI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyE5nI1nRJI


Wildman, S.M. (2014), “Revisiting privilege revealed and reflecting on teaching and learning together”,
Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 1-21.

Young, E. (2010), “Challenges to conceptualizing and actualizing culturally relevant pedagogy: how viable is
the theory in classroom practice?”, Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 61 No. 3, pp. 248-260.

Further reading

Marfelt, M.M. (2016), “Grounded intersectionality”, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International
Journal, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 31-47.

Wortham, S. and Contreras, M. (2002), “Struggling toward culturally relevant pedagogy in the Latino
diaspora”, Journal of Latinos and Education, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 133-144.

Corresponding author
Courtney E. Cole can be contacted at: courtney.cole@regiscollege.edu

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

750

EDI
36,8