Feeling Black: A Conversation About Justice Imperatives in Education, Disability, and Health

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to engage the reader in a conversation about justice imperatives in education, disability, and health. As counternarrative to structured majoritarian scholarship and positioned in the expressed intent of the National Academy of Kinesiology’s 90th annual meeting theme of Kinesiology’s Social Justice Imperative, we express feelings about the urgency for social justice in teacher education. To start, we operationally define social justice as advocacy, agency, and action. Next, we recommend the application of critical theoretical frameworks in conceptualizing and conducting research involving historically marginalized and minoritized populations (e.g., African American students). This conversation is theoretically grounded in intersectionality to offer a nuanced understanding of social constructions, such as ethnicity (e.g., African American) and race (e.g., Black), gender, culture, disability, and sociometric positioning regarding justice imperatives in education, disability, and health.