Disrupting Anti-Blackness in Early Childhood Qualitative Inquiry: Thinking With Black Refusal and Black Futurity

Abstract

Working with Black feminist concepts of Black futurity and Black refusal, this article seeks to illustrate what is possible when early childhood research does not begin with the anti-Blackness that is pervasiveness in early childhood education. My focus is on the liberatory potential of attending to quotidian relational world-making practices in the places and spaces of Black childhood. Thinking with a photo essay on Black boys and with images of a young Black girl from a place-based research project, I gesture toward the otherwise worlds that are made possible by experimenting with wayward methods as a practice of listening for Black childhood futurity.