ERIC Number: EJ1113283
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1946
EISSN: N/A
Meditating Gunrunner Speaking, Part I: A Black Male Journey Teaching in South Korea
Jackson, Johnnie
Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v52 n5 p424-437 2016
In this article, I offer my own decolonizing counterstory of teaching as a Black American man in a teacher education program in South Korea, to purport how I was both a colonizer and the colonized, inside and outside of the classroom and the curriculum (Asher, 2010; Baszile, 2008, 2009, 2010). To further complicate matters, my Black male body did not fit the Eurocentric manuscript of who teaches in South Korea, rendering me a problem (Du Bois, 1903/1969), and also placing a particular high value on Eurocentric epistemologies (Mignolo, 2011a). To decolonize my Black teaching experiences in South Korea, I rely on Baszile's (2010) critical race currere to perform a reading of my radical Black subjectivity in exile, while also tending to the public/private autobiographical racialization in an East Asian context. Thus, it leads me to raise the following questions: (1) What does it mean to teach while Black and male in South Korea? (2) How does one's Black man's story decolonize the narrative of who teaches abroad? To address these ontological/epistemological questions that Baszile addresses in her work, I begin with three vignettes (named "meditations"). The first meditation finds me strolling through a Korean neighborhood on my way to a coffee shop. The second meditation finds a cohort of Korean pre-service teachers and me in a coffee shop discussing Korean education and Black violence in America. The third meditation follows me home after my incident in the coffee shop. Ultimately, to decolonize ourselves as teachers and learners, I propose as many curriculum studies scholars do, that we must continue to offer counterdiscourses (Asher, 2010) to our racialization and colonization. Herein lies the importance of my meditations.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, African Americans, Males, Teacher Education Programs, Foreign Students, Racial Factors, Gender Issues, Cultural Differences, Social Influences, Teacher Characteristics, Personal Narratives, Cultural Awareness
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: South Korea
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A