Antiblack racism is endemic to every context youth navigate. Warren and Coles (2020) highlighted that schools and classrooms can often be the insidious sites of the following antiblack assaults: interpersonal, environmental, and curricular. I focused on the insidious manifestations of antiblack racism and intersecting forms of oppression in the lives of two Black queer femme highschoolers attending a high achieving performing arts high school in Florida. Florida is has become an increasingly polarized sociopolitical environment and a predictor of sorts for state contexts. I utilize Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) to observe how music education participates in the un/intentional harming of Black youth. I further considered how these harms can contribute to a metaphorical death through necropolitics (Mbembe 2003/2019), what I describe as a bifocal lens. I contend that the uncritical operationalizing of social justice is often informed through an approach to multiculturalism and social justice that exists upon a foundation of antiblackness and spirit-murder (Love 2019). I utilized my lived experience and bifocal lens to construct the following research questions: 1. How do Black youth see [their] culture reflected in music education? 2. How do Black youth navigate their place in music education? 3. How do Black youth re/imagine a music education that celebrates and lifts their identities? These research questions ultimately guided the study and contribute to a new body of scholarship that has not yet been considered in music education. It is my objective that this dissertation provides greater clarity to allow myself and future scholars to identify antiblackness with greater facility. I engaged in a methodology that I described as an Endarkened fabulation of the experiences of two young queer Black femmes, using data I collected through kitchen table talks (Kohl and McCutcheon 2015) and ethnographic methods. This methodology consists of the confluence of Endarkened Feminist Epistemology (Dillard 2000), Endarkened storywork (Toliver 2021), and critical fabulation (Hartman 2008). What is unique to the methodology is that I use the collected data and my lived experience to create a composite narrative and philosophical reflection. The findings of this study showcase the varying degrees of emotional harm the participants face. The participants faced interpersonal assaults with their administrators, directors, and classmates. The environmental assaults often stemmed from the severe isolation both participants felt by being the few people of color in their classes but was exacerbated by the Eurocentric posters and imagery in classroom spaces. The curricular assaults consisted of uncritically selecting “fun” repertoire from diverse composers and a lack of meaningful contextualization of the music. The participants additionally noted a severe lack of freedom in musical spaces, one that prevented them from exploring their own musical interests. What was most powerful, however, was identifying the various ways the participants resisted this violent environment through fugitive moments. These fugitive moments included the making of queer friend spaces, self-guided learning, and exploring music outside of the classroom. The implications of this inquiry are multi-faceted. The perspectives of these Black queer youth are currently vastly underrepresented and considered in mainstream music education discourse. Their insights provide powerful implications for the shifts that must occur in music teacher education and policy to affirm groups of children that are treated like they are disposable in this current paradigm. This work will serve as a foundation for future work in designing culturally-affirming curriculum and developing racially-informed pedagogies.
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