When people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, we often discover that the doors are barred. Even the very act of dreaming of worlds-that-never-were can be challenging when the known world does not provide many liberatory spaces. The dark fantastic cycle posits that the presence of Black characters in mainstream speculative fiction creates a dilemma. The way that this dilemma is most often resolved is by enacting violence against the character, who then haunts the narrative. This is what readers of the fantastic expect, for it mirrors the spectacle of symbolic violence against the Dark Other in our own world. Moving through spectacle, hesitation, violence, and haunting, the dark fantastic cycle is only interrupted through emancipation--transforming objectified Dark Others into agentive Dark Ones. Yet the success of new narratives from "Black Panther" in the Marvel Cinematic universe, the recent Hugo Awards won by N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor, and the blossoming of Afrofuturistic and Black fantastic tales prove that "all" people need new mythologies--new "stories about stories." In addition to amplifying diverse fantasy, liberating the rest of the fantastic from its fear and loathing of darkness and Dark Others is essential.

Teenager Jam unwittingly animates her mother's painting, summoning a being through a cross-dimensional portal...

Younger listeners may respond to the fantasy/horror aspect of the story, while older,
more thoughtful listeners will be drawn to
the allegorical aspects.

This soaring novel shoots for the stars and explodes the sky with its bold brilliance.

Critical essay in a book.

The article compares the Marvel superhero film "Black Panther" to early Black speculative fiction. The author explores Afrofuturist themes, discusses the importance of heroic blackness, and examines characters within various works including "Blake; or, The Huts of America," by Martin R. Delany, "The Black Sleuth," by John Edward Bruce, and "Of One Blood, Or, The Hidden Self," by Pauline Hopkins.

The term “Afrofuturism” was further explained in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Dr. Alondra Nelson, a seminal scholar on the intersections of race, technology, and health, and has continued to be pummeled into a shape that can hold a wider concept of Blackness by leading scholars. Others, however, have decided the genesis of the term is too flawed to be revivified, and that we need to move away from it and toward more accurate language altogether. “I started using the term Africanfuturism (a term I coined),” writes acclaimed Naijaamerican author Nnedi Okorafor, because “the term Afrofuturism had several definitions and some of the most prominent ones didn’t describe what I was doing.”

As is common with the white Western imagination, Dery’s conception of Blackness could only imagine a “one down” relationship to whiteness — a Blackness that begins with 1619 and is marked solely by the ensuing 400 years of violation by whiteness that Dery portrays as potentially irreparable. “Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?” he writes.

The article focuses on authentic equity efforts to address student needs and helping school communities despite distraction such as attack on critical race theory. Topics discussed include discussion among local parents on issues fo teaching school about racial issues, history of U.S. shaped by racism and sexism, and disrupting race-based discrimination.

The K-12 curriculum has always been a political battlefield, but recent attacks on critical race theory have brought hostilities to an entirely new level. As the recent and ongoing uproar over the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) makes clear, we Americans are bitterly divided over how we should think about our racial history and its continuing influence on our lives. Clearly, the subject of race remains, as ever, a national lightning rod, especially when it comes to deciding what our children should be taught about the country's past. It may be comforting to imagine that when school leaders and teachers consider what to include in the curriculum, they tend to rely on a consensual, evidence-based process, in which diverse perspectives are considered and those involved are committed to reaching a sensible agreement on the essential question: What content, skills, and dispositions should young people learn? In reality, though, the curriculum has always been a battlefield, and the current dispute over CRT is just the latest in a long history of disputes about what students ought to be taught.

The New American is a far-right print and digital magazine published twice a month by American Opinion Publishing Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the John Birch Society. Article reads: The article presents the guise of eradicating racism and division, Critical Race Theory does the opposite. Topics include the administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, the frustrated families that fighting off the imperatives of Critical Race Theory was not just a conservative issue anymore, and the replies from parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Eastern Europe.

The article assesses the backlash against the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) at the K-12 and higher education levels in the U.S. Topics discussed include the passage of laws in various states that restrict discussions of race, racism and gender in schools, the movement for civil rights and anti-racism action, and the students' increased interest in CRT.

The article discusses that GOP-led states are adopting high-profile legislation restricting the way racism can be taught in schools. Topics discussed include republican-backed bills banning the teaching of divisive topics on race and inequality are piling up in Congress and in statehouses across the country; and new survey of high school students shows that many never learn about such issues in classrooms anyway.

While the culture wars have plagued us for the past 30 years, the particular bitterness of this iteration began only last September with former president Donald Trump's now-rescinded executive order banning critical race theory and diversity training in all federal programs. He'd point out how disabling racially restrictive covenants were, not just as a topic for a separate course on "race law" but as integral to the power relations within foundational courses like property law.

A source for opposing viewpoints, future outlook, timeline, & much more!