Journal Gallery

The Spring–Summer 2022 issue focuses on Culture and the Black Child. Without a doubt, culture is the greatest influence on the lives of Black children, that is, children of African descent. Herein, we use the terms Black and African American as interchangeable. Culture is everything. It is in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Culture is in us and on us and all around us while at the same time we create and cause our culture to adapt and to evolve. We invite papers that speak to the question of how Black culture in the 21st century has changed over time and how it now affects our children. Culture is defined as a large, diverse set of mostly intangible aspects of a people’s life. It consists of the values, beliefs, language and other nonverbal forms of communication, customs, arts, mores, habits, and all of our unique capabilities. Black culture defines us as a collective people even as we acknowledge the presence of great diversity and individual differences among us. We acquire basic foundational aspects of our modern Black culture through a common history and identity that can be traced back to ancient African societies from across the continent and through all the manifold ways we have evolved and adapted over some 400 years of Maafa.

We invite submissions that address the following:  

• Discuss and/or demonstrate the importance/effectiveness of an Afrocentric perspective in our work with children?  

• Are there Africanisms in our current lives such as the way we use the arts, language, even family structures and processes that are important to a child’s development? 

 • What is the most vital, life sustaining cultural knowledge and practice that we can impart to our children? In other words, what are the most crucial aspects of our cultural heritage that we want to be sure to effectively impress upon our children and future generations to come?  

• In educational settings, is it possible to instill cultural awareness across the curriculum (e.g. in the classroom, in a school within a school or in the entire school or district context). How can this concept be applied to community programs and services for children and other contexts of child development work?  

• What is your understanding of how developing children’s cultural awareness is different today compared to what it was like for past generations. What’s been your experience of culture – throughout your life? How has that experience influenced your work with children? 

 • Can imparting knowledge of our history and culture help insulate our children from the deleterious effects of racism and white supremacy? 

 • What aspects of culture have you identified or practiced that you think we would want to explicitly impart to our children that might have practical implications that you would share with others, especially during escalating anti-Black sentiments in large swaths of society and the post-pandemic precariousness that has disproportionately affected our communities?  

Culture is the way we move, walk, talk, dress, the way spirit and worship manifests in our communities. It is our heritage bequeathed to us by our ancestors. All these things and more inform and are simultaneously informed by a worldview, a way of seeing and being in the world that cannot be erased and instead continues to influence other peoples and cultures throughout the world. We look forward to your submissions on this important topic. 

As always, we invite parents/guardians raising children, teachers, practitioners, community activists, researchers, administrators and policy makers working with children; as well as poets, creative expressionists, and artists of any medium to submit their works for publication in the Spring – Summer 2022 edition of the journal.