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Abolitionist Teaching & The Black Feminist Imagination

Abolitionist Teaching & The Black Feminist Imagination

Abolition Science
abolition, education

Summary:

Abolition as education in practice, generative pedagogy, and reimagining the classroom space are the focal points of our conversation with Dr. Carmen Kynard. We discuss how Black Feminism is an imaginary practice that allows us to resist, disrupt, and create.

Connect with Dr. Carmen Kynard:

Website: http://carmenkynard.org/

Dr. Kynard’s Go To’s:

Transcript (Please excuse any errors):

Please see mentions/resources list at the end.

 [Music Intro ♫]

LaToya [LS]: Hey listeners, welcome to Abolition Science Radio. We're your hosts, I'm LaToya Strong.

Aderinsola [AG]: And I'm Aderinsola Gilbert, and we're here to discuss science, math, technology, and other things.

LS: And their relationship to colonialism.

AG: Oppression.

LS: Resistance.

AG: Education.

LS: And liberation.

AG: All through the lens of abolition.

LS: Join us as we learn and unlearn.

AG: Critique and create.

LS: All while building community.


[00:32] [ ♫ Music fade out.]


LS: Hey listeners! Welcome back. Derin, how you been living?

AG: Hey. One day at a time and this pandemic, you know. You know. Listening to my music. 

LS: Ayy. Whatcha been listenin to?

AG: I’ve been listening to, I don’t know why now I go blank. I just had this question – had this answer ready but now I’m going blank. I’m listening to this, YouTube.

LS: U2?

AG: Yeah. This YouTube, um –

LS: Sorry. You saying U2, like that white band? Or are you saying YouTube?

AG: Oh, no no no no. No no – YouTUBE. 

LS: YouTube.

AG: I’ve been watching, yes. 

LS: Oh, ok.

AG: I’ve been watching YouTube. Actually following this personality, her name is Adeola Fayehun. And she kind of like, gives us – for me, it’s like catching up with the what’s happening in Nigeria, but also around the continent. And, it’s just – yeah, I like her live takes. 

LS: Oh. 

AG: Not only just on – yeah. The current situation that’s happening with the pandemic, but just also, you know, uh. Sometimes it delves into pop culture, delves into just the daily occurrences. And so, yes, so if you get a chance. Adeola Fayehun, is just her name on Instagram. And she also has a YouTube channel. Yes. 

LS: We’ll link it. So, when the transcript goes up, boom boom. 

[1:52]

AG: Who’ve you been listening to, Toya?

LS: I’ve been listening to Celeste. 

AG: Oop.

LS: So, Celeste, already in 2021, dropped an album called Not Your Muse. And it’s good. She’s a singer, songwriter, music – just like, soothing and soulful. I haven’t gotten into it like I want to but my first listen through, I was like, ‘Eh, you did that!’ 

AG: A ha ha. Ok, so. Celeste. I’m definitely going to have to check that out. 

LS: Yes, everyone should check her out. 

[2:21]

LS: So hey y’all – we have set up a Patreon. If it is within your capacity – we know there is a lot going on in the world, but even so, some of us still have sort of more to give – and if you do, we would appreciate it if you could go on and become a Patron to help us make Abolition Science more sustainable. Cause we would love to continue to do this work. 

[2:43]


LS: So, what’s going on today? What’s our episode about?

AG: Our guest today is a former Professor of mine, Dr. Carmen Kynard. 

LS: Mhmm. 

AG: Just, dopeness. Divine. Scholar.

LS: Ayy. 

AG: Activist. Just, all around here, just dope. Our conversation today is really looking at the Black Feminist Imagination. As well as literacy and freedom for Black life. 

LS: Yeah. And also, if I can add like – what it means to teach with a Black Feminist Imagination. Yes, it’s just - it’s a dope conversation, especially for me as an educator. So I’m excited to like, start to take some things that Professor Kynard was talking about and like, implement it into my work. 

AG: Yes. Ditto. Ditto. 

LS: Yeah. Oh! It’s such a good conversation. Derin, thank you dreaming this one up. Let’s get into it.

[3:33]


AG: So, welcome listeners. We are here today with Dr. Carmen Kynard. Thank you, Carmen for joining us. So, please take this time briefly to share with listeners a little bit about yourself and what songs or artists you’re listening to. 

[3:47]

Dr. Carmen Kynard [CK]: Good evening. Good evening – or at least, it’s evening right now. I am Carmen Kynard and I am a Professor of English and the Lilian Radford Chair in Rhetoric and Composition Studies at Texas Christian University. So, I am new to Texas. 

LS: Ooooh. 

CK: Yes, I’m at TCU, but I’m new to Texas. I moved here, um, not quite two years ago. So, still something of a Brooklynite, but I warm in Texas. So, there’s that. I think I said by way of introduction that I identify as a Black Feminist Educator and Dreamer. Those three things together. I don’t have one word for that, so we’ll use all three. So that’s how I identify. You know, technically speaking, according to the academy, I teach in rhetoric and composition. So I look at histories of Black literacy and Black education. Also, as that intersects with Black language and obviously Black culture. And rhetorical protest and things like this, and Black histories. That’s the official – the official area of research. So that’s what I do, that’s what I look at. 

I guess more of my biography will come up in – as we start talking. But I will say here that I’m in an English department but I consider myself more an Educator before a Professor. I started teaching in high schools. And pedagogy for me is a critical interventionist practice. And you don’t have to think of pedagogy or think of teaching or really think at all, it seems some days, to be in the academy. I’ll position myself in that way. 

AG: Ha ha. Ok. 

[5:20]

CK: Ha ha, I mean really. What am I listening to? I’m listening to a lot of different stuff right now. So, depends. I shouldn’t say a lot of different stuff. But if I’m cooking, I’m going to go to – I can’t say the A word in my house. So, I can’t say A-L-E-X-A, cause all my devices will come on. 

AG: Oh. 

LS: Ha ha ha ha. 

CK: I’ll say Miss Anne. So, sometimes I just Ms. Anne to play me an Isley Brothers list from whatever algorithm – whether that’s Pandora or Amazon. If I’m cooking, cause for some reason I need that sound. It reminds me of home, family. 

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: Sometimes, I ask Ms. Anne to go to a Badu mix. Or a - 

LS: Ooh!

CK: Just cause what’s in – cause I think that algorithm is interesting cause you’ll get Badu, you’ll get Coltrane, you’ll get Biggie with that. And then it’ll follow it with like the Delfonics and Jill Scott. 

AG: Oh what?! Ok. 

CK: It’s interesting what they mix in with that. So sometimes – then there’s the stuff I’m always putting together for my classes. In terms of, right now we’re looking. We’re going to be going into Blues. So, I’m looking at a lot of Black women in Blues. And, of course – it’s Texas. So it’s all about Tobe Nwigwe right now. 

AG: Okayyyy! Heyy!

CK: That’s some music and some personal life for you. 

[6:41]

AG: Oh. Love it. Love it. I almost started breaking out into the “Try Jesus,” but I’m like nah nah nah.

[All laughing.]

CK: Not throw hands.

[All laughing.]

AG: You know. 

CK: It’s perfect. 

AG: Forever the mood of 2020, I swear. And beyond. 

CK: I know. I know, it’s wonderful. 

LS: Alright, so we’ll just jump into it. Thank you for sharing that. I feel like algorithms for playlists are so important. I feel like Pandora, has the best playlists, period. All the streaming apps that came after them cannot match it. And I don’t know – I’ve never fact-checked this, but someone told me and I just keep repeating this without having fact-checked it – 

CK: Ha ha ha ha. 

LS: Because I believe it. I believe it in my spirit to be true. That because Pandora was before all the like, big social media and internet phase that we have now. It was like, actual people creating the algorithms. 

CK: Yeah. 

LS: As opposed to like, computers. And that’s why Pandora has the best playlists. 

[7:45]

AG: That is good to know. 

LS: I mean, I don’t know if it’s true. Ha ha ha. It sounds like it’s true, right?

AG: Yeah!

CK: It really does feel that way cause it’s sort of like, you know, the kind of. You feel like you’re hearing what people like to listen – 

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: So, like, Badu playlist. The Badu radio, I’m hearing what else people like pair with Badu. And it crosses time frame. It crosses genre. 

LS: Mhmm. 

AG: That’s true. That’s true. No one really does that like Pandora. Yeah, definitely. Spotify really takes – kinda stays at least within the, unless you’re looking for specific playlists. You save the playlist – yeah, it doesn’t really pick - the algorithm doesn’t really do as well as, or it’s not as eclectic as Pandora. 

[8:32]

CK: Yeah, it’s true. 

AG: When it comes – yeah. Well, we don’t need a factchecker. We just – it just feels. 

CK: It just feels. 

LS: Ha ha ha ha. 

[All laughing.]

AG: We’re just gonna roll with that. Yes. 

CK: Ha ha. Perfect. 

[8:51]

LS: So, Professor, if you could tell us – what does abolition mean to you? And what does it look like in your practice? 

[8:57]

CK: Thank you. Thank you for that question, and for this podcast and for the work y’all are doing around abolition and science, particularly. For me, I think abolition is very exciting. Um, little nervous, you’re also saying a sort of appropriation impulse coming. But, you’re either an abolitionist or you’re not. It’s not that easily appropriated, although folks is trying. Ha. I’m sorry that I’m forgetting the date, I think it may have been 2019 – but Patrisse Cullors has this piece in Harvard Law Review, about herself as an abolitionist and abolition and reparations and it’s narrative and her life. She calls it education in practice. Those three words, I just love. “Education in practice.” Because it gets at what we’re talking about – the three of us as educators. But it also locates, just the entire world of education as something much bigger than, you know, the way that probably we get limited in our research in terms of thinking about classrooms. Or even thinking about like, you know, different community organizations. Like, education is not bounded that way. 

LS & AG: Mhmm.

CK: I like that idea. And, for me. It is a space to undo, it’s about undoing and redoing the frames of knowing and being that have absolutely nothing to do with humanity. But everything to do with the ways in which the West has conceived itself as a world, as a culture - that will automatically always mean – really, the annihilation of certain peoples. And certain entities. I shouldn’t just say people, because you know, it also means the annihilation of the planet. Particularly what we’re seeing with, you know, different weather patterns and things like that. 

But it also is sort of, very grounding, and it is grounded in understanding plantation logics, plantation economy. 

[Mmm.]

[10:51]

CK: And so, that when we’re talking about plantations – that plantation, like – it’s a logic, it’s an economy. It’s not just this historical accident or this really bad thing we did way back when. No, it is literally the logic in which we understand human bodies and human interaction. And so, it gets you back to that. It gets you back to looking at that. And it also gets you back to very different kind of embodied ways of resistance and fugitivity. If you think of Linda Brent, hiding in plain sight, running away while you stand still. This kind of notions of resistance and community, and care. And for me, in some ways, it connects more to a sort of an ancestral practice in the sense that you’re aware of the past, you’re in the present looking forward. It’s very Sankofa in that way. 

Well, when you locate yourself foundationally, or if you’re just saying that your world is still functioning in plantation logics, and plantation economies – like, you’re thinking of time in a whole different kind of way also. 

LS: Mhmm. 

[11:53]

CK: And so, freedom, or intervention, is also gonna look different. Cause bodies, and time, and accountability – all of that looks different. I guess that’s what it means to me. 

In terms of my practice, for me, I guess this is bad – there’s like teaching and then there’s everything else. So it’s like teaching and then there’s life. Cause I talk about teaching a lot but then I’m like, well you know, Carmen, you know, sometimes you’re washing dishes, right. You’re not necessarily always teaching. Sometimes you’re bustin suds right. 

AG: Yup.

[12:24]

CK: So, I guess at this point in my life. I’ve been very cautious in terms of abolition of not doing, like some of this is just like, common sense – except common sense ain’t common. 

LS: Mhmm. Right. 

CK: Why are we doing the same thing when we know it don’t work?

AG: Ha ha. 

CK: We still do the same thing. We know this don’t work for young Black people. It never had, why would it now. Because you somehow the magic negro, or the magic white ally? No. Sit down. 

[12:51]

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: So there’s always been sort of, conscientious, not to sort of replicate what we know. Or just to sort of, have like a kind of self-check mechanism where you just don’t go to the default. We know the default is violent. And particularly in classrooms. Because the default is gonna be some Jim Crow shit.
LS: Mmm. 

CK: Am I allowed to curse? Anyway, so that’s probably not going to happen. The non-cursing is probably not gonna happen. But what’s the default – 

AG: No, go ahead!

CK: - it’s always going to be some Jim Crow violence and some Jim Crow hierarchical maintenance. And some Jim Crow white supremacy. That’s gonna be the default. And so, you constantly have to self-check yourself that you’re not going there. It seems like that would be so um, so obvious, but it’s really not. Abolitionism tells you that getting out of the shit that you’re in is never going to be easy. It’s always going to be about thought. It’s always going to be about doing and moving differently. 

[13:49]

AG: Mm. 

CK: Even so, if I’m doing syllabus design or I’m thinking about how – what I’m gonna do in class tomorrow. What is this rupturing? What is this – interest – oddly enough. In some ways, here in Texas, I’m like more conscientious about what I’m trying to rupture and why and how because my students are always asking. My undergrad students are always asking. And I would say like, when I was in New York City, for instance, with the undergraduates – they didn’t sort of ask that much. I think they knew they might say my class is weird, or, they might understand it as non-normative. But they didn’t really, they didn’t think anything of it. Of course, you know, I blame that on the NYC subway. Right. 

AG & LS: Ha ha ha. 

CK: Cause when you take the NYC Subway your whole life, non-normative becomes normative. Cause I’ve seen some stuff on the subway and people don’t even notice. They just be like, oh look, something crazy happening over there in that corner and they just go back to they phone. But here in Texas, my undergrad students, and not in a negative way – they’ll be like, this is really different. What made you do it like this, Professor Carmen? And they really want to know. I’ll talk about – well, schooling looks like this. Black culture looks like this. So, we’re gonna do this from a Black cultural framework. And they’ll be like, ok that’s what’s up. But I’ve never quite had to explain it that way. Or had to think about how to convey it quite that way, like I do here with these students. 

Because, you know, like I said, in New York, they’re like, now she’s weird – ok. Let’s go with it. They go with the weirdness here too in Texas, but they wanna know. What exactly is this train we on right here? So, um. 

[15:32]

AG: Interesting. So, again, so much is coming up from what you shared. And so, Professor Carmen, as being a former student – your class is one the classes that definitely comes to mind, is Black Girl Magic and examining like digital literacies. 

CK: Mhmm. 

AG: This was back in 2019, I think. So, one thing, for me, that really stood out was the use or the centering of the Black Feminist Imagination. In this, unlearning of this like, plantation logics within – embedded within the economy. So, maybe before I get more into like, what has that looked like for you- the Black Feminist Imagination? And how, especially within the classroom space, has it guided your work as an educator and researcher?

[16:20]

CK: Um, for me, like, I guess, I just – I won’t say recently. But I’ve had to sort of just name for myself that Black Feminism is an imaginative praxis – an imaginative process. Because, you know, if you have the nerve to call yourself a Black feminist, if you have that kind of audacity already, you’re already imagining something very – quite different. Cause I think that, you know, freedom, or demanding freedom – from what you’re in is an imaginative process.

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: Thinking of a Black Feminist Classroom, thinking of a different kind of classroom. This is, very imaginative. Cause there are ways - it began to strike me, particularly when I would hear people talking negatively about a lot of Afropessimism. Or, people who were talking about the Prison Industrial Complex, right.

AG: Mhmm. 

CK: And, lots of white faculty but not just white faculty, about you know, how depressing this is. Or how political this is, or how in your face it is. And I’m like, you know, I don’t hear it that way. I mean, imagining a world without prisons is like, oh most imaginative and creative thing I’ve ever heard. That’s more creative than some of what you’re painting. And some of the music that you’re making. Like, how we’re understanding like, the arts as creative. And this kind of political activism around prison abolition, or political activism against the hyper criminality of young Black bodies in schools – that is imaginative and creative processing also. 

AG: Mhmm

[17:52]

CK: I feel like sometimes my students also get caught up in stuff. Like, if I ask them to do something multi-modal, or if I ask them to break out of the confines of the academic essay. They’ll understand that as creative – and it is creative. But they’ll understand the other stuff as non-creative. That doesn’t work. 

That’s partly how I just had to articulate for myself that this is about imagination and creativity. Particularly, in classrooms when you’re designing stuff. When I first started teaching as a high school teacher. I think, you know, people would have defined me, or the sort of, the going term then was you were a Freireian. Right, um. I definitely identified as a Freireian. I particularly, the way Freire talks about banking concepts. And particularly this idea that’s very difficult sometimes for educators, I would say particularly at the college level to get, is that you can’t just have radical brown and Black content. The process has to be radical also. 

AG: Mmm. 

LS: Mhmm. 

[18:56]

CK: So, if you’re just doing scantron and multiple choice tests about radical Black thinkers. You’re still framing them within the terms of white Eugenicist learning ideas. And Freire helped you get at that, but really like, Black feminism was all I needed to get at that too. So, really if you think about the Combahee River Collective and their saying, you know, the sort of classic -the ends justify the means. Combahee River Collective says: no, that’s not right. Your ends cannot – it doesn’t work that way. The means and the ends have to be in sync. 

AG: Mhmm. 

CK: Otherwise, you have to question the ends. So that’s very much a Black Feminist framework. And that’s very much from – we know in all of these different movements, whether we’re talking about Civil Rights Movement, whether we’re talking about the New Negro Movement that you have these Black women who are behind the scenes, moving things – but not, you know, not getting any credit. It’s sort of, you have these Black feminist organizers who are, and just these – sort of, as just an everyday practitioner based ethos. Cause it’s not just at the big protest event, but the everyday ethos. It’s the move and movement, always. That’s sort of, just coming to terms with that, and also wanting to be able to articulate the history that I’m drawing from. Like I said, like I was just sort of understood as a Freireian. And, it’s not like I’m trying to diss Freire, I don’t have a diss on Freire and that Pedagogy of the Oppressed was critical, was pivotal for me. That text, cause I started teaching in ’93. And that text was critical to me. But, it was also problematic that I was only Freireian. That what I was doing wasn’t within an always already Black Feminist praxis. Just knowing that’s what I’m drawing from. It just give me a different kind of, for lack of a better word, confidence. 

[20:53]

[Mhmm.]

CK: Like, when I’m writing, when I’m doing the research – and, like, is this a Black Feminist process right here? Is it really? And that’s a different question than saying, is this a feminist process?

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: That’s a very different question. Those are not the same thing. 

AG: Yup. 

LS: Mm – mmm. 

CK: At all. Sometimes they can be very divergent. Cause I’m not quite sure sometimes what white feminists are doing. I don’t know what the fuck is going on out there. 

[Light laughing.]

AG: Yup.

[21:19]

CK: We talk about that. As historically, you know, they got some stuff wrong. But historically, I mean, you ain’t got to go back in history, you just got to look right here, right now. So, you know. I will say that. And, I guess too, it’s important for students to see that I’m drawing from these Black Feminist traditions, or just to articulate it that way. 

AG: Mmm. 

CK: I’m in good company. Even if y’all wanna sit around here, act like y’all ain’t never seen nothing like this before.

[Laughing.]

CK: I’m in good company. Ha ha ha ha. 

[21:50]

AG: Oh wow. 

LS: Earlier, you – the three you said, Black Feminist Educator Dreamer. And now, you was just giving us some information about imagination. I wonder if you could just talk about, I mean – science, the maths, all these fields are definitely fields where imagination is more than lacking. Ha. 

AG: Yup. 

LS: So could you just share with us, like when you tapped into Black feminism and sort of shifted to this frame of imagination – how that shifted your research? Perhaps, how you approach your classes? How maybe you started to engage with students differently?

[22:25]

CK: Yeah. I would say that, it’s like the courage to just do things differently. And to think about how you are relating to bodies. Even when I think about something as seemingly simple as the syllabus. I’ve had to, just based in different administrative stuff I’ve done, different committees I’ve done, different like, you know, accreditation stuff I’ve done – I have done so many syllabus reviews. I’ve seen so many syllabi, across the country. And, they are just ridiculous. They’re like, just incredibly punitive. I’m gonna learn more about policy and what I cannot do or the different rules and what kind of punishments will happen if I break those rules than I’m gonna learn about what this class is actually about. So I’ve seen syllabi that sort of really spell out when, where, if, and how I can go pee. Just that relationship to students and to learning, it is completely antagonistic. 

And I think about, just for instance, when I was in undergrad, as an undergrad, I think about the classes that I had with Sylvia Wynter. And people understand Sylvia Wynter, where she is as this really interesting critical theorist. And obviously, there’s that. But I also know her as a teacher. And so, she would give us like 50-page syllabi. And the syllabus was like: here’s the week, here’s what we’re trying to work through. The syllabus was like architectural because you were invited to build out an idea about something. And, here are some things you can read. And then we would have these course packets and the course packets were huge. And she would say, um, not necessarily expecting that you’re going to read for every week or read all of it. But as you’re building out these ideas right here, these are things you can think about and put it. This is what I would like to put in communication with each other and let’s see where it takes us. 

LS: Mhmm. 

AG: Oh wow. 

[24:15]

CK: And just like a – you know, today we call it a maker space. But we think of maker space totally in terms of some technological device, not in terms of an intellectual device. 

LS: Wow. 

CK: But that’s a very different relationship to students – that we’re coming together and we’re thinking through some stuff. We’re gonna make something, we’re gonna make new ways of looking at problems that nobody seems to be able to get us out of. That’s very different than most syllabi where it’s like, you know, here’s what could happen if you plagiarize. Here’s what Turnitin looks like. Here’s what’s going to happen – here is who you need to talk to if you have a disability. I don’t need to know nothing about it, and I don’t need to check my own ableism. But here is legally what I’m required to say. Here’s what I’m required to say about Title IX. And here’s what I’m required to do if, you know, you tell me about some issue of sexual violence. We’re not going to interrogate a world that makes me have to say this. It’s like, so how do you disrupt that? How do you just disrupt the dominant conversation? And that starts even at the syllabus. That’s every word. It’s like every moment. This is for me, was the gift of CUNY. Teaching at CUNY and the gift of teaching at high school. Cause I never had a semester at CUNY where I didn’t have a student who was in a homeless shelter; a student who wasn’t experiencing housing insecurity; a student who wasn’t experiencing food insecurity; a student who wasn’t facing mental health or tried to navigate neurological diversity. There was never a moment, ever. You know, if you went a month without something – you know, and then also young people who have lots of responsibilities in terms of working, in terms of taking care of elderly parents, in terms of taking care of nieces and nephews, in terms of taking care of their own children. I mean, this was constant. Like for instance, I never had a semester where I didn’t have a young woman who wasn’t in a shelter with her child, based on intimate partner violence. That never happened. And, so when you think of people’s lives that way, and you look at people’s lateness policies – it’s like a joke. How do you justify this lateness policy – like, the points or the grade levels you’re going to take off for a woman who had to flee to a homeless shelter with her child that night? How do you justify? Or, she has to tell you this and come to you and tell you this so you don’t take off. So this is all about disciplining. You know, this is really a punishment regime. It may as well be the carceral state. It is the carceral state. And it’s so automated. Like, it’s just how you think about how you’re supposed to teach. Not to say that you don’t want to hold people accountable to this, what you’re making and what you’re doing in a classroom – but you don’t have to rest on the logic of the carceral state to do it. 

[27:14]

AG & LS: Mhmm. 

CK: When I’m saying Black Feminism does is, it gives you that kick in the ass, every time you need it. To say, you know, what the fuck am I doing right here? What am I doing? Why am I teaching from a punitive place? Rather than a generative one? Yeah, so it’s like – I don’t want to make it just be a kick in the ass, but I do think that people need it. A lot of people need that though. 

[27:36]

LS: Yes. 

CK: Lots of people need that. It does give you that kick in the ass, but it also does give you the courage and the foundation to do something different. Cause it’s one thing to say, you know this is stupid, this is bad, this is wrong. It’s something else to say, ok so we’re gonna design something else. And this semester, I moved closer in that direction, but not quite. I’m gonna keep moving next semester. I’m gonna keep trying something different. I’m gonna keep trying something different. Keep trying. Keep trying. Keep trying. 

AG: Keep trying. 

CK: That, for me is that swift kick in the ass and then that way to keep it moving forward. 

[28:10]

LS: That’s dope. Derin, you already know what I’m finna ask. You fam. 

AG: Yep. Ha ha ha. 

LS: You already know what I’m finna ask her. Professor, when I tell you the way the light like, burst out of Derin when they be talkin about your class, I be jealous. I be like, dang, you don’t know the classes that we had to take before you blessed the Urban Education program. So Derin, so after – like we just heard Professor Kynard sort of like, talk about what Black Feminist Imagination has done for her in her class. Derin, if you could share with us just your experience as a student. It’s just like, so powerful always when you share that. So I think it would be dope to hear like, from the student perspective, what that looks like and what that feels like. 

[28:56]

AG: So yeah, right off like the bat. It was, I remember Day 1 walking into class, it will forever remain with me because I still have the syllabus. I still have your syllabus Professor Carmen. I do. I have all your syllabuses in fact, because the syllabus was a Zine. It was a Zine, but it was written in a way of like – it was an invitation to be a part of this process, this knowledge creation process. Like, and that’s how it read and then the readings, and just how – in many ways, I felt like it was a toolkit and so, to – a toolkit to like, all this experiences that we were having in the classroom. And also beyond the classroom. I think it introduced me to a possibility of what could exist within the space and beyond the space. 

[29:40]

LS: Wow. 

AG: That was my experience, in your classroom, Professor Carmen. And it continues to be because, also how I wanted to approach my work, and anything else that I would later go on to work on. It welcomed that permission to use my imagination, that I didn’t have to remove my imagination and myself from my work. Which I think there’s something about the academy and the way that it’s set up, that it’s very – it needs to be non-biased right, neutral, whatever that means. Even though we know nothing about what is being taught in these knowledge traditions is neutral. So that was a space where all of that came into play. It was like, it was the type of experience that I think – when I think about, oh when you go off to school. That was the type of experience I was having there. There was just like a, a dream space. 

[30:29]

CK: Thank you. That was a fun class – that year, that class we had. There was certain characters in there, you know. It was interesting to see the workaround and the different conversations and, I will say, that we’re in a moment. As hard, and as surreal as this moment feels, it’s also an amazing time to be in classrooms. Because, you know, particularly and I would say particularly graduate classrooms. I was reluctant with teaching graduate school. Because, when I first started teaching at the grad level, people would come to me and say, things like – I remember someone saying, I’m not really interested in your content, but you know a lot of the famous people in the field, so I wanted to take your class so you can introduce me to them. 

AG: What?!

LS: Oh no. 

CK: - I’m only gonna be able to go for so long before I choke one of these motherfuckers. 

AG & LS: Ha ha ha ha. 

CK: Look. Oh, and that was really like – the idea was like, grad school was presented as this way – like, the end result was to basically bling out. It was basically to be better than everyone else and to be like, some kind of academic celebrity. It wasn’t about abolition. It wasn’t about particular – and it wasn’t about interrogating the ways in which graduate education -  I mean, talk about a white colonial process. I think graduate education is like, the epitome of white colonization. 

AG: Mm. 

[31:56]

CK: Not to say that you know, what happens in the whole thing is that – but like, what they are, graduate schools are really holding on to this sort of – to a white settler system right here. 

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: And you’re holding on tight to people because the folk who get out of grad school are the ones who are going to be literally the next professors. The next researchers, all of this. And it’s really, I wanna say, really in sort of Black Lives Matter 2013 moment where you’re seeing more, I would say in larger numbers, people saying – no, I didn’t get a PhD so that I could be a white colonizer. That’s not really the purpose here. And I also want to do something more than this kind of, you know, sort of race spokesperson, or the one token who gets invited to the table and therefore I represent everybody’s voice. Cause that’s still within white settler logic. 

AG: Yup. 

[32:52]

CK: Particularly, I would say at the Grad Center. The students at the Grad Center showed me what graduate education could really be. We can muck this up. 

[All chuckle.]

AG: Yoo. 

CK: Yeah, y’all were dope. 

AG: That’s the space. I only wish that more folks would have experienced that. I think you really bring up a great point about what’s happening now with the, being remote. And also, I think what type of learning spaces are popping up outside of the academy – whether or not the academy wants to acknowledge them or not. You know, or even be – participate in that is just um, really curious to see where some of these autonomous learning communities – how it’s going to manifest itself beyond this pandemic that we find ourselves. 

CK: Mhmm. 

AG: Just, further really problematizing this idea, this notion that the experts or expertise right, is coming from these Ivory Towers.  

CK: Very, very true right now. That’s going to captivate someone’s interest. 

AG: Yup. 

CK: Because really, if you can’t captivate people’s interest, it’s really downhill right now for you. 

AG: Yup, yup. Definitely. So, yeah. 2020 – we’re in 2021, I keep saying 2020, but 2020 was a year. And even in the place that we find ourselves, right, from home. Being on countless Zoom meetings or just being in the digital space, right – the ether. What are different ways have you seen people really tap into the Black Feminist Imagination within that space? And what from that has maybe inspired you?

[34:29]

CK: What’s been really interesting too, is to think about, you know, your kind of digital vibe or digital ethos – for lack of a better word. Cause I, you know, I shouldn’t be – I shouldn’t have been, but I have been so shocked at how all that toxicity, all that stank attitude, all that uncomfortableness in the in-person, I mean really in the work environments – like, you know, in the academy, how quickly that translated over into a Zoom session. 

[Mmm.]

[34:56]

CK: Amazing. I was like, wow. You know, I’ve been in some Zoom meetings that are just uncomfortable. That are just tense. And I’m like, what is wrong with these people. I’m at home. What are they so tense about?  - Nothing. There’s no – it is bizarre. Again, this kind of default that was like: oh look, we had useless meetings all the time. 

[Everyone laughing.]

CK: On Zoom now! Ha ha ha. It’s like – and you can see, everybody’s texting each other in the meeting. Ain’t nobody – 

AG: The filter is gone. Ha ha. 

CK: People got they cameras off. I always want to know, the people who got they cameras off, what they doing. And then, be like, girl, I’m getting my hair done. I’m cooking. It’s just like – the irony of it, is sort of, you watch like these young people in the things and the different challenges and the TikToks and the ways that people are building out community and doing interesting things and even having parties over Zoom – all of this kind of stuff. Or an election basically over Zoom. And then we have meetings, we have faculty meetings where people still haven’t figured out how to have a relevant faculty meeting for folk. We still ain’t done that. In an ethnographic sense, it is fascinating. In, you know, a lived reality sense, it’s like, wow this is really bad. Um. 

So, um, in some ways, I’ve said this quite a few times. But I feel like, in one way, this is exciting, and in other ways, this is a whole lot of work. Cause I feel like, this is my first year of teaching all over again. Last semester, I was online. We have to do synchronous teaching at TCU. They want for us to be synchronous. And so last semester, I had graduate and this semester, I have undergraduate. This is the first time I’ve taught undergraduates in this capacity, in this way. So, I had to think about – what are the things that I have participated in that have felt energizing, that felt intellectually useful, that were interesting to me. What did the format look like? And what was the vibe? And how do I do that for students? When I ask myself that question, I automatically revert back to different like, kind of Zoom meetings and Zoom gathering that Black women have been in charge of. And the way they do it. The way they welcome everybody in, the way they say hello, the way they greet people. I’m saying the word vibe, but I mean something bigger than vibe. The way that people are using music, the way that people are using videos and different kind of sounds and different kind of experiences. It’s been sessions that I’ve been in or meetings that I’ve been in with Black women that I’m drawing from. Or, and the way that you organize different sort of – so like, I’ll teach tomorrow. So, Tuesdays are more like some interactive things. I’m trying to do interactive things with my students. And on Thursdays are panel discussions. So, they’re like three panels. And with students presenting and then they have to run their own like, slides and they have to screenshare and do all of that. And then we go into kind of Q&A. And I can already tell - this is what, the third week of the semester? Yes, it. 

AG: Fourth?

CK: This is all a good question. I say, I can never remember – I don’t remember dates or anything like this. I know, this is actually the third week of the semester for us and I can already tell like, the panel discussion days really are just, you know, gonna go over much better. And so, like, you know, on like the Tuesdays when we’re together, it just sort of looking. Cause the class is on Black Language and Rhetoric, so just sort of giving them some frameworks of ways to think about different performances. And then they share performances on the panel discussion days. But it was also, it was very interesting to me to see. So, some of the students, it looks like a lot of them – ok, and this is really a lot of the students of color here, and students of color and some of the athletes, they’re taking classes like in pairs. They’re taking classes with a friend, and someone that they know. Some of them are like, suitemates. So you can see them in the dorm room together. So, they asked me, like, you know, instead of doing individual presentations, can they work with a partner and then, you know, on the panel, it’ll be a pair talking. And I was like, absolutely. Cause that’s not the kind of thing that I would necessarily assign cause it’s difficult right now – but they are moving forward with that. And so like, and some of the students I will say, you know, if you don’t know anybody in this class but you would like to, can you let me know and maybe I can set something up for you. And so, just following their lead. But again, you know just kind of always going back and asking, what do I see happening everywhere except the academy? Ha ha. That’s working well. What are Black women doing? What are feminists doing? What are Black queer folk doing? How can I bring that vibe and that feel and that purpose-ing to this time I’m spending with these 36 young people, who are also hilarious. I’m having a good time with them. How do I make this experience now different again? Yeah, I feel like this is my first year of teaching all over again.

[40:00]

AG: Wow. 

CK: Really feels that way. 

AG: Yeah, it’s a whole new terrain now, yeah. 

CK: It’s interesting. But, it’s like – the amount of time that I spend like, on Monday trying to figure out like, what will we do on Tuesday. Because again – we’re, I want us to be doing something. Not just sitting in these weird – looking at each other in these weird little boxes. So that’s part of that. 

AG: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, that’s definitely been a struggle. Like, how do we translate what we may have had in an in-person experiences into the digital space. Like, interacting with each other and kind of navigating some of that in terms of communication outside of Zoom has been very, definitely has been an interesting challenge. 

LS: Yeah. And I like that you, uh, you’re naming all the Black women and Black feminism cause I think it goes back to our episode with Loren, Derin, where we was like – just listen to Black women. Ha ha ha. Stop listening to these men, stop listening – just listen to Black women. All you need. Blueprint for freedom and liberation. 

[41:01]

CK: Yeah, I think it’s hard for folk. You know, like I said, if I just think about the different meetings I’ve had to attend and I mean more or less like, I don’t mean the sort of social gatherings where you sort of get together and have a toast and stuff. But even some of that too. When I think about how different it looks, when Black women, who are always thinking about what it means to be in community with one another. How different their digital spaces look and feel. It’s phenomenal. Phenomenal. So. 

AG: Definitely agree with that. In fact, I think any of the outside events, quote unquote, Zoom, and events, most of my own have been either – it’s Black women, Black queer folks who are holding the space. Just, the energy, is it’s alive, and it’s in a way that definitely isn’t felt in kind of, other spaces. 

CK: Just gathering folk up and what – getting folk together. Gathering them up, all of that. Again, it’s a creative process. And if you don’t think of yourself as creative, you don’t think of that as generative and creative, it’s going to feel – I mean like, like I said, I’ve been in some Zoom meetings that have been toxic. I mean, just really tense and uncomfortable. I get mad, cause I’m in my own house. I’m at home. Y’all bringing this bullshit into my house right now. I don’t even know what we get so mad about, I don’t experience anything y’all are talking about as important. And here I am, you up in my house with this. Even like, how many – when I think about particular like, secondary educators who had to like, come – you know, particularly on social media, folk having kinda like a campaign, particularly like in, I wanna say in August before school started back – of people having to say like, you don’t get to tell young people who are at home in a pandemic, in remote learning, whether or not they can get up and go to the bathroom. Whether or not they can eat on the Zoom. You don’t get to police people in they own houses. 

[42:53]

LS: Thank you. 

CK: That you had to tell people that. I’m like, wow! And I feel like, what has also been very difficult to have these conversations at universities. Cause I’m not just talking about really, just my own university, but across different universities, is that, you know, it’s like all these workshops, they want to talk about these best practices in online learning. And these best practices around technology, and digital technologies, and I have just lost my shit with these. I was on a panel, for composition and rhetoric in my field, and it was about online doctoral education. And so, the idea was to gather up these people who do online PhDs in composition and rhetoric, and talk about what’s working there and how you do this work, because all of these graduate – you know, all the graduate programs obviously, graduate students for the most part are learning online and doing the synchronous and asynchronous work too. And people looked at me like I was crazy, because I was the only one on the panel like, this really isn’t about what are the best practices in online learning. What are the best practices in, you know, doctoral education that runs digitally. That’s really not a good question. Like, the question is, how do we do this in a pandemic? Are we not gonna talk about the fact that we are doing online learning in a pandemic?

[44:09]

LS: Mm. 

CK: And it was like, no one did. 

LS: Mhmm. 

CK: And so, and it was interesting cause you saw all these white people turn their cameras off when I started going in. And then I was like, you know, for those of you, those programs who have alienated particularly disabled, queer, brown, Black, graduate students in person – y’all must be doing one hell of a job now online. 

[Facts.]

AG: Mm. 

LS: Say that. Say that again.

CK: You know, the white folks started turning they camera off. And I wanted to say, hey white people, where y’all going? What y’all doing? What y’all doing back there? Ha ha ha ha. Y’all back there oppressing. Yeah, so you know, and it was like, nope – I mean, I think there was like, some people in the audience were interested in what I was talking about. But for the most part, none of the panelists, you know – that wasn’t what – they were talking about best practices. I was like, best practices my ass. 

[45:03]

CK: I feel like I’ve had to go outside of these kind of, educational spaces to think about what it means to have an educational space. Cause they just wanna talk about best practices in digital technologies and learning when that’s really not the question. That’s really not what we’re in, at all. And we’re not having that conversation. Too many schools are just not having that conversation. 

AG: Facts. 

LS: So, Professor, last year, you launched BlackLanguageSyllabus.com in collaboration with Dr. April Baker-Bell. Could you share with us and our listeners more about this project and how it came to be? 

[45:39]

CK: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for asking about that. Yeah, BlackLanguageSyllabus.com came from the demands that we wrote for the Conference on College Communication and Composition. That is four C’s (CCCC), I don’t even know if I got all the C’s right, but anyways, there’s four C’s. And so, April Baker-Bell was the chair of a committee called, Black Linguistic Justice, and it was around that time when everybody was writing these Black Lives Matter statements. From this past summer, and so basically that was the task. But we knew at that moment; we knew that we were going to – the first thing we decided was to not just kind of write this statement, or this white paper, or this position statement for an organization. Even though that was the task. So the first thing was like, how do we reimagine even that task? So we wrote it as a list of demands. And more or less, beyond, more like a manifesto. So, following, like for instance, the Black Panther Party and the 10 Point Platform, following Combahee River Collective Statement, following sort of Black Lives Matters, the activists and those kinds of demands, and so then – we would make it demand centered. So, change the rhetorical persona of this whole practice and this whole product. And then we knew we didn’t want to stop. April and I talk about not stopping there. Because, that we needed something that was more protracted. 

You know, I had always wanted to do – one of these kind of, online syllabi, like what you saw with the Black Lives Matter Syllabus, Lemonade Syllabus, the Dapple Syllabus. I always wanted to do something like this – and it seemed like this was the time to do this kind of thing with the Black Language Syllabus. And again, and the idea around this is that we do not have to wait for institutions to educate us about us. We don’t need to do that. And we want to make sure that this was more of a lived document. That it wasn’t like – a lot of the online syllabi that we see, it really lists references and texts for you to read. But, it doesn’t give you directions on questions you could ask; what you could do with it. It’s a syllabus but it doesn’t move quite into pedagogy. So, we wanted to move more into pedagogy. And we wanted it to make it, not just be this basic, a big annotated bibliography. So, we added this sort of Black Language Magazine that we will have different issues in. And look at different things. And have different conversations and highlight different people. And constantly be adding different kinds of activities for people. Different ways of thinking about Black Language. I blame schools for this, when people just start to lose common sense. Because people have said things to me like, well you don’t really use Black Language in your writing; like, you might have a sentence or two. And I’m like, Black Language is bigger than a sentence. Language is more than just morphosyntactic structures and grammar and sentences. Why are you talking like this? Thinking about that, giving people really a different understanding of what language really is and what it does. And that it’s not about, you know, this discrete set of sentences that are written out on paper and turned into school and then you look to see how the verbs and the nouns match and if that is a standardized version or if that’s a Black English – or if’s just like, standardized whiteness, or is that Black Language? And, realizing that this is really – if that’s your idea of language, then there’s no way again, there’s no way that this is an imaginative and radical language education that you’re offering young Black people in your classes. 

[49:14]

So, part of all of that, so this – this syllabus is trying to do all of that kind of stuff. And also think about really, so, then the recent work with Toya Okonkwo, Kaelyn Muiru, and Kashema Hutchinson – 

AG: Ayy!

LS: Ha ha. 

CK: Sharing – you know, they all took different lenses and they’re really getting us to look at the work that hip hop does, for Black Language. Like, you know, this ain’t going nowhere, ever. Not when you got hip hop, you got YA literature. You got rhetoric, you got all of this ain’t going nowhere. The question is – are, do you know how to ride? I don’t really know. I don’t know about academics. What’s wrong with them? Ha ha. So, that was part of what we were thinking with that. And, also because who tried to change – because it’s like, it’s amazing that like, when I think about once I got my – I got my PhD in 2005. And was really nested with writing about Black Language even more so then than now, although I’ve never left that. The same dumbass questions people would ask me in 2005, they asking me in 2021. And I’m like – if we can’t even have a conversation and go nowhere because people will still have these dumbass questions. You know, and so part of it was again, creating some new dialogue, some new discourse.  And moving some people out the way. Like really. And this is what I mean, it was like this Jim Crow conversation. Where you know, people are adamant, like I have to – I hear this a lot, and I hear this from educators of color, well, you know I really need to train my students. I really need to help my students for the next racist professor, or the next racist teacher they’re going to have, who isn’t going to respect the way that they use Black Language. And I was like, so basically your whole classroom and your whole pedagogy is about preparing young Black people for violence. 

LS: Mm. 

[51:08]

CK: You’ve got to move beyond that. 

AG: Yeah. 

CK: Basically, you can’t imagine anything except Black death. You’re not offering Black life to them. 

LS: Wow. 

CK: And Black Language is what that is. And like, we just can’t get past those kind of Jim Crow questions. If we aren’t always dealing in the Jim Crow question, then like, what can we imagine differently? For our praxis. That’s the work that we’re still doing here. 

AG: Mm. 

CK: And with that syllabus. So, with the project. So we’ll see. 

AG: Well, definitely looking forward to it. 

LS: Yeah. 

AG: Um, so like, thank you for sharing that. For sharing with us the origin story that is now BlackLanguageSyllabus.com. 

CK: Yes, yes. 

AG: Yes. Listeners, if you get a chance, check it out. You will not be disappointed. When’s the first issue? The first issue came out in September – magazine issue came out in September 2020? 

CK: Was that September? Yeah, that was 2020. I’m blanking on dates – yep that was it. And we were just in Teaira McMurtry, we really featured her and her talking really to Black Language users who don’t – not necessarily understand that they’re Black Language users. And to really recognize what this language is. It’s sort of a basic, sort of like a 101 – a Black Language 101: What is it. What it ain’t. How it do, what it do, how it be, all of that. And, claim it. That was the first part. 

[52:31]

AG: What’s in store for this second one?

CK: We featured the Editorial Assistants – Kaelyn, Kashema, Toya. And trying to draw people to their pages and reading and talking about, asking people to do basically – there’s a section called Black Language Homework. And there’s some sections there, and we’re asking people to do the homework on Black Language. So that’s part of that. 

And we want to look at Black ASL, we wanna look at – also look at Black ASL. And think about how that pushes us. You know, I think what Black ASL does for us, is really help us see how embodied Black Language is. Moving us past these spoken morphosyntactic structures. This is embodied. And so, we want to have those conversations. And then we want to hopefully, um, we haven’t confirmed any of this, but we’d like to interview some folk – bring some folk on here who have just groundbreaking work like Geneva Smith, so hear from here and maybe do – so we’re trying, thinking what would it -like mini montages of their work and them. A friend of mine also wants, requested – we’re sort of taking requests and things like that – also wants us to think about Black Comedy and how, you know. It, he raises a good point – like, if you think about different Black comedic moments, and how we take the language and just use it as part of the everyday banter. Even, and that can happen – that, you’re seeing that digitally, but you’re also seeing that with comedy. Even so, you know everybody, I think Kashema, ha ha, Kashema wrote, you know, ‘Where the Schoolin’ Reside’ – she had this hashtag #wheretheschoolingreside, talking about Black Language Syllabus and I just kept thinking about the way everybody took up ‘Where the Money Reside.’ 

LS: Mhmm. 

[54:14]

CK: And so, we – how that becomes, you know – particularly, and comedians - how we do this with comedians. And going back to like, you know, even when I was what – what was I, junior high school with Bébé’s Kids? Like, that’s like. 

[Ha ha ha ha.]

LS: Ha ha, I love Bébé’s Kids. Ha ha. 

CK: You say Bébé’s Kids, you know what I’m talking about right. We really have to think about that and notice how we do that. And notice the role of Black Comedy and Black – the kind of Black Commentary that makes and the way that it does it with Black Language. So those are some things coming – coming soon. 

AG: We’re looking forward to it. Excited – definitely excited.

CK: We’re excited. And we’re just honestly – it just gives me a chance. Like, April’s my girl. Like, my soul sister so it just gives us a chance to talk trash. Ha ha ha. 

[All chuckled.]

AG: Talk trash and create.

CK: I mean, we’re creating and doing work – but we’re also just being, having sister moments. 

AG: I love it. Thank you again, so much, Professor Carmen, for your time. And just, yeah. There’s so much. I just feel that this conversation could go on forever. 

LS: Yes. It could, ha ha. 

CK: Thank you all for inviting me. LaToya, I hope we meet in person one day soon. And Derin, I just want you to know I can hear you clapping back there. Like when you be talking clapping, ha ha ha. 

AG: Wow. 

LS: Talk about Black Language, yeah. 

[All laughing.]

AG: That’s that non-verbal. You know I gotta keep – 

CK: It’s like a rhythm and it’s on rhythm, it’s on time. I like – ha ha. 

[55:53]

LS: Professor, can you share, um with our listeners how they can follow your work? So if you have social media, websites, upcoming projects? 

CK: Yeah. I did, what I’m thinking through something, through teaching or different digital projects that I am working on – they’re housed really at CarmenKynard.org, so C-A-R-M-E-N-K-Y-N-A-R-D.org. If I’m pissed off about something, Imma write about it. If I’m gon air some dirty laundry, Imma do that there. There’s the blog function. I don’t blog as much, there’s a blog function there but it also links to different articles, things like that that I’ve read. All of that is there. The links to Black Language Syllabus.com. That’s there, or you know, my courses. Right now, I’m teaching Black Language and Rhetoric. That course is coming off of a website called Funkdafied.org. So yes, Funkdafied.org, as in Da Brat, that song. 

LS: I was about to say, ha ha ha. Rat tat tat tat. 

CK: Exactly. Anyways, so you’ll see some of the student projects and stuff there. There’s a place called, I think – there’s a section called Daily Rhetorics and so like, the students who are presenting tomorrow, their slideshows will be on there. So, basically you know, everyday that I teach, I have an agenda. Every time that I teach, there’s an agenda and I put it up online so people can see. I’m not really. I’m not on twitter. Because that’s too much reading – um. Yeah, that was a lot of work – that’s a lot of work. 

I am on Instagram. Mostly just like, playing around on Instagram, laughing at, looking at stuff. That’s about it. So I am on Instagram and I would say for the most part, just like, curating these different websites, these different digital classes that I teach and then my own kind of website and blog space. That’s about it for me. 

[57:37]

CK: Alright, thank y’all for having me!

AG: Thank you, thank you again! Um, Carmen, and hopefully this conversation will continue. 

CK: I hope so. 

AG: So yeah – thank you listeners.

[57:50] 


[Music Fade In ♫ - “That Lady” by the Isley Brothers]


[Music Stops ♫]


[58:23]

AG: Hey there listeners. You’ve just been listening to “That Lady” by the Isley Brothers. So, LaToya – who’s that lady?

LS: Ha ha ha. Listen. That lady is CLEARLY the Black lady that all y’all should be listening to and citing. 

AG: Ay. 

LS: Can I get an amen? Ha ha ha. 

AG: Hey! Ay! Yes. Yes! I mean. 

[Laughing.]

AG: Yeah, I was surprised, ha ha ha. 

LS: [Laughing] Oh my goodness – I’m so sorry – crack myself up. 

[Both laughing.]

AG: Oh. Laughter. It’s medicine, I swear. It’s like I’m still seeing stars after that conversation. It just feels so – I feel fed. 

LS: Yesss. So fed. So full. So like, inspiring and empowering too. 

AG: Yeah. 

LS: I think, so Professor Kynard gave us so much just then. And she did not have to. But she left us with a parting gift after that conversation. So listeners – ha. 

AG: A ha. 

LS: We, she dropped several songs, artists in the beginning, and we was like oh, what do we choose, what should we choose?  And Derin, you was like, let’s do the Isley Brothers. 

AG: Hey. 

LS: Fun fact. So, ok. Yeah – I’ll come back to the fun fact. But – there’s several fun facts. Like, the Isley Brothers started in the ‘50s y’all. The 50s. Ha ha. 

AG: Seven decades!

LS: Yes! So, we were floored. Cause we were like – what? You know what songs the Isley Brother – “Shout!”. 

AG: Did not know that. I’m still sitting with that. Just like, wait, what. “Its’ Our Thing”, right? No, sorry – “It’s Your Thing”, wow. Messing that up.

[Singing.]

LS: Ok. So, like – the fun fact is – that in conclusion, the Isley Brothers been – how many Black babies you think the Isley Brothers been responsible for helping to make?

AG: A ha ha ha. No no no no, ha ha. We not going into that. 

[Laughing.]

LS: What year did they make that song? Babymaking, they were just like, in conclusion of everything we’ve given y’all, babymaking music, we gonna bless y’all one more time.  Ha ha, bring some Black babies into the world. 

AG: Here you go. Well we thank you, Isley Brothers. For your, for your gift – the gift of your songs. Your hits. 

LS: Yeah. I’m still just like, floored that from the 50s to like, present day is – what they’ve done. Wild. 

AG: Yeah, definitely. 

[1:01:09]

AG: Do you know – in thinking about this conversation that we’ve just had with Dr. Kynard – how many people have you sat with who can talk about the work of Sylvia Wynter, not from the standpoint of like reading her work, but actually being taught by Sylvia Wynter? I’m still gathering all that. That must have been an experience. 

LS: Must have been. And to answer your question – not nary a one. 

AG: Ha. 

LS: I thought we was all in the same boat, struggling through Sylvia Wynter. Sylvia Wynter’s writing, just like, I’m just here to let y’all know that y’all some dumb hoes. That’s not really what Sylvia Wynter – that’s not really what she’s about. Sylvia Wynter’s just absolutely like brilliant and on another wavelength and to even tap into her brilliance is a lot, a lot, a lot of work. For me. Like, Sylvia Wynter amongst other Black women scholars and activists are like foundational to how I theorize Abolition Science. So yeah, so I am also just like, oh beside myself that someone can be a student of Sylvia Wynter. And like, a real life sense – not like I read her work sense. 

AG: Yes. And how that has even shaped um, Professor Carmen’s work. That interaction in the architectural text. And for me, like seeing how – hearing that and then like, remembering and seeing how she had laid out her syllabus and her zines when it came to the reading resources. Resources for days, y’all. Like, daysss. And this is the type of reading resources, you know, these are books that, if I – even if I wasn’t pursuing my Doctorate, that I would want to pick up and read. She definitely was not lying when she was talking about being in good company. 

LS: Mhmm. Yeah. So, we hope y’all enjoyed. We all owe Derin a big thank you for even thinking of this one – cause OOh, still taking it in.

AG: Appreciate that, Toya. And just, you know – definitely wanna extend gratitude in being open, right being open and also just in our collaboration with having this all come together. You know, in this space. And this uh, space that is Abolition Science. 

LS: Mhmm. 

[1:03:21]

LS: Alright y’all – until next time. 

AG: Peace. Don’t forget to wear your mask. 

LS: He he, yes. 


[Music Fade In ♫]


LS: Check out our website, AbolitionScience.org, where you can find transcripts of each episode and links to many of the resources that we mentioned. 

AG: You can also follow us on Twitter, @abolition_sci and on Instagram @AbolitionScience. 


[Music Stops♫]

[1:03:49]


Mentions & Resources:


Dr. Carmen Kynard’s Websites & Resources:


Listening Mentioned by Aderinsola Gilbert:


Music Artists Mentioned by LaToya Strong:


Songs & Playlists Mentioned by Dr. Carmen Kynard:


Orgs, Collectives, & Individuals Mentioned by Dr. Carmen Kynard:


Texts/Books/Articles Mentioned by Dr. Carmen Kynard:


Abolition Science Patreon: 

Science, Consent & Centering Survivors

Science, Consent & Centering Survivors

Instruments for Multiple Words

Instruments for Multiple Words

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