RECKONING WITH THE HARM OF ANTI-BLACKNESS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION: A REPARATORY JUSTICE RESEARCH APPROACH

Volume 28, Issue 2, 2022, pp. 95-110

DOI: 10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2022036667

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James Holly Jr.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, 3522 G.G. Brown Laboratory, 2350 Hayward St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

Lauren Thomas Quigley
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

ABSTRACT

Anti-Blackness has a consistent and insidious influence in engineering study and practice, hindering Black engineers' access and experiences in the classroom and beyond. Within engineering education research, some scholars have sought to understand, describe, and increase the presence of Black people in the discipline. However, their research approaches have sustained many of the same anti-Black practices and perspectives endemic to engineering in the United States. We present this position paper to initiate a discussion regarding harms caused in engineering education research that are specifically anti-Black in nature, and to prompt exploration of reparatory justice as a framework to reimagine research about Black people in engineering. We draw on the work of Joyce E. King's reparatory justice curriculum as a conceptual framework calling for undoing mis-education regarding chattel slavery and centering African epistemology and wisdom through what she calls heritage knowledge (intergenerational cultural memory) to rectify our research praxis.

KEY WORDS: engineering, anti-Blackness, reparation, higher education, epistemology

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