More than My Race: Deconstructing Racial Identity Categories through Digital Literacies

Lakeya Afolalu University of Washington

Abstract

Digital literacies have been recognized as significant practices for the identity formation of immigrant youth. However, the significance of self-sponsored digital literacies in the identity formation of African immigrant youth requires further scholarly examination. Drawing on racial and postcolonial theories, this study examines the identity constructions of a ten-year-old Nigerian girl through her digital art practices across various art apps. Data are interpreted through narrative analytical frameworks. Findings include that family and school contexts constrained her identity and how she desired to be known; digital literacies, specifically digital art literacies, facilitated her deconstruction of assigned US racial identity categories and construction of her desired identity; and digital literacies, such as coding and YouTube Nollywood videos, facilitated new friendships, familial bonds, and ethnic identity membership. Given the limited focus of existing literature on the agency and determination of African immigrant youth, this study makes visible how digital literacies can function as active mechanisms to deconstruct processes of racialization, rigid racial identity categorizations, and constructions of selfhood.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
2024-11-01
DOI
10.58680/rte2024592155
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (2)

  1. Computers and Composition
  2. Written Communication
Also cites 47 works outside this index ↓
  1. I’m still Nigerian: Navigating race through digital literacies
    Journal of Literacy Research  
  2. Matrix analysis as a complementary analytic strategy in qualitative inquiry
    Qualitative Health Research  
  3. Identity constructions and negotiations among 1.5- and second-generation nigerians: The i…
    Harvard Educational Review  
  4. (Con)texts for cultural and linguistic hybridity among somali diaspora youth
    The New Educator  
  5. “I would love for teachers to teach in a way that relates to my culture”: African immigra…
    Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy  
  6. Navigating Black racial identities: Literacy insights from an immigrant family
    Teachers College Record  
  7. New Blacks: Language, DNA, and the construction of the African American/Dominican boundar…
    Genealogy  
  8. Stories of experience and narrative inquiry
    Educational Researcher  
  9. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color
    Stanford Law Review  
  10. Diaspora literacies: An exploration of what reading means to young african immigrant women
    Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy  
  11. “J’aime to be funny!”: Humor, learning, and identity construction in high school english …
    The Modern Language Journal  
  12. “Be real Black for me”: Imagining BlackCrit in education
    Urban Education  
  13. Critical race ethnography in education: Narrative, inequality and the problem of epistemology
    Race Ethnicity and Education  
  14. Writing ethnographic fieldnotes
  15. Rethinking African culture and identity: The afropolitan model
    Journal of African Cultural Studies  
  16. Leveraging technology: How Black girls enact critical digital literacies for social change
    Learning, Media and Technology  
  17. Language and learning in the digital age
  18. Becoming Black: Rap and hip-hop, race, gender, identity, and the politics of ESL learning
    TESOL Quarterly  
  19. Transcultural digital literacies: Cross-border connections and self-representations in an…
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  20. “It was kind of a given that we were all multilingual”: Transnational youth identity work…
    Linguistics and Education  
  21. Family, culture, literacy and the kindergarten classroom: Perspectives of an immigrant teacher
    International Journal of Early Childhood Learning  
  22. “It’s ok. She doesn’t even speak English”: Narratives of language, culture, and identity …
    Urban Education  
  23. Toward participatory communal citizenship: Rendering visible the civic teaching, learning…
    American Educational Research Journal  
  24. Exploring factors that facilitate acculturation strategies and academic success of west a…
    Education and Urban Society  
  25. L2 literacy and the design of the self: A case study of a teenager writing on the internet
    TESOL Quarterly  
  26. Transnational mexican youth negotiating languages, identities, and cultures online: A chr…
    TESOL Quarterly  
  27. Multilingual literacies in transnational digitally mediated contexts: An exploratory stud…
    Language and Education  
  28. Between home and homeland: Facilitating theatre with Ethiopian youth
    Research in Drama Education  
  29. Normalizing Black students/youth and their families’ digital and STEAM literacies
    The Reading Teacher  
  30. A space called home: An immigrant adolescent’s digital literacy practices
    Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy  
  31. Racialized tensions in the multimodal literacies of Black immigrant youth
    Teachers College Record  
  32. Applying critical race theory as a tool for examining the literacies of Black immigrant youth
    Teachers College Record  
  33. Introducing offlineness: Theorizing (digital) literacy engagements
    Journal of Literacy Research  
  34. A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures
    Harvard Educational Review  
  35. Racial formation in the United States
  36. From Haiti to Detroit through Black immigrant languages and literacies
    Journal of Literacy Research  
  37. Language arts lessons: leveraging digital literacies for equity and social justice
    Language Arts  
  38. Socialization, culture, and identities of Black immigrant children: What educators need t…
    Education and Urban Society  
  39. Telling identities: In search of an analytic tool for investigating learning as a cultura…
    Educational Researcher  
  40. Languages and literacies in translocation: Experiences and perspectives of a transnationa…
    Journal of Literacy Research  
  41. Learning music literacies across transnational school settings
    Journal of Literacy Research  
  42. When racial, transnational, and immigrant identities, literacies, and languages meet: Bla…
    Teachers College Record  
  43. The Oxford handbook of language and race
  44. Silencing invisibility: Toward a framework for Black immigrant literacies
    Teachers College Record  
  45. Black immigrants in the United States: Transraciolinguistic justice for imagined futures …
    Annual Review of Applied Linguistics  
  46. Learning by observing and pitching in and the connections to Native and Indigenous knowle…
    Advances in child development and behavior  
  47. Belonging and the politics of belonging
    Patterns of Prejudice  
CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →