Spearheaded by the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Travon Martin, the #BlackLivesMatter movement was born. Black womxn activists—Alicia Garza, Opal Tometti, and Patrice Cullors Khan—employed social media as a tool of engagement and connection to share their pain and discontent for yet another Black person who had fallen victim to state violence at the hands of citizen vigilantism. Since its inception in 2013, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has become the premier organizing and activism medium for Black youth, particularly in teaching and learning spaces that center critical analysis of whiteness, white privilege, and white supremacy.  

In 2019, four hundred years after the first Africans arrived on the shores of Jamestown, VA, Nana Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana, launched the Year of Return, an initiative intended to encourage African diasporans, specifically descendants of those who survived the Maafa (the African Holocaust) to return to Africa, to Ghana, to visit, invest and ultimately repatriate. This event, produced and engaged in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter, provided various mediums for diasporans to amplify and expand their interpretation of Black liberation, and hence, how the pursuit of such is viewed through various academic, social, and community-based initiatives. 

In response to the murder of George Floyd and the civil unrest of the summer of 2020 that followed, this All #BlackLivesMatter Special Issue of Understanding & Dismantling Privilege seeks to address the diversity of those who identify as Black and honor the lived experiences and social identities of said persons. Additionally, this collection has been curated to support expanding institutional conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion to intersectionality, justice, and the implementation of anti-oppressive frameworks as tools to transform systems and institutions.

A special thank you to Bonyi Bofor Akosua Kalesa Queen Mother Shemariah J. Arki, EdD, assistant professor and director of the Center for Pan African Culture at Kent State University for her editorial contributions.

Eddie Moore Jr., PhD

Co-Founder, Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Journal

Founder/President, The Privilege Institute

This Special Issue in the journal of Understanding & Dismantling Privilege features studies that utilize Critical Content Analysis (CCS) as a methodological approach to research the topic of race, racial oppression, and racial privilege across a variety of texts. Unlike reflections on texts or creative pieces,

Critical Content Analysis is a form of textual analysis with a critical “stance of locating power in social practices in order to challenge conditions of inequity” (Short, 2017, p. 1).

The editors for "Special Issue: Critical Content Analysis of Race, Racism, & Whitness” are Understanding & Dismantling Privilege Editor Jamie Utt with Co-Editor Kathy Short from the University of Arizona.

This Double Special Issue was envisioned as an international collaborative endeavor between colleagues located at educational institutions in both Canada and the United States. The White Privilege Symposium Canada (WPSC) event, held at Brock University from September 30 – October 1, 2016, an initiative of the Antiracism Task Force set the stage for the inception of this collaboration. The two journals provide a platform for our mutual desire to exchange knowledge across Canadian and US borders specifically regarding strategies and action plans that are being used by individuals and organizations that strive to merge duality between environments (the world of social activists and that of academics). These works provide inroads into a critical understanding about White privilege as articulated through heterogenous writings, reflections, workshops and papers offered at WPSC..." To continue reading this editorial, and to read the other half of this special double issue, visit Brock Education: A Journal of Educational Research and Practice at

https://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/brocked/home/issue/view/36

Inaugural Issue