Facilitating Difficult Dialogues in the Classroom: A Pedagogical Imperative

The recent social unrest in the United States, sparked by increased social media attention to the deaths of Black individuals at the hands of police (e.g., “The Counted,” 2016), has led to a national conversation about the issues of institutional racism and racial injustice. This growing conversation has been fostered by the Black Lives Matter movement, which is illuminating these problems for larger segments of the U.S. (and international) community. The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States emerged in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 by a self-appointed vigilante, George Zimmerman, and picked up momentum in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in 2014 by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson. As explained by activist, and cofounder of #BlackLivesMatter Alicia Garza (2014), “When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity,” and in particular that these are the “consequence of state violence” (para. 12).