Care-sickness: Black Women Educators, Ethic of Care, and a Hermeneutic of Suspicion

This article builds upon earlier work exploring the implications of care theory for Black women educators by exploring the issue of colorblindness more broadly, as it relates to libratory education. Using the work of Freire (1970, 1998a, 1998b) and Noddings (1992a, 1995, 2001, 2005b), the authors revisit the relationship between libratory education and ethic of care paying particular attention to its relevance to the unique circumstances of Black women educators. The authors argue that Black women educators embody a qualitatively different ethic of care--one that is nuanced by their historical, social, spiritual, and political situatedness. They contend that as Black women educators, they cannot divorce their historicized disposition toward libratory education from their lived experiences of multiple and competing forms of oppression. Normative notions of trust, home, and power relevant to care theory are complicated by the lived experiences of Black women educators. They use the narratives of exemplary Black women educators to develop a preliminary framework for libratory ethic of care that is sensitive to Black women educators' contradictory status as "oppressed liberators." Lastly, they introduce the concept of care-sickness through a brief exploration of the implications for Black women who practice their ethic of care within multiple contexts of oppression.