Ms. Fadhila Hadjeris
BIO
Fadhila Hadjeris is a Ph.D. Candidate majoring in Social Sciences and Comparative Education.at the School of Education at UCLA. Prior to undertaking her graduate studies at UCLA, she has successfully completed a Fulbright Scholarship at Wellesley college. Fadhila served as a teaching assistant and teaching fellow at UCLA Department of Linguistics, Department of European Languages and Transcultural studies as well as the Department of Education. Fadhila’s research interests center on the implementation of Global Citizenship Education in the Algerian/Maghrebi context with a focus on the school curriculum and teachers’ pedagogy using Race and post-colonial feminist theories.
Presentation
Session 3-C. Colorism in North Africa: Implications for Equity and Inclusion in Educational Spaces
Description
As a practice of discrimination based on phenotypic traits, colorism symbolizes the favoritism of lighter skin tones, straight hair, and facial features that are quite Eurocentric over those with darker skin, curly hair, and stereotypically Afrocentric facial features (Russell, Wilson & Hall, 1992). Despite the indigenous nature of Blackness in north Africa regions, such as Algeria, the colonial legacy of conflating blackness with slavery contributes to the prejudiced definition of a sense of belonging and the naturalization of discourses of exclusion based on skin color (Gross-Wyrtzen, 2022).
While there are different studies that addressed the mechanisms of race and racial formation in North Africa, there is scarcity of research that addresses issues of exclusion from the lens of colorism. In this presentation, the researcher will offer a historical critical analysis of race in Algeria to explain how both colonial divide and rule strategy and postcolonial Arab nationalism contributed to the marginalization of Black Algerians, both Arabs and Berber. Guided by the concept of colorism, the study will then derive from the experiences of Algerians to demonstrate the sense of “not-from-hereness” (Gross-Wyrtzen, 2022) that Algerians with stereotypically Afrocentric facial features encounter. Based on these findings, the researcher will suggest a future agenda for the study of colorism in North Africa regions for a more inclusive and equitable educational spaces.
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While there are different studies that addressed the mechanisms of race and racial formation in North Africa, there is scarcity of research that addresses issues of exclusion from the lens of colorism. In this presentation, the researcher will offer a historical critical analysis of race in Algeria to explain how both colonial divide and rule strategy and postcolonial Arab nationalism contributed to the marginalization of Black Algerians, both Arabs and Berber. Guided by the concept of colorism, the study will then derive from the experiences of Algerians to demonstrate the sense of “not-from-hereness” (Gross-Wyrtzen, 2022) that Algerians with stereotypically Afrocentric facial features encounter. Based on these findings, the researcher will suggest a future agenda for the study of colorism in North Africa regions for a more inclusive and equitable educational spaces.
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