“Asheville is in a crisis. We have the worst academic outcomes for Black children in the state of North Carolina.”
This startling statistic, referencing Asheville’s record of the largest racial achievement gap between Black and white students statewide for all of NC’s 115 school districts, has prompted the publication of the first edition of UNC Asheville’s Moja: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Africana Studies, with a special focus on responding to the structural inequalities faced by Black children in Asheville’s educational system.
With papers including, “Closing Opportunity Gaps Through Love: Challenges and Opportunities,” and “Addressing Unseen Suffering and Reimagining Possibility Through Community Engagement: Lessons from the Back of the Bus,” this edition of Moja offers best practices for closing the opportunity gap for Black children and helping them to thrive in schools locally, from people who have been educated in those systems and are currently scholars, teachers, activists, and parents of children being educated in similar institutions. Authors include expert faculty from UNC System institutions UNC Asheville and Western Carolina University, and neighboring university Lenoir-Rhyne.
The full journal can be accessed for free here: http://libjournals.unca.edu/moja/issues/special-issue-closing-the-education-gap/
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