Emerging Research on Black Identity and Racial Consciousness to Conclude Black History Month
Each February, folks across the United States acknowledge Black History Month, “paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society” and “celebrat[ing] the contributions of so many [B]lack American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history” (The Library of Congress; The White House). This year, the feel of Black History Month has undoubtedly been a bit different, with broad federal policy changes being proposed and implemented by the Trump administration to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, revisit “Civil Rights-era equal employment opportunity initiatives,” eliminate some “identity-based observances,” and change how Black history is taught in K-12 schools and higher education institutions (CNN). Nonetheless, various organizations nationwide, including Michigan State University, have spent the last month offering educators resources to help their students learn about Black History Month and putting on copious events “highlighting the U.S. history of Black and African American people” (MSU Today). As readers wrap up these last few weeks of commemoration, reflection, and study, they are encouraged to consider how they can incorporate lessons learned into their personal and professional lives – beyond the narrow confines of Black History Month.
Furthermore, engaged individuals are invited to grapple with extensive new research that is constantly being generated related to Black history, culture, experiences, and excellence. An example of such scholarship comes from Dr. Theodore S. Ransaw, former Outreach Specialist for the Office of K-12 Outreach and current Diversity, Equity and Community Partnerships Specialist for Michigan State University’s College of Education. This February, Dr. Ransaw published a new book – Thoughtful Being: How the Mind’s Eye Plays a Role in the Formation of Black Identity and Racial Consciousness: 3 Ways to Think about Psychology Differently. Centrally, this text explores identity formation and presents “the interrelated idea that racial identity is a dialectical performance that occurs in the mind between the ‘self’ and the ‘other,’ that racial consciousness is not static but a process that occurs in stages, and that racial cognition is a conscious awareness of reality in a social context” (Ransaw, 2025, p. xviii). In doing so, Dr. Ransaw digs into often-overlooked “African influences on philosophy and psychology as the missing thread that ties together race and identity” (Ransaw, 2025, p. xviii).
While Dr. Ransaw’s new book is more rooted in cultural psychology than educational administration or policy, its insights should resonate with a wide variety of K-12-minded folks, including teachers and administrators. For one, the text’s introduction notes how these individuals have the potential to inform their students’ identity formation (Ransaw, 2025, p. xiv). By walking the reader through this process, the book leaves educators in a better position to support the young people they interact with daily. Additionally, this new work details some specific strategies to aid students’ personal development. For instance, anecdotally, Dr. Ransaw explains how past “instructors awakened [his] consciousness and animated [his] identity through the use of well-informed and well-delivered stories” (Ransaw, 2025, p. xiv). Such an example provides not just an understanding of how certain students form their Black identity and racial consciousness but also some of the tools that can assist them along the way. Finally, Dr. Ransaw’s book offers education stakeholders an alternative conceptual framework for understanding young people’s development in a manner that challenges “the saturation of European-framed perspectives on history as the exemplar of the norm and the subsequent projection of Whiteness on history, science, and medicine, including mental health,” which “has left many researchers and scientists with cultural amnesia about the origins and influences of African metaphysics, psychology, and philosophy” (Ransaw, 2025, p. xvii). Cumulatively, then, this new book offers essential lessons to readers firmly in the K-12 space and primarily concerned with on-the-ground educational conditions.
Importantly, the salience of Dr. Ransaw’s new text for educators is also informed by the fact that this piece is far from his first literary contribution to Emerging Research and education scholarship more broadly. That is, this work can be read in the context of a host of other important considerations of pedagogy, education policy, and student learning. For instance, newsletter readers might revisit Dr. Ransaw’s edited volume Emerging Trends in Education Policy: Unapologetic Progressive Conversations, prepared in conjunction with Dr. Brian Boggs, Assistant Professor of Policy and Educational Leadership at the University of Michigan – Dearborn. This book provides practitioners space to consider “impactful policies, strategies, initiatives, and approaches to educational reform globally, nationally, as well as locally” based on their lived experiences and unique identities (July 2023 Emerging Research; MSU College of Education) Relatedly, readers might explore Dr. Ransaw’s new book through the lens of his Mindful Teaching Practices for Black Male Achievement: A Student-Focused Guide for Educators, which offers ideas about how educators can best support Black students based on findings from psychology (November 2022 Emerging Research). Together, these texts offer a comprehensive look at the formation of Black identity and the ramifications of this process for teachers, staff members, and administrators working with Black students in Michigan schools.
In reviewing Dr. Ransaw’s Thoughtful Being, Dr. Richard Majors, Honorary Professor and Senior Consulting Counseling Psychologist, describes the new book as an “opus” that is “evidence-based and thoughtful” as well as “theoretically and methodologically rigorous” as it “offers deeper insight into a variety of current, historical, and classic issues that the Black community has faced, is facing, and has grappled with for decades” (Ransaw, 2025). With that, Dr. Majors explains that this new text “is not just an academic work but a piece of scholarship with practical implications, aiming to increase our understanding of identity and its connection to important recent movements” (Ransaw, 2025). As such, Thoughtful Being offers the perfect example of emerging research that commits itself to the highest academic standards but that simultaneously does not get so caught up in the process of inquiry that it loses sight of the need to inform folks’ daily lives. In the near term, we invite readers to wrap up Black History Month 2025 with some of these new and more familiar texts from Dr. Ransaw and to incorporate the wisdom from them into their lives until the arrival of Black History Month 2026. As they dig into this literature, individuals with questions can contact Dr. Theodore S. Ransaw at ransawth@msu.edu.