Racial micropolitical literacy: Examining the sociopolitical realities of teachers of color co-constructing student transformational resistance

Abstract

In connection with the historical legacy and imaginations of youth of Color advocating for more just and equitable futures, I consider the complex political terrain through which teachers of Color cultivate students’ agency for social change within the narrow confines of schooling institutions. In this article, I conceptualize racial micropolitical literacy to analyze how teachers identify context-specific reproductions of whiteness and interlocking systems of oppression while learning to politically confront, navigate, and transform race and power through daily, embodied, and interactional practices. Through video recordings, ethnographic field notes, and interview data, I apply this framework to document the day-to-day practices of an Asian American teacher co-constructing student transformational resistance within a southeast Los Angeles, California public middle school. My analysis reveals that the teacher: (1) used critical artifacts to reconstruct carceral conditions of schooling into communal learning spaces of solidarity and activism, (2) engaged students in everyday dialogue about racism, power, and just possibilities, and (3) subverted scripted curricula by drawing on students and his own counternarratives as resources for sociopolitical learning. These practices were improvisationally leveraged on the day of a US national student-led walkout to expand multiple opportunities for politically marginalized Latinx students to organize collective action against gun violence. Offering a more intergenerational and intersectional lens of resistance and social change, I provide implications for eradicating oppressive schooling conditions that constrain the potential of students and teachers of Color as movement-makers and civic leaders in daily classroom life.