Anti-racist Praxis Research Articles

Introduction: critical development studies—critique and radical praxis

Introduction: critical development studies—critique and radical praxis

Experimenting with anarchistic approaches to collaborative planning: The Planning Free School of Chattanooga

ABSTRACTUrban planners have long recognized that collaborative planning processes can lead to more equitable development outcomes. Despite this recognition, calls for greater inclusion, community self-determination, and equitable decision making appear louder than ever before. This study combines narrative and dialogic analysis to examine the transformative impacts and limits of the Planning Free School of Chattanooga, an experimental collaborative planning initiative launched in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to engage historically underrepresented and marginalized residents in local planning conversations and decision making. The Planning Free School model was rooted in anarchistic principles of horizontal, learner-driven engagement, critical self-reflection, capacity building, and antiracist praxis. Over 5 months, 52 workshops, organized as issue-based discussion groups, critical conversations, transformative place-making sessions, and skill shares, were conducted as part of the initiative. The study contends that the planning free school model may hold promise as a collaborative planning model for 4 reasons: (a) its independent, horizontal structure may attract participants who distrusted city staff; (b) the creative, nontraditional format of workshops can help participants reckon with local legacies of violence, exclusion, and uneven development; (c) it can support capacity building through a learner-driven, do-it-yourself curriculum; and (d) its flexibility and radical openness can allow participants to improvise and adapt to evolving political situations.

Racial Mixedness in the Contemporary United States and South Africa: On the Politics of Impurity and Antiracist Praxis

Abstract This article is motivated by a concern about the increasing embrace of apolitical and ahistorical notions of racial “mixedness” and “impurity.” It draws on recent examples from the United States and South Africa in order to direct attention to the difficulties of identifying logics that, on the face of it, seem to evade conventional claims of racism, but nevertheless, as it will argue, rely on racist notions that must be challenged. These include examples in the United States and South Africa of individuals self-identifying as a stand-alone mixed race category (and furthermore espousing this as a “pure” category of belonging) as well as white Afrikaners in South Africa uncritically appropriating claims to mixed heritage. This article is critical of these phenomena because of what it finds to be a lack of politically and historically situated understandings of the notions of purity and impurity and their relation to racism.

Racial Mixedness in the Contemporary United States and South Africa: On the Politics of Impurity and Antiracist Praxis

Abstract This article is motivated by a concern about the increasing embrace of apolitical and ahistorical notions of racial “mixedness” and “impurity.” It draws on recent examples from the United States and South Africa in order to direct attention to the difficulties of identifying logics that, on the face of it, seem to evade conventional claims of racism, but nevertheless, as it will argue, rely on racist notions that must be challenged. These include examples in the United States and South Africa of individuals self-identifying as a stand-alone mixed race category (and furthermore espousing this as a “pure” category of belonging) as well as white Afrikaners in South Africa uncritically appropriating claims to mixed heritage. This article is critical of these phenomena because of what it finds to be a lack of politically and historically situated understandings of the notions of purity and impurity and their relation to racism.

Learning to Teach About Race

This article examines the intellectual and experiential journey of a South Asian American (SAA) feminist who teaches about race and anti-racist praxis in the United States. It starts with her struggles trying to teach about race through the lens of White privilege and ends by sharing her current teaching practices which foreground the concept of race as a learned identity. Her pedagogy, informed by Black feminist and postcolonial theory/Subaltern Studies and her research on the racialized experience of SAAs in the United States, challenges dominant notions of race in three ways, namely: (a) race is not a tangible, objective phenomenon, but rather a learned social construct open to varying attributions and interpretations; (b) the SAA racial identity disrupts the Black–White binary by adding a third racial category; and (c) religion may be treated as an attribute of race. Some of her strategies to complicate and disrupt the narrow and binary ways of thinking about race in the classroom are to (a) develop a common language of race; (b) include diverse voices and experiences beyond the binary conception of race; (c) decenter White, Western perspectives; and (d) rethink systems of domination beyond White privilege.

Post-Racialism in the Classroom as Anti-Racist Praxis in Cuba?

Although Cuba is among the world’s most racially egalitarian countries, racism exists on the island despite years of progress and struggle for racial equality. One of the key concepts used by Cuban teachers to explain race and racism on the island is the discourse of post-racialism, through which the contemporary significance of race is denied. While a silencing tool at times, Cuban post-racial discourse has also been an effective strategy for countering racism on the island for well over a century. Based on a mixed method study (survey and interview) conducted in the Havana area, this article investigates teachers’ understandings of race and post-racialism in Cuba with a focus on education, schools and teachers’ work using a critical race theory framework. The findings reveal that teachers understand themselves as frontline race workers and vanguard anti-racists. At the same time, the pedagogy and practice in which they are engaged relies heavily on a color-blind, post-racial approach which is derived from the larger Cuban race narrative as well as from the teachers’ personal and communal experiences with race and racism.

Post-racial futures: imagining post-racialist anti-racism(s)

Can the theoretical insights of post-racialism contribute to the development of a progressive anti-racism? Drawing on interviews with anti-racist organizations in London, this article explores the translation of the theoretical insights of post-racialism into anti-racist praxis. Theoretically informed and empirically engaged, this article argues that post-racialism faces its own set of paradoxes and practical dilemmas complicating the process of deriving post-racialist practice(s) from post-racialist theory. The article concludes that, in spite of the challenges, the powerful questions that post-racialism raises create a much needed ethico-political space for critical reflection on the concept and category of race. Ultimately, post-racialist insights may refine understandings of the discriminatory practices performed in the name of race and point towards a methodological approach of working with and against race in anti-racism.

Taking the bull by the horns: the critical perspectives and pedagogy of two Black teachers in Anglophone Montreal schools

In the midst of the complicated racial-linguistic landscape that is Montreal, Quebec, the educational experiences of the relatively small population of Anglophone Blacks are often invisibilized within the education literature, and relatively little attention is paid to the nature of Black students’ and educators’ struggles with racism and Eurocentricity within Anglophone schools in Montreal. This article makes a contribution to the empirical literature concerning these groups. It shares the experiences of, and racism witnessed by, two Black teachers in Montreal. Their narratives paint a compelling picture of the consequences and effects of educating Black students within a colour-blind context in Montreal schools, as well as the pedagogies and personal philosophies they work through to resist and challenge the context of denial within Canadian education. The article ends with a discussion of the ways in which the teachers’ pedagogies align with critical anti-racist praxis, and nascent forms of African-centred pedagogy.

Queer Trouble: Centring Race in Queer and Feminist Politics

Those involved in queer politics were caught somewhat off guard when Judith Butler refused Berlin's Christopher Street Day (Gay Pride) Civil Courage Prize being awarded to her due to the failure of the organisers to distance themselves from a political programme that uses racist discourse for political gain. This paper will not focus on the homonationalist organisations associated with the festival organisers but rather on progressive queer and feminist groups who claim an anti-racist position yet do not change their white-dominated structures to engage in anti-racist praxis. It remains a challenge for white-dominated progressive feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)/queer groups to change racist structures. This has the effect of propagating an exclusionary white queer and feminist politics. To counter this, white allies need to commit to an accountable positionality.

A Response to Ben Pitcher's “Obama and the Politics of Blackness: Antiracism in the ‘post-black’ Conjuncture”

This article reflects on the disparities between dominant public discourses that deny the persistence of systemic gendered racism in the post-civil rights era and socio-economic realities that present evidence of the contrary. In a context where mainstream antiracism has reduced racism to a problem of individual sentiment, voting for Obama may have been understood as an act of proving one's antiracism and a vehicle to relinquish the responsibility to redress past injustices. Such appropriations of radical antiracist praxis, as well as the symbolic weight of Obama's election, presents new challenges and possibilities to the future of antiracist praxis.

Contact Theory: Too Timid for “Race” and Racism

This article extends critiques of contact theory. It notes four deeper limitations: (1) what I call a “psychometric imaginary”; (2) an assumption that “race” is given, homogeneous and stable; (3) contact/noncontact dualism; and (4) inattention to whiteness. These limitations locate contact theory within raciological thought, making contact a reformist, rather than transformative antiracist strategy. I suggest an alternative: a critical literacy for the use of “race.” Contrary to Pettigrew's (1998) call for conceptual economy, I argue that conceptual expansion better serves understanding the tenacity of “race” and complexities of racism(s). Contrary to the psychometric imaginary of contact theory, I suggest that we need a visionary political imaginary for an antiracist world. I conclude that the key question for transforming intergroup relations in South Africa is not “which conditions,” and “what kinds of” contact are necessary, but “what kinds of politics, knowing, seeing and belonging” are necessary for critical antiracist praxis.

The Terms of Engagement: Warfare, White Locality, and Abolition

This essay attempts to contextualize and theoretically resituate the state and state-ordained violences of different modalities of ‘warfare’ have been rendered mundane, acceptable, and banal within the American ‘domestic’ social formation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. More precisely, it attempts to bring analytical and theoretical attention to how the organized subjection of racially pathologized social subjects is essential to white supremacist nation-building, even and especially within the historical conjuncture of the multiculturalist racist state’s emergence as the hegemonic institutional form of the USA. What might a radical sociology, antiracist praxis, and social theory contribute to a critical reframing of the white supremacist state as something that has neither obsolesced nor decomposed, but has reinvigorated and recomposed its structures of dominance through a symbiosis of multiculturalist incorporations/empowerments and political enhancement of a statecraft that is durably and foundationally racist?

Relational Understanding and White Antiracist Praxis

In this article, we argue that, in order for white racial consciousness and practice to shift toward an antiracist praxis, a relational understanding of racism, the “self,” and society is necessary. We find that such understanding arises from a confluence of propositional, affective, and tacit forms of knowledge about racism and one's own situatedness within it. We consider the claims sociologists have made about transformations in racial consciousness, bringing sociological theories of racism into dialogue with research on whiteness and antiracism. We assert that sociological research on white racism and “whiteness” tends to privilege propositional and tacit/common sense knowledge, respectively, as critical to shifting white racial consciousness. Research on antiracism privileges affective knowledge as the source of antiracist change. We examine some of Perry's recent ethnographic research with white people who attended either multiracial or majority white high schools to argue that the confluence of these three types of knowledge is necessary to transform white racial praxis because it produces a relational understanding of self and “other,” and, by extension, race, racism, and antiracist practice.

Racism, disadvantage and multiculturalism: towards effective anti-racist praxis

The practice of multiculturalism in modern liberal democracies has been hampered by lack of a clear definition of ‘racism’ and ‘anti-racism’ as well as confusion about the role of multiculturalism in addressing disadvantage and combating racism. This lack of clarity has contributed to a marginalization of anti-racism within multiculturalism. As a prerequisite to re-centring anti-racist praxis within multiculturalism, this paper disentangles the concepts of ‘equity’ versus ‘equality’, ‘racism’, ‘anti-racism’, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘disadvantage’. We then distinguish between policies and practices designed to mitigate disadvantage, and those designed to address racism. Taking Australia as a case study, historical and contemporary notions of multiculturalism are examined before considering their relationship to racism, anti-racism and disadvantage. It is only through a clear understanding and inclusion of anti-racist praxis that the potential of multiculturalism to address the challenges of racial diversity in modern liberal democracies can be realized.

Tactical Reversal or Re-centring Whiteness? A Response to Green, Sonn, and Matsebula

Green, Sonn, and Matsebula (2007) offer critical whiteness studies as a potential form of resistance against the strategic relations of power that constitute racism. While there may be utility in applying and extending international work on whiteness in the South African and Australian contexts, it is important to observe some cautions. First, whiteness manifests differently across contexts, and the type of comparison performed by Green et al. may at times elide important differences between, for example, contexts where whiteness has historically always been on the defensive versus contexts where it has not. Second, whiteness studies runs the risk of uncritically accepting white identity self-articulations. Third, whiteness studies may be incorrectly perceived as a ‘silver bullet’ for understanding and combating racism, rather than as a complementary and often secondary critical tool for anti-racist praxis.

Freudian Knot or Gordian Knot? The Contradictions of Racialized Masculinity in Chester Himes' If He Hollers Let Him Go

This article situates Chester Himes' hard-boiled excoriation of American racism, If He Hollers Let Him Go, in relationship to larger critical and political debates about the value and limitations of negative representation. Taking Himes' use of the forms of negative representation associated with the hard-boiled narrative as its jumping off point, the article argues that Himes' novel, in its representation of the violence that overdetermines black and white social and sexual relationships, reveals the specific forms of negativity that structure the social field in the United States. Positioned historically between the broad social mapping of Native Son and the surrealist psychological narrative of Invisible Man, as well as more broadly between the proletarian aesthetic of the thirties and the popular psychodramas of the fifties, If He Hollers Let Him Go gives a unique account of the ways in which the intersection between psychological and material forms of racism-or as Himes puts it Freudian and Gordian knots--shape the position of the black male subject. In addressing these dual forms of racism, Himes' novel engages in a form of negative fantasy-work: revealing the ways in which the negations experienced by the black male subject are structured in part through the sexualizing fantasies constructed by a white supremacist culture as well as by the same culture's systematic erasure of the distinction between fantasy and action. This fantasy-work forms a key part of the anti-racist praxis that the novel implicitly suggests, a praxis of working-through the Freudian knots and cutting through the Gordian knots of American racism.

CENTERING ON GLOBAL RACISM AND ANTIRACISM: FROM EVERYDAY LIFE TO GLOBAL COMPLEXITY

The concept of global racism provides a theoretical base on which to examine the everyday and the global and historical, and spatial connections and is integral to the conceptualization of antiracism and antiracist praxis. By examining the expansion of, perpetuation of, and struggle against global racism, this article argues that antiracist action ties the everyday confrontation with racism to the global confrontation with racism, making each confrontation and everyday struggle against racism part of a global struggle against global racism.

On the Necessity of Antiracist Praxis: An Experience in Teaching and Learning

This paper discusses the role of antiracist praxis in teaching and learning, concentrating on the experience and reflections of the participants of the course Racism and Intellectuals. Participants of this class decided to write this article as a way to convey alternative methods of establishing antiracist praxis. These involved creating and maintaining a community among students and faculty members, and developing collaborations with antiracist student organizations to extend beyond the walls of the campus, and to participate in a collective educational effort for antiracism

"We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible": Black Women School Founders and Their Mission

Previous articleNext article No AccessRevisions/Reports"We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible": Black Women School Founders and Their MissionAudrey Thomas McCluskeyAudrey Thomas McCluskey Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 22, Number 2Winter, 1997 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/495166 Views: 12Total views on this site Citations: 17Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1997 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Janaka B. Lewis Radical Leadership and Creativity: Race, Gender, and Academic Freedom, (Apr 2021): 161–171.https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-882-620211012Christina L. Moss (An)other Southern Rhetoric: Charlotte Hawkins Brown’s Mammy: An Appeal to the Heart of the South, Rhetoric Review 40, no.22 (May 2021): 123–137.https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2021.1883808Patricia Linn Williams Paut Neteru: Dreams of Leadership and Liberation—An Autoethnography of a Black Female Charter School Leader Using An Africentric Approach, Frontiers in Education 6 (Feb 2021).https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.517880April L. Peters, Angel Miles Nash I’m Every Woman: Advancing the Intersectional Leadership of Black Women School Leaders as Anti-Racist Praxis, Journal of School Leadership 31, no.1-21-2 (Feb 2021): 7–28.https://doi.org/10.1177/1052684621992759Meredith Cooper Brown, Nicole A. Taylor , ( 2019): 9.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90128-2_2Kalvin DaRonne Harvell The Art of Sankofa and Re-Establishing Kujichagulia, (Jan 2019): 41–71.https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5990-0.ch003Adah Ward Randolph Presidential Address: African-American Education History—A Manifestation of Faith, History of Education Quarterly 54, no.11 (Jan 2017): 1–18.https://doi.org/10.1111/hoeq.12044Bette J. Dickerson, Wanda Parham-Payne, Tekisha Dwan Everette Single Mothering in Poverty: Black Feminist Considerations, (Mar 2015): 91–111.https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-2126(2012)0000016008Sarah D. Bair The Struggle for Community and Respectability: Black Women School Founders and the Politics of Character Education in the Early Twentieth Century, Theory & Research in Social Education 37, no.44 (Sep 2009): 570–599.https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2009.10473411Sarah D. Bair Educating Black Girls in the Early 20 th Century: The Pioneering Work of Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961), Theory & Research in Social Education 36, no.11 (Jan 2008): 9–35.https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2008.10473358Marybeth Gasman Swept Under the Rug? A Historiography of Gender and Black Colleges, American Educational Research Journal 44, no.44 (Dec 2016): 760–805.https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831207308639Jillian Jimenez The history of child protection in the African American community: Implications for current child welfare policies, Children and Youth Services Review 28, no.88 (Aug 2006): 888–905.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.10.004Iris Carlton-LaNey, Vanessa Hodges African American Reformers’ Mission: Caring for Our Girls and Women, Affilia 19, no.33 (Sep 2016): 257–272.https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109904265853Kathleen M. Tangenberg Linking Feminist Social Work and Feminist Theology in Light of Faith-Based Service Initiatives, Affilia 18, no.44 (Jul 2016): 379–394.https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109903257547Patricia S. Parker Chapter 9: Control, Resistance, and Empowerment in Raced, Gendered, and Classed Work Contexts: The Case of African American Women, Communication Yearbook 27, no.11 (Jan 2003): 257–291.https://doi.org/10.1207/s15567419cy2701_9Kenneth W. Mack Law, Society, Identity, and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875-1905, Law <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Social Inquiry 24, no.22 (Apr 1999): 377–409.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.1999.tb00134.xKenneth W. Mack Law, Society, Identity and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875-1905, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 1999).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.158829

The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought

Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells Barnett, and Fannie Lou Hamer are but a few names from a growing list of distinguished African-American women activists. Although their sustained resistance to Black women's victimization within interlocking systems of race, gender, and class oppression is well known, these women did not act alone.' Their actions were nurtured by the support of countless, ordinary African-American women who, through strategies of everyday resistance, created a powerful foundation for