Interest Convergence Theory Research Articles

The centrality of English as one legacy of Lau: An interest convergence theory analysis of Massachusetts policy for English Learners

ABSTRACT Using the theoretical framework of interest convergence, this document analysis explores the legacy of Lau v. Nichols as a gateway to instructional programs for classified English learners in the state of Massachusetts that maintain the hegemony of English as the primary goal of schooling. Findings reveal that interest convergence is an organizing principle for how instruction for classified ELs has historically been organized and delivered throughout Massachusetts as a move both toward and away from English-only instructional policy.

Workers united: a non-assimilatory approach to Indigenous leadership in higher education

Indigenous leaders in higher education are restive, disaffected, and dissatisfied with the slow gyrations of change. Using Interest Convergence Theory, this paper will unravel the constraints inherent in institutional reform that delimit the influence of Indigenous senior leaders in the sector. Positioned amidst the burgeoning impact of neoliberalism, an architecture of colonial governance models, and systemic resistance to change, Indigenous leaders are affecting reform. By providing examples of reform-driven agential actions shouldered by senior Indigenous leaders across Canada, Aotearoa, America and Australia, this paper, underpinned by relationality, details how Indigenous leaders are engaging with Indigenous Institutional work and Entrepreneurship, speaking back to interest-driven institutional policies and practices in the sector with a pronounced focus on nation building. Drawn from an international, comprehensive qualitative study, we investigate how Indigenous leaders in higher education are disrupting systemic racism to promote equity and justice within higher education amid macro-level resistance to change.

Students for Fair Admissions Through the Lens of Interest-Convergence Theory: Reality, Perception, and Fear

In two cases, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (SFFA), the Supreme Court held that Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in their use of race in their admissions process. This Article examines the SFFA decision through the lens of interest-convergence theory. This Article is novel in three respects. It is the first article to explain the SFFA decision in-depth. The opaqueness of the decision has led to significant confusion between commentators, scholars, and universities about the impact of the decision. I conclude that the SFFA decision overturned prior precedent and ended affirmative action in higher education, no matter how carefully crafted the race-conscious admission plan. I also conclude that universities will not be able to ignore the decision, or use race-neutral alternatives, to maintain a critical mass of minority students. Second, this Article is the first to explain the SFFA outcome using interest-convergence theory. I break down the separate interests of Black,[1] Hispanic,[2] White,[3] and Asian-Americans.[4] I find that Black and Hispanic interests remain served by race-conscious admission policies, but that shifting racial demographics and political power dynamics changed the decades-long White interest in supporting affirmative action. I further find that Asian-Americans have an interest in maintaining affirmative action, but that the SFFA outcome aligned with White interests because it permitted universities to continue “negative action” against Asian-Americans in favor of White students. Third, this Article is the first to explain how the perceptions of White Americans about policies that benefit minorities overrides the significant benefits they receive from diverse educational environments. I conclude that the longstanding and concrete benefits that White students receive from a critical mass of minority students on campus has become less important than the perceived threat of such admission policies to the current societal hierarchy. I conclude that interest-convergence theory explains why the Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent and university admission practices: it served the perceived interests of White Americans.

“Stealing from the language”: interest convergence and teachers’ advocacy for language-inclusive practices

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to support advocacy for racial and linguistic justice by examining teachers’ efforts to contest their colleagues' language-exclusive policies and practices.Design/methodology/approachThe author used a critical and reconstructive discourse analysis guided by interest convergence theory to analyze narratives shared by teachers working to contest language-exclusive practices.FindingsTeachers identified or created interest convergence to successfully contest specific practices. However, their arguments had the potential to be coopted for hegemonic purposes.Originality/valuePrevious studies have used interest convergence to analyze bilingual education policy. This study is one of the few to apply the theory to analyze other efforts to contest language-exclusive practices.

Racial Triangulation, Interest-Convergence, and the Double-Consciousness of Asian Americans

This Essay is part of the 26th Annual Georgia State University Law Review Symposium, "Social Equality and Racial Justice: What's Next?" It integrates Professor Claire Jean Kim’s racial triangulation framework, Professor Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double-consciousness, all to examine the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the dilemmas we face as a result. To do so, it considers the history of Asian immigration to the U.S., the model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, Asian Americans’ positioning in the affirmative action debate, COVID-19 related hate and bias incidents, and Andrew Yang’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy. The Essay examines how racial stereotypes of Asian Americans have emerged through historical cycles of valorization and ostracism, as analyzed through the racial triangulation framework. It analyzes how the political interests of the U.S. government converged with those of educated professionals in Asian countries, leading to changes in immigration policy and the emergence of the model minority stereotype. The Essay considers various ways that Asian Americans have been simultaneously valorized as model minorities and ostracized as perpetual foreigners. It highlights the affirmative action debate, where Asian Americans have been cast as high-achieving victims of race-conscious university admissions policies and pitted against other groups of people of color, culminating with the current Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard lawsuit. Finally, the Essay focuses on Andrew Yang’s presidential bid—particularly how his navigation of racial stereotypes reflected a double-consciousness that parallels the dilemmas faced by many Black Americans. The Essay concludes by arguing that to build coalitions and work towards racial justice, Asian Americans, Black Americans, and other people of color need to recognize their own double-consciousness and also see how it relates to the double-consciousness experienced by others.

Derrick Bell’s Interest Convergence and the Permanence of Racism: A Reflection on Resistance

Nothing about this moment — COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black people, Trump’s explicit anti-Black racism, or the mass demonstrations following lethal police use of force against Black people — would have surprised Professor Derrick Bell. These fault lines are not new; rather, these events merely expose longstanding structural damage to the nation’s foundation. A central theme of Bell’s scholarship is the permanence and cyclical predictability of racism. He urged us to accept “the reality that we live in a society in which racism has been internalized and institutionalized,” a society that produced “a culture from whose inception racial discrimination has been a regulating force for maintaining stability and growth.” Bell would have also foreseen Trump’s presidency as the likely follow-up to eight years of the nation’s first Black President. Any amount of racial advancement, Bell argued, signified “temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance.” In this reflection, I revisit Bell’s arguments, including his interest convergence theory, to provide clarity on the current moment and to reflect on the way his scholarship has impacted my work as a civil rights lawyer, scholar, and teacher.

China's Repression of Uigher Muslims: A Human Rights Perspective in Historical Context

Author(s): Abdelkader, Engy | Abstract: This Essay focuses on Beijing’s repression of its Uigher population, a religious and ethnic minority community residing in northwest China. Recent human rights violations have attracted significant attention among journalists, activists and policy makers. Still, this writing argues that Beijing’s tactics reflect worsening human rights violations spanning decades rather than years. In addition to providing historical context, this Essay makes an important contribution to existing literature because it applies Interest Convergence Theory to the instant context. Insofar as its laws, policies and practices create fertile breeding grounds for violent extremism locally and internationally, it is in Beijing’s strategic interest to respect, protect and advance human rights for all citizens.

Interest-Convergence Theory and Police Use of Deadly Force on Latinos

Interest-Convergence Theory and Police Use of Deadly Force on Latinos

Closing Commentary: New Strategies for Racial Equity in Education: Interest Convergence and Movement Building

The purpose of this issue of the Peabody Journal of Education is to revisit interest-convergence theory and explore new strategies for pursuing racial equity and justice in education. This issue co...

Interest convergence and hegemony in dual language: Bilingual education, but for whom and why?

I analyze two bills from the state legislatures of California (SB 1174) and Arizona (SB 1242) that propose to expand bilingual education where English-only education was previously the default. Using a critical discourse analysis lens to conduct a directed content analysis, I ask who bilingual education is for, why it is offered, and how the proposed programs would affect the education of English learners. The theoretical framework draws heavily from interest convergence theory, which holds that minoritized communities make civil rights gains when their interests converge with interests of the majority/state. Additionally, the framework employs the idea of economic preparation through education as a hegemonic force, driving the expansion of dual language programs. The bills demonstrate the shifting discourse from supporting English learners to an economic interest in bilingualism. The Arizona bill restricts bilingual education to students who already speak English fluently, making the programs unavailable to English learners. The California bill explicitly makes the potential programs available to all students, including English learners. The bills mention multiple reasons for expanding bilingual education, but the primary emphases are economic benefits and national security. While the promotion of bilingualism is a step forward, interest convergence theory and hegemony are useful analytical tools to understand the change and ensure that all students have equitable access to language programs.

Immigration Reform

The topic of immigration reform has been at the forefront of the political debate for many years. The debate has been especially intense in Arizona, a border state where sentiments over immigration are strong and which has, in the last decade, approved a series of measures directed to curtail the presence of unauthorized immigrants. Using the critical race theory notions of majoritarian storytelling and counter-storytelling as well as interest-convergence theory, the present study examined the types of arguments provided by the editorials of two newspapers in Arizona, The Arizona Republic and La Prensa Hispana, on the topic of immigration reform in the period between 2007 and 2011. Results show that the English-language publication justified the need for reform in the interests of American businesses, whereas the Spanish-language newspaper cited the well-being of the immigrant community.

Biting the hand that feeds you? Teachers engage with an ethnography of neoliberalism in education

Scholars who document neoliberal trends in education argue that privatization and corporatization in schools is dehumanizing and discourages democratic participation. These scholars assert that neoliberal education policies heighten social inequity by emphasizing individualism, marketability and colorblindness without interrogating social structures of power. Can qualitative documentation of the effects of neoliberal policy in education “talk back” to these trends? Can ethnographically mapping the complex effects of neoliberal trends on teaching and learning serve to heighten teachers' sense of agency and resistance? This paper documents the ways that teachers construct their identities in reaction to reading the author's critical ethnography of their school. Data were gathered for this paper in teacher interviews following two years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork at the College Preparatory Academy, a small public high school in Brooklyn, New York that created its own in-house nonprofit organization in order to solicit funds from private donors. Using Derrick Bell's interest convergence theory, I critique competitive models of philanthropy in education and explore whether collaborative and critically engaged ethnography can serve to expose the tension between public and private interests in education, and can encourage teachers to challenge and critique these borders.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Obama Administration's Education Speeches

This qualitative study examined 45 education speeches presented by President Obama and leaders of the U.S. Department of Education from January 2009 through December 2010. These speeches were interpreted with the use of critical discourse analysis and reviewed through the lens of interest convergence theory. The first aim of the researcher was to uncover the underlying ideologies represented in the Obama Administration’s education speeches. The second objective was to understand how those ideologies impacted the Administration’s proposed reform ideas. Specifically, the researcher was interested in how the underpinning ideologies and proposed solutions affected the education of poor students of color. The researcher found four primary ideologies in the education speeches. First, every speech was coupled with an economic agenda. Second, the speakers displayed great concern over America’s ability to remain a global economic leader. Third, there was an emphasis on the role of education in promoting equal opportunity and a belief in the American Dream. Finally, the speakers showed a deficit-oriented perception of students of color. The researcher discovered that economic ideologies inspired the Obama Administration’s proposed solutions. As such, the author argues that the Obama Administration utilized interest convergence by focusing on the economic self-interests of white policymakers. This study concludes with the author’s recommendations for change in the education of poor students of color. The author calls for strategic alliances throughout group identities in order to achieve educational equity.

Black Health Matters: Disparities, Community Health, and Interest Convergence

Health disparities represent a significant strand in the fabric of racial injustice in the United States, one that has proven exceptionally durable. Many millions of dollars have been invested in addressing racial disparities over the past three decades. Researchers have identified disparities, unpacked their causes, and tracked their trajectories, with only limited progress in narrowing the health gap between whites and racial and ethnic minorities. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the movement toward value-based payment methods for health care may supply a new avenue for addressing disparities. This Article argues that the ACA’s requirement that tax-exempt hospitals assess the health needs of their communities and take steps to address those needs presents a valuable opportunity to engage hospitals as partners in efforts to reduce racial health disparities. Whether hospitals will focus on disparities as they assess their communities’ health needs, however, is uncertain; preliminary reviews of hospitals’ initial compliance with the new requirement suggest that most did not. Relying on Professor Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, this Article explores how hospitals’ economic interests may converge with interests in racial health justice. It presents two examples of interventions that could reduce disparities while saving hospitals money. The Article closes by identifying steps that health justice advocates, the federal government, and researchers should take to help, in Professor Bell’s words, “forge [the] fortuity” of interest convergence between hospitals and advocates for racial justice, and lead to progress in eliminating racial health disparities.

The inherent vulnerability of the Australian Curriculum’s cross-curriculum priorities

National curriculum development is a complex and contested process. By its very function, a national curriculum serves to organise diverse interests into a common framework, a task fraught with cultural and political tensions and compromises. In the emergent Australian Curriculum these tensions are manifest in and around the cross-curriculum priorities (CCPs): sustainability, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. These priorities have been under fire since their introduction to the curriculum and the announcement of a review of the emerging curriculum prompted fears of a renewed attack. Studies from diverse fields of education research suggest that a lack of high-level institutional support for initiatives such as the CCPs places them in jeopardy. This paper focuses on two priorities: Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It employs interest convergence theory as a framework to understand connections between the intentions behind the inclusion of the CCPs and the outcomes of the Review of the Australian Curriculum. Furthermore, this paper draws on interview-based research that explores how the priorities are constructed by those who are expected to work with them, from pre-service through to experienced teachers. This theoretical framework provides an explanation for the perennially precarious nature of these kinds of curriculum initiatives.

Reading Professor Obama: Race and the American Constitutional Tradition

"Reading Professor Obama" mines Barack Obama’s syllabus on “Current Issues in Racism and the Law” for evidence of his beliefs about race, law, and jurisprudence. The syllabus forhis 1994 seminar at the University of Chicago, which provides the reading assignments and structure for the course, has been available on the New York Times website since July 2008. Other than a few responses solicited by the New York Times when it published the syllabus, however, there has been little attention to the material Obama assigned or to what it suggests about Obama’s approach to the law and race.The class began with four weeks of foundational readings, followed by four weeks of student-led class discussions. The readings started by discussing the malleability of racial categories and progressed to cases from the nineteenth century on Native Americans and on slavery. The second day’s readings shifted to the Reconstruction era and changes in the Constitution and statutory law, as well as the rise of the “Jim Crow” system of segregation and the response of African American intellectuals. The third class covered the Civil Rights revolution and retrenchment. It included reading from such diverse figures as Robert Bork, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. The fourth class, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” addressed some of the enduring issues of inequality facing our nation, the fragility of the African American middle class, continuing racism against African Americans, and a plea for more understanding. After the initial four class meetings, student groups selected additional readings and led class discussions on a variety of race-related topics. The syllabus has suggested topics for the presentations and brief discussion of those topics.The media has called attention to President Obama’s public relationship with Derrick Bell; notwithstanding the option to read Bell’s summaries of cases in lieu of the actual opinions, the readings have no overt endorsement of Derrick Bell, Critical Race Theory (“CRT”), or Bell’s Interest-Convergence theory. Obama included many critics of CRT and offered readings that seemingly demonstrate his hope for substantially more dialog and perhaps, ultimately, economic uplift of those labeled by some of his readings “the truly disadvantaged.” Obama’s use of the Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? as the title of the last group of readings suggests that Obama did not share Bell’s vision of the unalterable nature of racism.The readings, while instructive, are just the starting point of our analysis. Obama’s suggested topics encourage students to wrestle with the modern consequences of racism and to question its malleability. Thus, we suggest that the readings and group presentation topics reveal Obama, the teacher, as interested in, but not necessarily aligned with, many of the key questions of CRT. The syllabus fits with the story that Obama focuses on issues that unite Americans while he seeks equal treatment. This may reflect the future of constitutional doctrine related to race.

Addressing Federalism and Separation of Powers Social Violence: The Ordinary Citizen Beyond Shelby County, North Carolina and Ohio and Voting Rights

This essay builds on my experience at a voter integrity group named True the Vote meeting at its Ohio Summit on August 25, 2012 and subsequent developments in the US Supreme Court and states. I examine this topic experience through four lenses: private and public forms of what I term social violence; negotiation theory; recent work on explicit bias, implicit bias and stereotype threat; Derrick Bell’s work on interest convergence theory and the personal limits of that approach when one operates in both the domestic and international law spheres; Francesco Alberoni’s work on how movements get started and in particular a person reaches depressive overload and what he terms the nascent state, seeks affinity with others to create a movement that confronts institutions. Through these four lenses, I hope to assist reflection on a manner of thinking about the Shelby County’s, the North Carolina’s, and Ohio’s and Voting Rights.

Take Off the [Color] Blinders: How Ignoring the Hague Conventionns Subsidiary Principle Furthers Structural Racism Against Black American Children

The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, to which the United States subscribes, was established to stem the tide of corruption in international adoption. It sets adoption practice standards for member countries and, through its subsidiarity principle, provides for international adoption as a child’s best interest only when intra-country adoption is not available. However, the United States currently allows its citizens to adopt from countries that refuse to adhere to the Hague Convention, creating a two-system approach to international adoption, and intra-country adoption avenues are not being exhausted prior to U.S. international adoptions. The United States is currently the largest “receiving country” in international adoption, but even as the globalization of the adoption industry has led to a more culturally diverse American population, the United States is certainly not colorblind in its approach to adoption. Despite adherence to post-racial thought, the children aging out of foster care unadopted are disproportionately black, and race still negatively influences industry standards. What is more, the United States has become known as a “sending country,” as it ships many of its black and biracial foster care children abroad to find homes, leading some to call the practice of international adoption “covert racism.” This Article suggests, just as Derrick Bell’s Interest Convergence Theory argued that colorblindness was co-opted through Brown v. Board of Education to serve the interests of white elites, that the best interests of the child standard has been co-opted in adoption merely to satisfy predominantly white demands for children. The Children in Families First Act has even been introduced to circumvent the Hague’s subsidiarity principle and to provide more children for international adoption. However, the Article concludes that the United States should not allow international adoptions – whether to or from the United States – until all domestic placement efforts have been exhausted, in line with the Hague’s subsidiarity principle. The Article ultimately calls for abolishment of the current U.S. two-system approach to international adoption that circumvents Hague protocols and protections and contributes to the structural racism against black American children.

On an Ordinary African-American Citizen Negotiating Voting Rights and Voter Intimidation in Ohio 2012

I thank the Cardozo Journal for Conflict Resolution for the opportunity to present at the November 5, 2012 Symposium, “Negotiating the Extremes: Impossible Political Dialogues in the 21st Century.” This article builds on my presentation about my experience at a voter integrity group named True the Vote meeting at its Ohio Summit on August 25, 2012 and subsequently. As I have reflected on that experience it seemed that it might be useful to examine that experience through four lenses. First, I tell the personal story. Next, I reframe the experience in terms of negotiation theory with regard to difficult conversations. In making that reframing, it did occur to me that the negotiation theory analysis I was doing might be well informed by recent work on explicit bias, implicit bias and stereotype threat that could have been a second order frame around the negotiation. Third, given the positive and negative reactions to me in that space over that day and in subsequent events, I was drawn back again to Derrick Bell’s work on interest convergence theory. Fourth, with these three strands operating as the ordinary citizen experiencing a kind of dissociative moment that led to a certain galvanizing of my own activity, I was brought back to the work of Francesco Alberoni’s on how movements get started and in particular a person reaches what he terms the nascent state, seeks affinity with others and movement and institution were also relevant. Through these four lenses, I hope to assist reflection on a manner of thinking about negotiating extremes in settings of impossible political dialogue.

Gendered (in) Security: Migration and Criminalization in the Security State

Gendered (in) Security: Migration and Criminalization in the Security State