Race Theory In Education Research Articles

DisCrit mothering: interrogating consequential education for our children’s lives and humanity

In this special issue, a collective of mother-scholar-activists focus on exploring the possibilities for an intersectional critical stance for motherhood. Building on and extending the field of Critical Race Parenting (ParentCrit), we propose a global DisCrit Mothering approach. We draw from Disability Critical Race Theory in Education (DisCrit) and Revolutionary Mothering, to forward DisCrit Mothering as politicized action (as opposed to biological function). Such politicized action is necessarily rooted in defiance and radical love for children dehumanized by intersecting oppressions (i.e., ableism, racism, linguicism, cisheteropatriarchy) in schools. Moreover, we view DisCrit mothering as an interdependent educational praxis that attends to the ways in which many of these intersecting oppression impact mothers themselves, often limiting their capacity to advocate for their children.

Recruitment overhaul of Black athletes in college sport

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the recruitment and retention efforts of Black college athletes in football, women’s basketball and men’s basketball by white head coaches at historically white institutions (HWI). This study employed Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the educational tenets of: (1) racism; (2) interest convergence; (3) social construction; (4) differential racialization; (5) intersectionality/anti-essentialism; and (6) unique voice/counter storytelling [Bell, D. (1995). Who's afraid of critical race theory? University of Illinois Law Review, 1995, 893–910; Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York University Press; Ladson-Billings, G. (2013). Critical race theory: What it is not!. In M. L. Editor, & A. D. Editors (Eds.), The handbook of critical race theory in education (pp. 34–47). Routledge Handbooks Online; Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44]. A descriptive multiple case study [Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Sage Publications, Inc.] was designed, and semi-structured interviews were carried out with seven male and three female former college athletes from a Power 5 institution. This study gathered common themes related to former athletes’ intersection of race and gender. The theme of race produced the following subthemes: (1) representation, (2) assimilation, (3) academics and (4) community. Furthermore, the theme of gender produced greater insight in the subtheme of (1) intersectionality. Through the aforementioned themes, the researchers call for a complete overhaul of the current practices of recruiting Black college athletes at HWIs through established offices comprised of researchers and practitioners well versed in providing resources and support for students on and beyond the campus environment.

An Examination of Educational Leadership Preparation in Ontario: Are Principals Prepared to Lead Equitably?

<p>In response to the changing demographics of schools in Canada and efforts to better equip principals to challenging inequity, leadership preparation programs have adopted new policies focused more on leading with an equity lens. However, studies have demonstrated a disconnect between what is covered in these leadership programs and how school principals actually perceive their ability to lead equitably and work with diverse learners. Six current school principals and vice principals in Ontario, Canada who have successfully completed a Principal Qualification Program (PQP) course were interviewed to understand their perceptions on the program’s ability to prepare them to lead, and their perceptions on concepts of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). The racial experiences and identities of each participant shaped their definitions of EDI, as well as their understandings of difference. Study findings indicate several critical areas of change for principal preparation programs in Ontario: training guidelines, efforts to prepare educators to be equitable leaders, and the educators’ perceptions on their preparedness to lead. Utilization of Critical Race Theory in Education and Applied Critical Leadership additionally help frame analysis and support the need to integrate culturally relevant pedagogical practice into leadership preparation programs.</p>

Examining Race in LatCrit: A Systematic Review of Latinx Critical Race Theory in Education

This systematic review includes 125 peer-reviewed education-research articles that employ a LatCrit framework (from a search including articles published from 1995 to 2020). The author examines how the literature utilizes LatCrit and advances ideas about race, Latinxs, and Latinidad in education. The author presents significant patterns and divergences in the literature’s strengths, challenges, and tensions. Some strengths include detailing Latinxs’ experiences and valuing experiential knowledge. The author problematizes four research practices: (1) describing LatCrit with select tenets of CRT; (2) not defining race or other relevant concepts (language, culture, etc.); (3) claiming Latinxs are unique because of their multidimensionality; and (4) exceeding LatCrit’s scope by rationalizing the study’s use of LatCrit because its participants are Latinxs. The author argues that these complications lead to a paradox: even though LatCrit emerges from critical race theory and is described as for Latinxs, the literature largely undertheorizes race and lacks clarity about conceptualizing Latinxs as a racialized group. The author recommends four framing ideas that are particular to LatCrit and that help advance the specificity of Latinidad in education.

Black Graduate Students’ Counternarratives and Interrogations of a Hate Crime

ABSTRACT Hate crimes across the country are becoming more prevalent, and there are growing concerns for higher education and college campuses. White supremacy has been noted as a potential driving force escalating hate and discrimination at disproportionate levels, especially for Black students on predominantly white campuses. This qualitative study described the murder of 2nd Lieutenant Richard Collins III by a white supremacist student, Sean Urbanski at a bus stop at the University of Maryland College Park. I used critical race theory in education and critical race methodology to analyze Black graduate students’ counternarratives and interrogations of a hate crime through semi-structured interviews. I described how the juxtaposition of this hate crime influenced campus and national conversations about Black students’ proximity to white supremacy. Lastly, participants’ counternarratives attested to widespread trauma, which adds a new layer to existing literature on Black graduate students’ experiences. Implications for this scholarship offer practice, policy, and research recommendations to eradicate hate crimes on college campuses.

Critical Race Theory in Education: How Banning its Tenets Undermines our Best Hope for Equity in Education

Critical Race Theory in Education: How Banning its Tenets Undermines our Best Hope for Equity in Education

Rejecting the racial contract: Charles Mills and critical race theory

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore the deep roots and long history of the attacks on Critical Race Theory in education, while at the same time savoring the equally long and eminently venerable and presently visible traditions forged by “the insights of generations of anonymous ‘race men’ [and ‘race women] who, under the most difficult circumstances” developed ‘the concepts necessary to trace the contours of the system oppressing them, defying the massive weight of a white scholarship that either morally justified this oppression or denied its existence’ (1996, 131). I identify Critical Race Theory as the product of a long history of Afro-diasporic autonomous learning centers and parallel institutions as well as the producer of new ones.

(Re)constructing a Border Pedagogy: Centering the Borderlands in Latinx Teacher Education

ABSTRACT As teacher educators on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, our goal is to (re)conceptualize a pedagogical approach for bilingual teacher development informed by teacher education research in the borderlands and anchored in the myriad of historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic realities of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands – a border pedagogy. Our (re)conceptualization is based on a metasynthesis of bilingual teacher education research from the four U.S.-Mexico border states and additionally draws from critical race theory in education and border theory scholarship to examine the geopolitical context of the borderlands as impacted by colonization and whiteness. Principles for (bilingual) teacher development and design are discussed.

Introduction – Naming and Reclaiming Our Intergenerational Path Forward: Critical Race Theory in Education’s Past, Present, and Possibility

Abstract In this Special Issue introduction, I share lessons from five trailblazing scholars who contributed to developing CRT in education fields – Laurance Parker, Tara Yosso, David Gillborn, William Smith, and David Stovall. I put their reflections into conversation with the contributing authors of the Special Issue, which include Daniel Solórzano, Walter Allen, María Ledesma, Chezare Warren, Rican Vue, and many more. As the host, of what I envisioned as sort of a dinner-party style introduction, I also share my own coming into CRT moments and the legacy I am proud to carry forward. We gather here to honor the liberatory impact of CRT, speak its intergenerational stories, and learn its lessons about our past, present and future: to name racism; to be in collective struggle; to create spaces of support, freedom, and possibility.

Studying and Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Naming Bad Faith to Understand the “Logic” of Racism

In this conceptual essay, the author argues that bad faith is a valuable concept in understanding and challenging racism in higher education. The philosopher Lewis Gordon argues that racism is a manifestation of bad faith. For the actor who sees Black people as less than human, for example, no evidence will allow the actor to see otherwise. Bad faith is the disavowal of any disconfirming evidence which allows actors to maintain their worldviews. The author draws from high profile examples of racism in higher education as conceptual cases to make his argument. Specifically, the author demonstrates how attacks upon Critical Race Theory in education, the currency of critiques of microaggressions research, and the perennial difficulty to name racist violence on campus as hate crimes operate upon a logic of racism through bad faith.

Critical race comics: Centering black subjectivities and teaching racial literacy

This article seeks to explore the complexities of Black subjectivities as written and illustrated by comic book creators of color who wrestle with the enigmatic qualities of blackness as they write within and beyond racial imaginaries and social realities. I call these works “critical race comics” to highlight their explicit engagement with the ubiquity of race and racism and other tenets of critical race theory in education. Critical race comics teach through onto-epistemological explorations of blackness and by centering the black gaze in ways that foster humanizing racial discourse in classrooms, develop racial literacy in readers, and contribute to antiracist pedagogy. As such, I position critical race comics as pop culture and curriculum as they reflect larger literary, artistic, and social movements for racial justice in America (e.g. Antislavery, Reconstruction, New Negro, Civil Rights, Black Power, Hip-Hop, and #BlackLivesMatter).

Review of DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education by David J. Connor, Beth A. Ferri & Subini A. Annamma, Eds. (2016)


 
 
 DisCrit places scholars from the field of Disability Studies (DS) in conversation with those from Critical Race Theory (CRT). Specifically, dis/ability is put into conversation with class- and race-based analyses to formulate an intersectional framework1. The concept of intersectionality has taken on heightened importance within Disability Studies in recent years. While Discrit is primarily intended for scholars and aspiring academics, the text also directly speaks to people like me, who identify as dis/abled.
 
 

Using Critical Race Theory to Explore the Experiences of College Students from Rural Areas

There are several indicators (e.g. lower enrollment rates and lower persistence rates) that rural people are achieving less postsecondary success compared to their urban peers. This is particularly true for people with low socioeconomic statuses and people of color. This article, therefore, utilizes critical race theory in education to explore the experiences of college students from rural areas. The article begins with an overview of critical race theory and a review of relevant literature about rural students organized within a critical race theory framework. This information is then utilized to construct a strategy to guide educators in their critical explorations of rural students and their experiences through assessing pertinent questions. A case study is also provided as an example to assist educators in their utilization of the strategy, providing a promising practice to support educators at higher education institutions in their efforts to be more inclusive of students from rural areas.

Queering critical race pedagogy: reflections of disrupting erasure while centering intersectionality

This article argues that intersectional pedagogies are one way to capture the experiences of Queers of Color, specifically in higher education classrooms. Using critical pedagogies and critical race theory in education, the author makes the case for the need to intentionally center race and sexuality within pedagogical approaches and curriculum, what they call “Queer Critical Race Pedagogy.” Using autoethnography, the author reflects on three pedagogical practices that center race and sexuality and finds that employing a QCRP is critical because the representation of Queers of Color in the classroom, course materials, and as historical actors are significant to disrupt erasure and silence in curriculum. The author concludes that QCRP can lead students of diverse backgrounds to commit to social change.

Toward a critical race pedagogy of physical education

ABSTRACTBackground: A critical race theory of education has a been a popular framework for understanding racial inequities teaching and teacher education. Furthermore, it has served as the foundation for critical race research methodologies and critical race pedagogy, which are meant to address racial inequity via research and teaching, respectively. With regard to critical race pedagogy, there has been no specific conceptualization for the preparation of physical educators.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a critical race pedagogy of physical education teacher education (PETE).Key Concepts: In the paper, critical race theory and critical race pedagogy are highlighted as the conceptual roots of a critical race pedagogy of PETE. In doing so it offers a critique of resource pedagogies and their conceptualization in PETE. Critical race theory has been described as a scholarly movement that seeks to uncover and dismantle systemic racism while rejecting incrementalism. Critical race pedagogy is an approach to teaching that is informed by critical race theory and womanism. A critical race pedagogy of PETE builds upon previous conceptualization of critical race pedagogy by offering the (a) recognition context; (b) the value of Black self-reliance; (c) and the value of the Black body as its foundations.Discussion and Conclusion: A critical race pedagogy of PETE adheres to a post-White orientation. As such, this approach to teaching recognizes that Black physical education involves Black people and Black places without subordinating or comparing them to White people and White places. It is also a challenge for Black scholars and teacher educators within PETE to focus their attentions, intentions, and efforts to the sustaining of Black educational institutions and the training of Black physical educators for Black communities. Thus, I acknowledge context within the post-White orientation allowing for an appropriate reorienting of a critical race pedagogy of PETE to meet the needs racially minoritized communities globally.

Ethnic Studies as Praxis

The authors provide a collective counter-narrative of the movement at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) to resist educational policies that have negative implications for students, particularly students of color, and threaten Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies. The authors contextualize the movement that erupted in the fall of 2017 at CSUN within the struggles of the 1960s to transform higher education by establishing Ethnic Studies. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Critical Race Theory in education, the authors maintain that, in its best iterations, Ethnic Studies is praxis that empowers communities to create transformative social change.

An Overdue Theoretical Discourse: Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice and Critical Race Theory in Education

Scholars often use Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Bourdieusian analyses with the aim of studying inequities in education. Despite their usefulness and popularity, a theoretical discourse between the two frameworks has not yet transpired and the two are sometimes constructed as incompatible, if not at odds. The argument in this essay is three-fold: (1) CRT has never fully engaged with Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, (2) Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice and CRT, although distinct, are not necessarily in opposition, and (3) CRT and Bourdieusian concepts have the potential to inform each other, resulting in a more nuanced engagement of the interplay between structure, agency, and racial realities in education.

“No One Wants to Believe It”: Manifestations of White Privilege in a STEM-Focused College

The lagging behind of underrepresented minority (URM) students in higher education, and particularly in the STEM fields, is well documented. In this paper we draw on critical race theory in education to frame and present counter-narratives of URM students in STEM fields, to explicate the function of the interactions that occur between these students and their (mostly White) instructors and peers. Focus group interviews with URM students (and staff) at a STEM focused college identify three ways in which White privilege is enacted through these interactions: in group projects; in cheating accusations; and in the grading process. Our participants illuminate particular manifestations of White privilege in STEM classrooms and on campus, and we place these within the context of “colorblind” changes in higher education in the U.S.

The one-in-ten: quantitative Critical Race Theory and the education of the ‘new (white) oppressed’

ABSTRACTThis paper challenges the notion that quantitative data – as a numeric truth – exist independent of a nation’s political and racial landscape. Utilising large-scale national attainment data, the analysis challenges the belief that ‘White working class’ children in England, especially boys, are ‘the new oppressed’ – as a former equality adviser has publicly claimed. The analysis applies Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or ‘QuantCrit’, an emerging quantitative sub-field of Critical Race Theory in education. The paper argues that far from being ‘oppressed’, White boys continue to enjoy achievement advantages over numerous minoritised groups; especially their peers of Black Caribbean ethnic origin. Additionally, the analysis uniquely exposes racialised trends of ‘equivalency’ in core subject qualifications, whereby minority ethnic children are over-represented in certain lower-status qualifications that are counted as equivalent in education statistics but not in the real world labour market. The analysis concludes that knowing misrepresentations of quantitative data are at the heart of an institutional process through which race and racism are produced, legitimised and perpetuated in education.

Race and the politics of educational exclusion: explaining the persistence of disproportionate disciplinary practices in an urban school district

ABSTRACTEducational research has established a link between zero tolerance disciplinary policies and increases in racial disproportionality in suspensions and expulsions of students of color. This article reports on a critical ethnography of Rivertown, a school district with urban characteristics, where we have been working with parents of color whose children are subjected to exclusionary discipline. Using the framework of Critical Race Theory in education, specifically Derrick Bell's interest-convergence principle, we argue that several interrelated barriers prevent movement toward racial equity: a culture of colorblindness and white fragility that silences race talk; contested definitions of the problem that obfuscate its racialized nature; and the persistence of a zero tolerance framework even with the implementation of a restorative justice pilot. We conclude by discussing our ongoing strategies for creating interest-convergence between White power-holders and communities of color in Rivertown.