Racial Literacy Research Articles

Pedagogy or “trauma porn”? Racial literacy as a prerequisite for teaching racially dignifying content in the Australian social work context

PurposeOn June 21, 2021, a motion was introduced to the Australian Senate calling on the federal government to reject critical race theory (CRT) from the national curriculum, claiming that CRT is divisive and racist. This was allegedly sparked by revisions to the national school curriculum, which included a more accurate reflection of the historical record of First Nations peoples’ experiences of colonisation and the framing of British arrival onto the continent as an invasion. This paper aims to overview the omnipresence of Western thought systems in the academy and critiques how knowledge production as a disciplinary practice positions race as a “marginalised knowledge”.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is conceptual and it theorises the morphology and functions of racism within the Australian education system specifically, and across the board. This theorisation offers an invaluable starting point in rethinking how we advocate for and preserve Blac/k scholarship in academia. It examines how the political economy of racism in education offers a transformative position from which scholars can contribute to potential systemic change that promotes racial literacy and racial dignity, and the conditions necessary to foster these changes.FindingsThe paper confirms what studies by Blac/k scholars already highlight: that racialised knowledges are marked – as an aesthetic addition or as disruptive – or unnecessary – and how these patterns of colonial desires are manifested in the classroom or in race discourse.Originality/valueSpecifically, the arguments made in this paper examine two undertheorised concepts, namely, “racial dignity” and “trauma porn” to foreground the reimagination of practices that inform racial literacy in education. This offers a helpful starting place to consider how this form of education facilitates ongoing settler colonialism in Australia. The authors then propose an anti-racist pedagogical practice in social work education entailing three core crucial and transformative elements: self- reflexivity, storytelling and collaboration with Blac/k people.

Negotiating Racialized Discourses and Navigating Racism in U.S. Schools: Understanding Chinese Immigrants’ Parenting Identities and Practices Through an AsianCrit Lens

This article draws on Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit) and racial literacy to examine how Chinese immigrant parents in one U.S. metropolitan area negotiated their parenting identity, and how they addressed racism faced by their children at school. Our analysis of interview data indicated that while some parents internalized “Tiger Mom” and model minority discourses and focused exclusively on their children's academic success, others countered such discourses to value their children's emotional and mental well-being. Parents adopted a range of strategies to navigate racism and to counter or reframe racialized discourses. This study highlights the importance of developing racial literacy among immigrant parents and institutional responses from schoools to address issues of racism and discrimination.

The role of racial literacy in US K-12 education research: a review of the literature

ABSTRACT The pursuit of racial justice in education continues to demand research that employs critical race theory (CRT). Underscoring the importance of such scholarship, this review of K-12 literature examines the trend of racial literacy in educational research. Using an interactive and recursive systematic review of research, this paper ultimately analyzed 22 peer-reviewed articles that employed racial literacy as a theory and/or method – many connected to CRT – for the possibilities they offered in upending racial liberalism in K-12 teaching and schooling. In this review, racial literacy was categorized into themes: as a process, as disrupting white supremacy and internalized racism, and as working toward curricular transformation, intersectional analysis, and centering youth voice. We conclude by discussing ways that racial literacy research can continue to work within and beyond the academy to disrupt racial liberalism and work toward anti-racist transformation in K-12 education.

Identifying Root Causes For Literacy Inequities in the Williamsburg County Education System

There appears to be an alarming attention drawn to the low literacy rates of American citizens in the past years. The ability to read is often used synonymously with the ability to be a good citizen, hold a satisfactory job, and perform daily duties. Yet, literacy rates have fallen over the last several years. One county in particular that frames this issue is Williamsburg County of South Carolina. In Williamsburg County learning how to read ceases being taught in the third grade; from then on it is assumed that a student can read. Poor public school success rates have paved the way for private schools to outnumber public schools in the area. Because of this phenomenon, a racial literacy gap has subsequently developed in the county. Here, I propose that school budgets have an influence on the presence of this phenomenon. I hypothesize that the higher a school’s budget is, the higher their general success rate in ELA studies will be. My research finds that while this may be true for Williamsburg County, other counties in the state do not mirror these same results. Additionally, I find no evidence to support the subsequent hypothesis that school budget has a correlation with literacy success rates of particular demographics. Given the results of this research, other questions as to indicating factors of school success are left unanswered for future research.

Games and Assessment: Measuring How Course Content Impacts Race-Talk

Background: Race-talk reduces racial prejudice, presents correct information regarding race, improves racial literacy, and encourages positive race relations. Purpose: This research demonstrates how experiential learning in the form of a game measures Race and Ethnicity course curriculum effectiveness. Methodology/Approach: We used a live version of the game Guess Who (Hasbro) at the beginning and end of the semester and assessed students’ reflections of the game to measure changes in race-talk. Findings/Conclusions: The results indicate courses focusing on institutional racism for 16 weeks may produce a change in race-talk. Implications: Students benefit from this activity by growing in their racial literacy, and instructors benefit by using the game to assess their curriculum's effectiveness.

Why Race Still Matters as therapy

ABSTRACT Alana Lentin's Why Race Still Matters (2020) is a timely articulation of where we are at in current debates on race. The book lists, names and archives critical arguments, and identifies the many actors entangled in a battle of ideas. In this article, I provide three main readings of Lentin's work. I suggest the book is an erudite and necessary reading of the public’s racial literacy, which also casts a needed self-reflective gaze on how anti-racists may be frustrating failing the public. Indeed, Lentin sublimates frustration into a productive and insightful use of “Not-racism”. A concept that unsettles the prevailing way we discuss and fail to discuss Racism. In the end, I suggest Lentin’s Why Race Still Matters works as sort of therapy that speaks to the emotional register that surrounds anti-racist work. There is decluttering of the conversation that points to how we may manage the ways we fight and discuss racism.

“Honestly, I Had a Very Strong Reaction to this Reading”: Social Studies Pre‐Service Teachers’ Application of Literacy Frameworks While Engaging with a Graphic Textbook

AbstractBecause social studies educators are expected to incorporate literacy into their instruction, it is important to consider how prospective teachers interact with literacy frameworks as they engage with social studies content. This qualitative case study examines two pre‐service social studies teachers enrolled in a teacher preparation course at a Hispanic‐Serving Institution as they read and reacted to Zinn's (2008) graphic textbook, A People's History of the American Empire. The study examines how these pre‐service teachers employed three literacy frameworks—disciplinary, critical, and racial literacy—when reading social studies material. Data sources included student‐produced written responses, researcher’s field notes from whole‐class discussions, and semi‐structured interviews. Findings demonstrate how readers sometimes use parts of frameworks, entire frameworks in isolation, and multiple frameworks simultaneously. Neither participant addressed the socio‐emotional aspect of racial literacy. This study suggests how teacher educators can better prepare social studies teachers to incorporate literacy while using graphic texts.

Growing up with systemic racism in the USA

Growing up with systemic racism in the USA

"What can I possibly do?": White individual responsibility for addressing racism as a public health crisis.

What responsibilities do individuals have when it comes to combating large-scale public health crises such as racism? A seductive argument borrowed from the climate ethics literature suggests that focusing on individual morality for a structural problem such as racism is at best unhelpful and at worst actively harmful. In response, we argue that individuals have good moral reasons to modify their own behaviors to help in the fight against large, structural public health emergencies in general, and that the public health crisis of racism, in particular, demands heightened moral responsiveness from individual white people to resist white supremacy. The moral reasons that support white engagement in antiracist work extend above and beyond those regarding individual involvement in the fight against other collectively created public health challenges. Our conclusions help to defend the claim that racial literacy and antiracist education aimed at individuals are vital.

Promoting racial literacy in early childhood: Storybooks and conversations with young black children

AbstractRacial literacy as defined by Stevenson (2014) is an important cultural resistance strategy (e.g., positive coping strategy) for Black children and youth because it gives them the skills needed to survive in a racist society. Stevenson’s work, along with the work of several of his colleagues, focuses on adolescents and those in middle childhood, yet it has inspired us to postulate how racial literacy might be fostered in young children (ages 3–8). In this article, we propose a theoretical model for how racial literary can be fostered within shared‐reading contexts using racially affirming storybooks coupled with conversations grounded in the principles of ethnic‐racial socialization. We also propose that these conversations result in both a direct influence on racial literacy and an indirect influence via positive ethnic‐racial identity and emotion regulation and understanding.

Book Review - Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing by Mara Lee Grayson

Book Review - Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing by Mara Lee Grayson

COMPREENDENDO UMA FORMA TECNOLINGUAGEIRA: UMA ANÁLISE LINGUÍSTICA DA CONSTRUÇÃO E PERPETUAÇÃO DE ESTEREÓTIPOS RACIAIS NO GÊNERO NOTÍCIA ONLINE

With the advent of technology and its uses within the social practices, there have been triggered changes in the use of language as well as new discursive and textual genres, such as the leads, constituents of the following technodiscoursive form: online news. Reflecting upon the technological advances that societies have experienced over the last decades, this paper is structured upon textual linguistics and discourse analysis’ studies, with the goal of analyzing and understanding the linguistic use in techno language forms and, more specifically, in online news. Furthermore, this research aims to discuss, identify and deconstruct the historically built pejorative social signs that portray the Brazilian black population, identified in the analyzed lead. In order to do so, this essay is drawn as follows: contextualization and synthesis of the linguistic studies on techno language practices, presentation of the historical perspective on racial issues in Brazil and reflection on the role of language and critical literacy in the racial struggle. Finally, through this study analysis results, we can point out the relevance of integrating the technodiscoursive forms and semiotics strategies to the discursive studies and critical racial literacy, inasmuch as language practices reflect social and historical issues.

The silent schooling of whiteness in social studies content standards

ABSTRACT Race shapes the policies and history of the United States. Current research shows that state-approved social studies content standards are written in a non-racial and colour-evasive whiteness language that reinforces racist policies and practices in education. This qualitative framework analysis study examines the language of social studies content standards from New Mexico and Texas; two states on the US-Mexico border. This research, theoretically grounded in Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies, analyses how the silent schooling of whiteness uses language to support racist ideals in social studies content to promote property rights and wealth over human rights. Furthermore, whiteness language in education reinforces the racist power structure by intentionally silencing culturally relevant and anti-racist instruction to students. Learning to identify whiteness language is an important step towards developing racial literacy, cultural responsiveness and social justice in social studies education.

Coaching Using Racial Literacy in Preservice Teacher Education

Drawing on a theoretical framework that centers race, racism, and anti-racism, this study explores a coaching conference in preservice literacy teacher education. In classrooms, teachers often encounter disruptions in the community; however, those disruptions are often seen as problems to be solved and are addressed without interrogating race discourses. This study builds on previous research that has explored how teachers engage in developing understandings about race in relation to their practice using discursive tools of racial literacy. We ask, How do three White teachers draw on race discourses that are racist and anti-racist within the context of one coaching event, a post-conference? Using critical discourse analysis, we describe and interpret how race discourses were drawn upon and disrupted in the conference. We conclude with a discussion of the racial literacy practices that have promise in this coaching context and in other professional settings.

Raising a Coconspirator: A Letter to My Daughter

In this letter to her daughter, the author utilizes a journey map to anticipate some of the decisions and actions she will have to make and take in order to raise her as an antiracist co-conspirator. As a white parent to a white child, the author explores necessary moves towards racial literacy, rethinking obedience, and revisiting concepts of independence. She explores the way in which her parenting must be envisioned differently given this current COVID moment amidst the movement for Black lives.

Racialization of Knowledge: How the Marginalization of Black History and Knowledges Fosters a Lack of Racial Literacy among Teacher Candidates

This paper examines the practice within universities of restricting the number of courses focussing on Black/African-Canadian history and ‘Blackness’, in the context of teacher education programs, and the implications for the unawareness of racial literacy among teacher candidates. The lack of such courses at select universities in Western Canada is discussed, as are the consequences for teacher candidates. Teacher education programs can address the systemic gaps in Black history courses and Black knowledge systems and better serve the interests of students by, offering courses that centers Black worldviews and hire Black scholars to foster a more equitable learning environment.

In my skin: racial education and post abyssal thinking of black aesthetics

This work, which is a fragment of a research that has been discussed in lectures and presented separately in other journals and books, examines through the lens of critical racial literacy, the discrimination, tension, and racism experienced by Afro-Brazilian persons due to the aesthetics of their phenotypic traits. The theoretical framework draws on Critical Race Theory (LADSON-BILLINGS, 1998; FERREIRA, 2014) and Epistemologies of the South (SANTOS, 2014) which provided the basis for data analysis. The methodology for data gathering was autobiographical narratives provided by the informants, who were selected due to their experiences of the subject. The primary research instrument was an online questionnaire, voluntarily and anonymously, answered by the participants. The results show that black people in Brazil face issues of race and racism in their own homes, at schools and universities as students, as well as in their working environments. The discussion is pertinent to the field of Applied Linguistics and Education as it highlights the paramount importance of developing a critical racial literacy at schools, which can address these issues and overcome racism from a variety of perspectives.

Exploring Tensions: A Self-Study of A Teacher Educator’s White Fragility in Mentoring Novice Teachers

ABSTRACT This article examines the tensions encountered and lessons learned when a White teacher mentor discovered white fragility in her mentoring practices with a Black novice teacher. It was the mentor’s first attempt to ‘wake up white’ and acknowledge her White identity in her mentoring actions. The mentor engaged a secondary English as a New Language teacher in six observation cycles to support the teacher with culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). The mentor discovered her restraint in conversations when the teacher reflected on teaching students about racism. Further, the mentor enacted white fragility when she avoided discussing the teacher’s critically conscious pedagogy, stifling opportunities for deep reflection. The mentor’s actions indicate that she had not engaged in necessary self-work before mentoring the teacher in CRP. Self-work that the mentor had missed includes exploring her White identity, privilege, and cultural competence. Implications for White teacher educators, mentors, and supervisors include the need to engage in ongoing self-work and professional development to explore White identity and privilege and develop racial literacy to engage in race talk.

Teaching Racial Literacy through Language, Health, and the Body: Introducing Bio-racial Rhetorics in the Writing Classroom

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“I’m Very Hurt”: (Un)justly Reading the Black Female Body as Text in a Racial Literacy Learning Assemblage

ABSTRACTThere has been a recent rise in research that has attuned to matters of the body in literacy learning. This article is a contribution to that emerging corpus of scholarship. Specifically, the article is a Black feminist narrative inquiry into the undertheorized role of embodiment―and relatedly, the embodied knowing that materializes as emotion or affect―in racial literacy learning. To illustrate, I employed a blend of embodiment, affect, and assemblage theories to examine an episode of a university‐based (self‐described) anti‐racist pedagogue’s racial literacy instruction in an English teacher education program in the United States. A sociomaterial approach to literacy frames my exploration of the relation between the emotions generated during classroom discourse about the contents of a curricular text used by the Black female pedagogue and the reproduction of anti‐racist ideology. Findings underscore that racial literacy instruction is (inter)embodied and affective and that each body is a particular racialized, sexed, gendered, and otherwise marked text. These findings underpin my clarion call for a turn to Black feminist racial literacy instruction, an approach entailing the enactment of reparative and healing pedagogical practices that care‐fully tend to the embodied and psychic wellness of Black women and girls in particular while simultaneously cultivating pedagogues’ and students’ commitments to justice and humanization in English teacher education classrooms.