Lee Bell

• Consultant on Diversity in Higher Education; Social Justice, Anti-Racism
• Professor Emeritus at Columbia University

This chapter contextualizes the approach to oppression and social justice taken throughout this book. It provides a framework for readers who approach oppression and social justice from other positions to see what approaches we share, and where we differ. Our intention is to foster a broad and continuing dialogue among the many people who struggle,...

Not only can art expose the norms and hierarchies of the existing social order, but it can give us the conceptual means to invent another, making what had once seemed utterly impossible entirely realistic. (Hardt & Negri, 2009)

Background/Context Research in Europe and the United States shows that racial position shapes and gives voice to the stories people tell about race and racism, and filters how such stories are perceived and understood by listeners. Although not uniformly the case, people from the majority White racial group tend to emphasize forward progress and th...

Through accessible language and candid discussions, Storytelling for Social Justice explores the stories we tell ourselves and each other about race and racism in our society. Making sense of the racial constructions expressed through the language and images we encounter every day, this book provides strategies for developing a more critical unders...

Through accessible language and candid discussions, this book explores the stories we tell ourselves and each other about race and racism. Making sense of the racial constructions expressed through language and images, the book provides strategies for developing a critical understanding of how racism operates culturally and institutionally in our s...

The Storytelling Project: Teaching about Racism and Tolerance through Storytelling and the Arts (STP) at Barnard College links research to practice through the development of a curriculum to teach about race, racism, and social justice through storytelling and the arts. A creative team of artists, public school teachers, university faculty, and col...

In this article, we examine how youth in one urban high school talked about race and racism while participating in a curriculum that introduced the analytic lens of story types (stock stories, concealed stories, resistance stories, and counterstories) to look at race and racism and engage these issues through storytelling and the arts. We draw on d...

This article examines the stories people from various racial groups tell about race and racism. It draws upon data from 106 transcribed interviews about race/racism with college educated adults who work in education and human service fields. The interview questions did not directly ask for stories, but respondents frequently told stories to illustr...

This article discusses the double binds girls experience in sexist culture and describes activities to empower girls that were developed during a 3-year project in one urban elementary school in the Eastern United States. The strategies focus on ways girls can be empowered to critique and challenge the limiting messages they encounter to achieve th...

Recent demographic changes in our society have wrought new challenges for schools as growing numbers of students from diverse racial and linguistic backgrounds move toward becoming the majority in public schools. Because schools are slow to change and may lack the internal expertise in multicultural education, consultants are needed who can provide...

This article proposes an integration of critical theory and humanistic education. Strengths and limitations of each approach are discussed and the positive outcomes of their synthesis suggested. A model for liberatory education is proposed that incorporates the pedagogical skills of the humanists with the social analysis of the critical theorists....

Explored 5 core dilemmas that block girls' success in school through discussions with 26 4th–6th graders in a multiethnic program for girls with high academic potential. The core dilemmas were smart vs social, silence vs bragging, failure vs perfection, "beauty" vs marginality, passive vs aggressive, and conforming vs being punished. Examples illus...

This paper proposes an integration of critical theory and humanistic education. Strengths and limitations of each are discussed, and a model for liberatory education is proposed that incorporates the pedagogical skills of the humanists with the social analysis of the critical theorists. This model is illustrated with an example from a fifth-grade c...