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Writing critical race theory and method: A composite counterstory on the experiences of black teachers in New Orleans post-Katrina
International Journal of Qualitative Studies In Education
Abstract
Using a critical race theory lens, the authors propose a way of writing race research using composite counterstories. Drawing on data from a yearlong study of school rebuilding in the time period immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated the City of New Orleans, the authors examine the experiences of African-American educators in the school rebuilding efforts. Cook and Dixson look specifically at how composite counterstories speak back to racialized constructions of black educators that justified their post-Katrina displacement and usher in an era of school reform in which New Orleans is described as “ground zero” for the expansion of charter schools, the disempowerment of teachers’ unions, and the re-organization of teacher preparation. Given the context of the research, the authors argue that researchers should consider how composite counterstories facilitate racial research and ensure the protection of research participants.
... In this paper, I share two composite counterstories (e.g. Cook & Dixson, 2013) developed by Black high school students in a summer writing course that shed light on how educators can confront and disrupt being complicit in conceptualizing Black youth as non-human/superhuman. My goal Figure 1. Kara Walker, Untitled, 1996, cut paper, watercolor, and graphite on canvas, 69 1 =2 x 66". ...
... My use of counterstorying builds directly with educational researchers (across the educational pipeline) who have used counterstories with Black participants Cook & Dixson, 2013;Goings, 2015;Griffin et al., 2014;Harper, 2009;Leyva, 2021;Patton & Catching, 2009;Ross & Stevenson, 2018;Tafari, 2018). My theorization of Black youth as embodied Afrofuturities directly aligns with counterstories, since they aid research that "recognizes and incorporates, as data, lived and embodied experiences of people of color" (Martinez, 2014, p. 33). ...
... Throughout this process, students were critiquing and editing each other's writing, showing another layer of critical engagement. Since the Black storywork cyphers were developed and presented collectively, I analyze and present them as composite counterstories (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Corbin et al., 2018;Griffin et al., 2014;Patr on et al., 2021;Tafari, 2018;Warren, 2017), rather than as presenting and analyzing the data based on individual student contributions to the cypher. ...
Antiblackness, and the dominant stories it produces about Black humanity, creates distorted images of Black humanness that are used to justify violence against Black youth in schools and society. However, Black youth have different stories to tell about their being in the world that stems directly from their lived experiences and are inherently counter to damaged center narratives intertwined with Black suffering. Using the theoretical framing of BlackCrit and theorizations of Afrofuturism, I share two composite Afro-futurist counterstories developed by Black high school students in a summer writing course, which confront antiblackness and disrupt the ways the regime makes educators complicit in seeing Black youth as non-human/superhuman. The research provides insights into Black youth futurity in relation to schooling in an anti-Black world.
... Utilizing counterstorytelling (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), a tenet and method of CRT, the current study provides the CCS of African American new mothers. Counterstorytelling as a method intends to give voice to those voices often not heard and to provide space to relay experiences of oppression (Cook & Dixson, 2013). This methodology intends to challenge the status quo by uncovering the realities of systematic oppression. ...
... This article provides a composite narrative also known as a CCS which is an integration of the participant stories. The composite nature of the counterstory is done to highlight the shared reality of the participants in their experiences with racism (Bell, 1980;Cook & Dixson, 2013;Solórzano and Yosso, 2002). It is of note that CRT contests the belief that individual experiences of racism cannot represent the collective experience (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). ...
... As is important in qualitative research generally, we believe it is especially important that in any study that takes up CRT, the researchers' position on their participants and the topic of racism must be elucidated (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). ...
Utilizing the critical race theory framework, this article shares the emergent data from a larger study of new mothers that provided a composite counterstory of racism and plans to address racism with their children. Interviews of 12 African American women who were receiving Medicaid for pregnant women and delivered in a Southeastern hospital revealed that race and racism were underlying the variety of other topics discussed. Critical race theory provides a way of understanding their experiences and management of racism. Shared in the findings are applications to social work practice and education to address the racism that is experienced by African American women and their children.
... In each case, both Heilig et al. (2012) and Busey (2019) operationalized the tenets as analytics for their studies. Building from Woodson's (2016Woodson's ( , 2019 use of critical race ethnography, we use these findings to call for more research in social studies education that not only centers voices from communities of color, but also utilizes CRT methods and methodologies (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Hylton, 2012;Parker & Lynn, 2002;Perez Huber, 2008;Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). ...
... Looking to the bottom of the well also requires social studies education scholars to reassess the use of CRT as not just an analytic, but also an epistemological and methodological tool in research. CRT can function as a stand-alone theory, but it also has a method that encourages researchers to consider how one should go about best elucidating the theory (Cook & Dixson, 2013;DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2019;Hylton, 2012). This "method of looking to the bottom" (Matsuda, 1987, p. 63) moves stories and counterstories from being a mere rant to a collection of stories that have a broader legal, political, and social purpose (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Donnor & Ladson-Billings, 2018;Ladson-Billings, 2013). ...
... CRT can function as a stand-alone theory, but it also has a method that encourages researchers to consider how one should go about best elucidating the theory (Cook & Dixson, 2013;DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2019;Hylton, 2012). This "method of looking to the bottom" (Matsuda, 1987, p. 63) moves stories and counterstories from being a mere rant to a collection of stories that have a broader legal, political, and social purpose (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Donnor & Ladson-Billings, 2018;Ladson-Billings, 2013). For example, when social studies education research centers the perspectives of educators and students of color, then we are able to challenge how postracialism functions as an extension of colorblindness to advance narratives that the nation-state has somehow superseded race relations (Ender, 2019;Griffin & James, 2018;Rodríguez, 2017Rodríguez, , 2018Rodríguez, , 2019Salinas & Rodríguez, 2019;Woodson, 2016Woodson, , 2017bWoodson, , 2019. ...
Since its introduction as an analytic and theoretical tool for the examination of racism in education, CRT scholarship has proliferated as the most visible critical theory of race in educational research. Whereas CRT’s popularity can be viewed as a welcome sign, scholars continually caution against its misappropriation and overuse, which dilute its criticality. We draw from the cautionary ethos of this canon of literature as the impetus for examining CRT’s terrain in social studies education research. Starting from Ladson-Billings’s watershed edited CRT text on race and social studies in 2003, this study provides a comprehensive theoretical review of scholarly literature in the social studies education field pertinent to the nexus of CRT, racialized citizenship, and race(ism). To guide our review, we asked how social studies education scholars have defined and used CRT as an analytic and theoretical framework in social studies education research from 2004 to 2019, as well as how scholars have positioned CRT within social studies education research to foreground the relationship between citizenship and race. Overall, findings from our theoretical review illustrated that contrary to the proliferation of CRT in educational research, CRT was slow to catch on as a theoretical and analytic framework in social studies education, as only seven of the articles in our analysis were published between 2004 and 2010. However, CRT emerged as a viable framework for the examination of race, racism, and racialized citizenship between 2011 and 2019, with a majority of these studies emphasizing (a) the centrality of race as a core tenet of CRT, (b) idealist interrogations of race, (c) the perspectives of teachers of color and White teachers in learning how to teach about race, and (d) the role of race and racism in curricular analyses that serve as counternarrative to the master script of the nation’s linear social progress in social studies education.
... The following points are taken directly from Cook and Dixson (2013) and assist with the interpretation of the collective story: ...
... 4). CRT scholars use CCS as a way to confront the master narrative that attempts to erase the struggles and resilience of BIPOC who have challenged the U.S. to live up to its democratic ideals (Cook & Dixson, 2013). However, within sustainable tourism studies, there has been a dearth of scholars who used CRT to inform their research (Chambers, 2021). ...
... For the CCS, we adapted Cook and Dixson (2013) study and conducted semi-structured interviews with leaders of the BTM in 2018. We focused our curiosity around the challenges BTM leaders faced, which helped unpack complexities around race, assumptions, perceptions, and biases. ...
In this article, we argue for tourism scholars to amplify the stories and lived experiences of traditionally silenced groups through the adaption of critical race theory (CRT) toward a framework of Critical Race Tourism. Critical Race Tourism includes a specific focus on counter-storytelling, endarkened storywork, and regular engagement of interest convergence. We believe Critical Race Tourism can contribute to racial reconciliation and healing, particularly during a time of a global pandemic, that exacerbates systems of marginalization and oppression. Using a Critical Race Tourism framework is about realizing the potential of thick, rich data of everyday lived experiences from marginalized communities in order to enrich the theoretical, empiricism, and scholarly insights offered by academic writing. We begin by defining CRT and describe the employment of and application within tourism studies. We introduce the framework of endarkened storywork, which responds to the sustainability and justice challenges resulting from past, current, and future inequities for BIPOC communities. We close with implications for tourism contexts and research.
... In this phase, we documented instances in the interviews and observations in which we witnessed the mothers making sense of expected roles and responsibilities for parents in their bilingual program and the multiple forms of support and care available for their children during unprecedented schooling conditions (RQ1). The initial thematic coding was guided by CRT theoretical orientations, the literature on family engagement and bi/multilingual family planning, as well as our professional and personal experiences (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Examples of initial codes included the following terms: class/lesson and school-wide activities, forms of participation in class/lesson and school-wide activities, mothers' access to and support for their children's curricular and instructional programming, and opportunities to advocate and critique instruction and programming. ...
... We were intentional about answering our first research question by writing counter-stories that presented the mothers' experiences, priorities, and critiques as holistic narratives of people instead of categorized objects of data. As Cook and Dixson (2013) explained, "Individual experiences that people have with racism and discrimination cannot represent the collective experiences that people of color have with racism and discrimination" (p.1243). As we independently continued to refine key themes and excerpts for each mother's counter-story, we served as each other's peer debriefers (Lincoln & Cuba, 1985) and provided feedback on our analytical procedures, particularly our triangulation of multiple data sources. ...
U.S. educational institutions continue to frame racially minoritized families as inferior and as the causes for their children’s educational challenges based on expectations associated with white, middle- and upper-class families. Latinx families can be positioned in deficit ways even in dual language bilingual education programs (DLBE), often lauded for being culturally and linguistically expansive settings. Informed by Critical Race Theory in Education and LatCrit, this study presents counterstories of two Latina immigrant mothers supporting their children’s learning and development during the COVID-19 pandemic in states with anti-bilingual and anti-immigrant legislative histories, Arizona and Massachusetts. Leveraging community cultural wealth, the mothers shared a deep commitment to sustaining their children’s bilingual and bicultural development and wellness. Although they were positioned as engaged parents by the DLBE programs, they problematized static and constrained forms of engagement efforts during pandemic schooling and learning. As such, their counterstories trouble deficit conceptualizations and false dichotomies within family-bilingual school relations and serve as a cautionary tale for educational programs framed as supportive of linguistic and cultural pluralism. We argue for the continued interrogation of school-led forms of engagement to ensure that racially minoritized families engage in shared leadership and school governance and have their knowledge forms and language traditions elevated as crucial levers for catalyzing transformative learning in response to COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts.
... Similarly, within a post-hurricane Katrina backdrop Cook and Dixson (2013) argued for the use of composite counter-stories to profile Black teachers in New Orleans who recounted tales of personal and systemic racism that lead to the destruction of neighborhood public schools. Perez-Huber (2009) as well as Malagon et al. (2009), spotlighted the role that testimonio has played in validating the use of counternarratives for Chicana undergraduates. ...
... The fundamental tenets of CRT, specifically counterstory-telling and testimonios (Bell, 1980;Cook & Dixson, 2013;Crenshaw, 1991;Delgado, 1989;Delgado & Stefancic, 2017;Delgado Bernal, 1998;Delgado Bernal et al., 2012;Dixson & Rousseau, 2005;Espino, 2012;Harris, 1993;Ladson-Billings, 1998;Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995;Lynn & Parker, 2006;Lynn et al., 2002;Matias, 2013;Solorzano, 1998;Solorzano et al., 2000;Solorzano & Yosso, 2001Tate, 1997;Yosso, 2005;Yosso et al., 2009) as related to research methods have been articulated many times before. Recent examples include works by DeCuir-Gumby et al. (2019) and Vaught (2011). ...
In 2021, former President Donald Trump issued a presidential memo halting and prohibiting “divisive” and “anti-American propaganda” in federal contracting--described as “any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training and propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil”. Unsurprisingly, the concerted attack against CRT grossly misunderstands what CRT is and often equates teaching about individual racism, privilege, unconscious bias, systemic racism, and U.S. history with the teaching of CRT. As of October 2021, 28 states have restricted education on racism, bias, and the teaching of CRT.
... In this study, we draw from critical race theory (CRT) with a focus on intersectionality and counter-storytelling to deepen our understanding of structural racism in teacher education through the perspectives of four first-generation preservice teachers who self-identify as Black or Hispanic/Latina. Through CRT counter-storytelling (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Delgado, 1989;Solorzano & Yosso, 2001) we sought to answer the following research questions: ...
... However, narrative intersectional research through counter-storytelling is more than a vent or rant (Ladson-Billings, 2013). Counter-storytelling allows researchers to methodologically construct principled arguments that illustrate broader political or social concerns regarding matters of race and racial injustice (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Delgado & Stefancic, 2017;Ladson-Billings, 2013). Through narrative intersectional counter-storytelling, we seek to "walk the walk" (Hylton, 2012) by not partially employing CRT as a theoretical frame. ...
... Negative working conditions predicted lower job satisfaction and higher turnover, suggesting inequity in career supports-with teachers in the most demanding schools encountering less supportive working conditions. School reform policies such as turnarounds, school closures, and curriculum overhauls also place particularly high demands on teachers of color and teachers of minoritized students (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Cucchiara et al.;Todd-Breland, 2018). ...
Teachers often address student wellness concerns such as health and mental health. Yet, this work goes largely unacknowledged and unsupported by professional preparation. COVID-19 intensified these concerns amid disrupted systems of student support and increased student distress. Our national survey (N = 1398) pursued the powerful opportunity present during the pandemic to understand the extent and distribution of demands on teachers to address student wellness and the support they receive for such work. We found that the demand for teachers’ wellness work was inequitably distributed across teachers, varying largely by their schools’ sociodemographic characteristics. Additionally, access to support for this work did not align with demand levels. We discuss these findings’ implications for teacher preparation, support, and workload equity.
... Instruction and supervision, despite some changes, mirror these panoptic plantations by shackling the autonomy and agency of both teachers and their supervisors (Hook, 2023;Lyle & Peurach, 2024;Smyth, 1984). These same teachers and schools more keenly experience the negative effects of plantation traditions that inform accountability or reforms which are often touted as "politically and racially neutral, progressive, beneficial, and inherently good" (Cook & Dixson, 2013, p. 1251. The policies and norms imposed on teachers and schools are framed as essential for maintaining quality and accountability, yet they frequently undermine the very conditions necessary for fostering authentic learning environments. ...
... We used narrative inquiry to reveal the threads in the data (Clandinin & Michael Connelly, 2000), specifically to uncover commonalities in the participants' narratives regarding their experiences in race-focused staff forums. We also used a CRT lens to examine how their narratives shed light on the endemic nature of racism in higher education and how narratives by people of color can provide more contextual understandings that expose the often hidden, taken-for-grantedness of that racism (Cook & Dixson, 2013). It is important to note that this is not directly a piece of counternarrative. ...
... In brief, CRT presumes the centrality of race in shaping the experiences of oppression and privilege or disparate outcomes for members of society. In describing the mentoring perspectives and experience of FOC, we examined and critiqued the role of race and racism in mentoring using narrative inquiry to prioritize the voices and experiential knowledge of those individuals who have been marginalized (Cook & Dixson, 2013). This approach allowed us to use the words, language, and stories of our participants to construct a counter-narrative of traditional research exploring mentoring that ignores or minimizes the importance of race in mentoring relationships and outcomes (Miller et al., 2020). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of faculty of color (FOC) in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) with a specific emphasis on mentoring or being mentored during doctoral training and as faculty. FOC experience a number of unique obstacles to achieve success in higher education, often as a result of engaging in predominantly white spaces at the university or broader professional levels. Mentoring is a commonly recommended strategy for the recruitment and retention of FOC; however, little is known about the mentoring experiences of FOC in CSD.
Method
Sixteen FOC, primarily women in tenure-track positions, provided 46- to 60-min semistructured interviews related to their experiences in academia. Interviews were transcribed, and for the purposes of this study, comments related to mentoring were identified and coded. A narrative thematic analysis was used to generate themes and subthemes evident in the interviews.
Results
Six themes emerged from the data analysis: types of mentoring, cultural dynamics of mentoring, institutional support, motivation, ineffective mentoring, and effective mentoring. While participants chose to emphasize different aspects of their experiences as FOC, the importance of mentoring was notable and there were marked similarities in their experiences with mentoring.
Conclusions
The data in this study indicated that mentoring plays an important role in shaping one's career success and trajectory in the discipline and the academy. A number of conclusions and recommendations were drawn from the experiences shared by the FOC. Recommendations include creating an environment to talk about mentoring, formally developing mentoring programs, and providing support and structure to guide mentoring relationships.
... Again, this is particularly true in Poland, a country that prides itself on its whiteness and Europeanness. It is the failure of the mainstream sociology in the country to effectively articulate the concern of the minority that makes CRT an essential method that brings the marginalized to the centre of social discourse in order to challenge racialized relations (hooks 1992;Collins 1994;Bell 1995;Julien and Mercer 1996;Solorzano and Delgado Bernal 2001;Solorzano and Yosso 2002;Cook and Dixson 2013). As Guba and Lincoln (1994, 113) explain, the function of critical theory is to critique and transform the social, political, culture, economic, ethnic, and gender structures that constrain and exploit humankind. ...
... In contrast to competition and stratification (Henry & Dixson, 2016;Lubienski, 2003;Mommandi & Welner, 2021), communitybased educators fostered we rather than I, which is central to the blues. Like Foster's (1993) research on exemplary African American teachers, Cook and Dixson (2013) noted Black educators in New Orleans, in contrast, emphasized: "cooperation, collaboration, and solidarity in fictive kinship relationships" (p. 1252). ...
Education research has often overlooked how the long durée of resistance for Black education has shaped current educational policy. We complicate notions of Black public school closures in two case studies from extensive ethnographic research in post-Katrina New Orleans through our reading of the plantation. Findings suggest these institutions have served as lynchpins for the transferal of the blues. Data analysis also indicates that traditional public school closures have functioned as a plantation management device. We encourage future inquiries into portfolio governance models, school “choice,” and school closures to consider the plantation complex and to recognize that post-Katrina education reforms were not isolated policy enactments.
... Their connections with those around them influence how they move in a world that is sometimes unforgiving and demanding (Collins, 2000). This review of the literature provided evidence of the connections between the lived experiences of Black women teachers and their pedagogy and instructional practices (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005;Casey, 1993;Cook & Dixson, 2013;Hodge, 2017;Howell et al., 2019;Watson, 2017). CRT and Black feminist thought guided this study as I steered away from impetuously generalizing the lived experiences of Black women early childhood educators and instead sought to center the unique narratives of each woman carefully within the context of the collective. ...
The landscape of how to best prepare minoritized young children for the uncertainties of an inequitable American society demands a change in the way we view the connection between early childhood educators’ lived experiences and their pedagogy. Using the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory, Black feminist thought, and intersectionality, the purpose of this narrative inquiry was to examine how five Black women early childhood educators’ lived experiences inform their use of culturally relevant pedagogy to enact a communal ethic of care with students in pre-k to third grade. This study took place at an elementary public charter school serving students in pre-kindergarten to third grade in the southeast sector of Fort Worth, Texas. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews, sister circle collective gatherings, Photovoice, and researcher produced life notes. Data was analyzed using Polkinghorne’s narrative mode of analysis to produce life story narratives. This inquiry’s findings demonstrated how these educators (re)membered their culturally situated work in early learning spaces. Each woman navigated the intersections of her identity to build meaningful relationships with young children and families. Implications for early childhood educators, administrators, educational researchers, and teacher educators are offered along with recommendations for future research. Through witnessing the lives of Judy, Mimi, Bobbi, Scarlett, and Krys, I learned that the answer to achieving abolitionist educational goals lies in the implementation of a communal ethic of care.
... Furthermore, Solórzano and Yosso argue that counterstorytelling exposes, analyzes, and challenges the majoritarian stories of racial privilege with the potential to further the struggle for racial reform. As such, numerous scholars have used counterstorytelling as a research method to illuminate the experiences of People of Color, who a readily marginalized, excluded, and misrepresented in stories (Alemán, 2017;Cook & Dixson, 2013;Gonzalez, 2022aGonzalez, , 2022bGonzalez, , 2023aGonzalez, , 2023bGonzalez, , 2023cMartinez, 2020;Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). ...
In this piece, the author uses counterstorytelling as a research method to write a book review of Tanya Katerí Hernández’s recently published book, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. Specifically, in this counterstory, the author created two composite characters, Alberto and his mother, Lola, made up of arguments from the book to engage in a real and critical dialogue about the anti-Blackness amongst Latinos in the United States. Drawing on Hernández’s argument that Latino anti-Blackness upholds racism, the author uses this counterstory to illustrate the various ways Latinos enact anti-Black ideologies and practices to deny Black people good experiences in public spaces, a quality education, work opportunities, housing, and physical and psychological safety. The author argues that counterstorytelling allows him to make research accessible—digestible and understandable— to his community and other Communities of Color who continue to be systematically excluded from academia and knowledge production in higher education.
... Composite Counter-Storytelling Solórzano and Yosso (2002) shared three types of counterstories, including personal stories, other people's stories, and composite stories. We first used the composite story approach, used by other higher education scholars, to build fictional narratives drawn from interview data (i.e., transcripts, quotes, life notes, reflexive journals; Cook & Dixson, 2013;Squire, 2020). Composite characters helped in two distinct ways. ...
This study explored the relationships between historically white institutions (HWIs) and their local Black communities. Using participatory action research (PAR) methodology, grounded in a critical race theoretical framework, undergirded by endarkened feminist epistemology, our research question was: How do Black communities surrounding University of Georgia make meaning of their local HWI? Rooted in PAR methodology, this study included two Black undergraduate coresearchers from Athens, Georgia. Together, we used an intergenerational approach for data collection, centering the voices of Black undergraduate students, community leaders, and families from the Athens-Clarke County community. Findings are presented as theatrical performance based on performative counterstory.
... Over 31,500 Black educators were removed from the teaching profession between 1954-1972 (Fultz, 2004;Thompson, 2020). More recently, charter school movements in urban districts often result in the disproportionate loss of Black educators from public schools, continuing this legacy and maintaining a predominantly white teacher workforce overall (Cook & Dixson, 2013;Dixson et al., 2015;Drake & Cowan, 2022). And, policies initiated for the purposes of racial exclusion (e.g., teacher licensure exams; Fultz, 2004) remain in force and continue to exclude teachers of color from the profession (Cowan et al., 2020). ...
... Below we outline three researcher-constructed composite counter-stories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), each representative of themes we identified from the collective voices of participants. We chose to employ composite characters to protect the anonymity of participants (Cook & Dixson, 2013), while attentive to how we might be speaking for, attempting to save, or minimizing the expertise and experiences of parents, especially Black parents. We share these composite counter-stories below and conclude with comments on the importance of reframing parent activism as parent engagement and antiracist leadership. ...
This study Expressions in Urban Educationlores the Expressions in Urban Educationeriences of 11 Black parents, one Latinx parent and one Brown (South Asian) parent in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) in Ontario, Canada, who have challenged racial injustices and inequities in schools, districts, and the province. Drawing on counter-storytelling as a methodology of Critical Race Theory, we reframe the activism of Black and racialized parents as the ultimate form of parent engagement and an important example of educational leadership. These strategies include: the energy of collectivizing, powering up, and building cross-racial and cross-community solidarity. We share implications for educational leaders in rethinking parent engagement and anti-racist, educational leadership.
... Directly inspired by the centrality of storytelling in critical race scholarship (Bell, 1993;Delgado, 1995), Black storywork is an embodiment of CRT's key tenet, the voice-of-color thesis or the idea that people of color have a 'presumed competence to speak about race and racism' (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001: 9) given their direct racialized lived experiences. This thesis on the value of voice in documenting the experiences of people of color in CRT has been largely conceptualized as counter-storytelling, which many Black scholars have used in their research on Black education across the P-20 pipeline (Baszile, 2015;Cook & Dixson, 2013;DeCuir & Dixson, 2004;Ellison, 2019;Ellison & Solomon, 2019;Grey & Williams-Farrier, 2017;Griffin et al., 2014;Howard, 2008;Jenkins et al., 2020;Kynard, 2010;Love, 2014;Tafari, 2018;Terry, 2011;Warren, 2017). Counter-storytelling in CRT can be defined by the capturing of 'stories that run counter to prevailing stock stories that advance ideas of racial neutrality, merit-based systems and equal opportunity' (Rolón-Dow, 2011: 160). ...
... Casemore demonstrates this in his autobiography of growing up in the American South and his being within the storylines of a white patriarchal space. This aligns with others who argue that place should be seen as a character in the narrative of participants (see Cook, 2013;Cook & Dixon, 2013). Percentages of contextual factors (e.g. ...
We problematize the idea of the context of a study by complicating the place in which a study is being conducted. We argue mathematics education researchers need to contextualize their investigations within the storylines of history. The history of a place, or the collection of storylines about a context of learning and the people who have occupied the space, can add a richness and depth of understanding to our work. We demonstrate this by focusing on the history of the Latinx population of Texas and how that history can inform the reading of mathematics education literature. We focus specifically on two historical storylines: 1) Construction of racial stereotypes about Spanish-speaking students and 2) Americanization of the Spanish-speaking students.
... As scholar and artist Eve Ewing argues, "[g]host stories serve as an important counter-story; a ghost story says something you thought was gone is still happening here; a ghost story says those who are dead will not be forgotten" (2018, 154). Ewing's work signals that engagements with in-between-ness are more than just memories of that past, they Journal of Folklore and Education (2022: Vol. 9) (Re)tracings of What Was Once Present/Absent by Bretton A. Varga and Mark E. Helmsing, Guest Editors 6 hold narrative agency and are committed to disrupting master narratives of history, (in)justice, and community (i.e., counternarratives, see also Cook andDixson 2013, Solorzano andYosso 2002). ...
Introduction to issue of the Journal of Folklore and Education: "Death, Loss, and Remembrance Across Cultures"
... Between 2005 and 2015, the teaching force transformed from primarily black teachers (71%) to less than half black teachers, from experienced to inexperienced, and from local to nonlocal (Barrett & Harris, 2015). Indeed, the nation has suffered no greater loss of a black teaching force all at once since desegregation (Cook & Dixson, 2013). New Orleans schools also have one of the highest segregation rates in the country, with the vast majority of its white students in private schools while their black peers attend charters (Parsons & Turner, 2014). ...
The current study critically analyzes the dress code and uniform policies of 89 New Orleans public charter schools using content analysis. Dress code and uniform policies across the United States are deeply rooted in racism, sexism, and classism and, through their implementation, further contribute to these same oppressions. In this study, the dress code and uniform policies, including the justifications for policy, specific policy rules, and possible consequences for noncompliance, are the primary units of analysis. Drawing on intersectionality and the concept of misogynoir, this study attempts to dissect what school policies communicate about race, class, and gender. The racist, classist, and sexist language deployed within the policies is exposed while specifically centering the disproportionate regulation of young black female bodies in dress code policies. School social workers are uniquely positioned to advocate for more equitable dress code and uniform policies. This study contributes to the larger body of literature for its inclusion of data from an entire city as well as its intersectional approach.
... Storytelling is not new (as cited in Delgado, 1989Delgado, , 1995Delgado, , 1996Olivas, 1990;Paredes, 1977) and stems from LatCrit Theory. As Stefanci (1997) (Cook & Dixson, 2013), that which "may be political, collective, conscious, and motivated by a sense that social justice is possible through resistant behavior" (327). Solarzano and Bernal (2001) note that identities are multilayeredthey exist in various worlds and their borders. ...
... In this article, I illustrate how white rage and antiblackness surfaced at Pride Elementary, a school in a small southeastern U.S. city, where I have conducted a 5-year collaborative research project utilizing critical race theory (CRT). CRT is a scholarly tradition and framework that employs several key tenets-e.g., racial realism (Bell 1992;2008), centering the perspectives of people of color (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005), and counterstory and revisionist narrative (Cook & Dixson, 2013)-to examine how racism is a foundational, embedded cultural system in U.S. society and institutions like schools (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017;Vaught & Castagno, 2008). I specifically highlight the insights from my work with the principal, Sandra, a Black woman. ...
This article reveals how white rage and antiblackness-often in the form of disdain for Black joy-surfaced at Pride Elementary, a racially integrated school in the urban center of a small city in the southeastern United States. Based on a 5-year ethnographic study, it analyzes the perceived threat some white teachers and parents felt by the mere presence of Black students, teachers, and administrators. It highlights the insights of the Black principal, whose experiences most clearly illustrate how school-based racism is rooted not only in white supremacy but also antiblackness, thus supporting Dumas' (2016) assertion that school-based research on race must better address antiblackness.
This chapter offers a critical commentary on the intersection of Muslim women adult learners, whose multiple marginalities have rendered them an invisible group in relation to institutional and sector priorities regarding student access, success, and progression in UK higher education. Using the methodological framework MusCrit (a micro-theoretical framing of Critical Race Theory which addresses more rigorously the marginalisation of Muslims), the chapter utilises a composite narrative and autoethnography to illustrate both the burgeoning and burdening position of Muslim women adult learners. Applying this mix of theory and reflexivity facilitates intimate insights into the complexities and ‘embodied intersectionality’ of Muslim women adult learners, specifically in the postgraduate research landscape. The chapter exposes the precarious positionings of Muslim women adult learners; the need for intentionally supporting the access, success, and progression of these students; and the systemic nature of oppression which has made invisible our inequalities within the broader widening participation discourse in UK higher education.
This study centers on the origins of the Black Student Union (BSU) during the late 1960s and early 1970s at the University of Florida (UF) presented as a speculative fiction composite counterstory. The story presented in this manuscript serves as a cautionary tale of what the future of higher education will be, if white supremacy persists, even when white people will no longer represent a numerical majority. Though the findings utilized in this piece are decades old, we offer the current climate of public institutions and DEI initiatives to emphasize the importance of counterstories that underscore the resistance and activism that challenges oppressive systems and birthed such organizations as Black Student Unions, which are now increasingly under threat of elimination. Utilizing BlackCrit, we look backward to explore the permanence of anti-Black racism in our future. We invoke the genre of speculative fiction to give form to our findings - a fictional short story that posits a possible future world that runs counter to expectations for a post-racial future on college campuses and in the United States more broadly. Through a deeper understanding of how Black students drew upon their social networks during the Long Black Student Movement era, we aim to spark dialogue about the future of Black student advocacy at predominantly white American colleges and universities.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) and postcritical ethnography (PCE) share a commitment to justice, social transformation, deep belief in the democratic project, and mutual interests in challenging dominant stories that reinforce the social order as natural, and centering the experiential knowledge of people on the margins of society. In this chapter the author discusses the relationships critical race/postcritical ethnographers hold to people, place, and their political commitments. Reflecting on her long-term work with Black educators in New Orleans post-Katrina, she interrogates the role of critical race theory and postcritical orientations in her work. Examining her racially informed writing and research methodology, she uses multiple stories to invite readers into the strategic choices she made about her approach and how it evolved over time.
This study centers on the origins of the Black Student Union (BSU) during the late 1960s and early 1970s at the University of Florida (UF) presented as a speculative fiction composite counterstory. The story presented in this manuscript serves as a cautionary tale of what the future of higher education will be, if white supremacy persists, even when white people will no longer represent a numerical majority. Though the findings utilized in this piece are decades old, we offer the current climate of public institutions and DEI initiatives to emphasize the importance of counterstories that underscore the resistance and activism that challenges oppressive systems and birthed such organizations as Black Student Unions, which are now increasingly under threat of elimination. Utilizing BlackCrit, we look backward to explore the permanence of anti-Black racism in our future. We invoke the genre of speculative fiction to give form to our findings-a fictional short story that posits a possible future world that runs counter to expectations for a post-racial future on college campuses and in the United States more broadly. Through a deeper understanding of how Black students drew upon their social networks during the Long Black Student Movement era, we aim to spark dialogue about the future of Black student advocacy at predominantly white American colleges and universities.
Part of a larger study exploring leadership development opportunities for academic advisors of color at a predominantly white institution, this paper focuses on the lived experiences of academic advisors of color. Through an understanding of race theory, a critical race lens is used to examine the predominantly white institution and the narratives of academic advisors of color in this racialized setting. This qualitative study explored advisors’ experiences with the structure of academic advising, their racialized experiences, and how race is addressed in the workplace. Implications for institutions of higher education are discussed, including how an understanding of the experiences of academic advisors of color can aid in challenging dominant narratives and practices within institutions of higher education.
Maintaining the value of qualitative research requires constant self-critique. Thus, qualitative researchers must always be attentive to critiques of the current conceptions and practices of qualitative research. One problem, I suggest, is our lack of attention to ontology. A second problem I raise is an epistemological/methodological issue. Therefore, I problematize three aspects of qualitative research, that is, the standard qualitative research model that came out of the 1980s to early 1990s, the focus on the individual as the font of “truth,” and coding and thematizing, all of which arises within the systemic White supremacy racism of Modernity.
Building on research conducted in feminist organizations in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, this paper explores the role, relationship, and responsibility of advocating for antiracism and social justice in the context of antiracism projects in feminist nonprofit organizations. In doing so this paper asks: What do antiracism projects look like in feminist organizations? And how are these projects informed or interrupted by racialized and Indigenous activists within these spaces? Using critical race theory’s composite counterstory, this paper uses storytelling methodologies to understand how racialized settlers and Indigenous folks can collaborate and thrive – as they have been doing – on occupied unceded territories in Canada. Based on a series of interviews with racialized and Indigenous activists engaging in feminist nonprofit organizations, these stories shed light on contemporary realities of colonization, including collaboration within white settler systems.
Purpose
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to effectively end race-conscious admissions practices across the nation, this paper highlights the law’s commitment to whiteness and antiblackness, invites us to mourn and to connect to possibility.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Cheryl Harris, Jarvis Givens and Chezare Warren, as well as the wisdom of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion, this paper utilizes CRT composite counterstory methodology to illuminate the antiblack reality of facially “race-neutral” admissions.
Findings
By manifesting the impossible situation that SFFA and the Supreme Court’s majority seek to normalize, the composite counterstory illuminates how Justice Jackson’s hypothetical enacts a fugitive pedagogy within a dominant legal system committed to whiteness as property; invites us to mourn, to connect to possibility and to remain committed to freedom as an intergenerational project that is inherently humanizing.
Originality/value
In a sobering moment where we face the end of race-conscious admissions, this paper uniquely grapples with the contradictions of affirmative action as minimally effective while also radically disruptive.
Over the course of 18 months, I found myself on a journey that began with two research questions based on my wonderings and observations about the lives of the women I witnessed engaging with young Black children in ways that the academic literature had not expounded upon. In this article, I use poetic inquiry to elucidate the liberatory practices of five Black women early childhood educators in a southwestern state. Rooted in Black feminist thought and ars spirituality, I analyzed my co-researchers' narrative portraits to craft found poems that explored the connection between their embodiment of reciprocal authenticity and liberatory practices that further developed young Black children's critical consciousness. As a means of (re) claiming my responsibility as a scholar and teacher educator, I provide the reader with poetic offerings that speak to the intergenerational freedom dreams of these Black women educators.
Objective: Black librarians account for just 5.4% of academic librarians in the U.S. in a period in which enrollments for Black students steadily increases. While national programs aimed at recruitment exist, too little attention is focused on the environments and cultures that influence the attrition of racially minoritized groups. This study investigated the experiences of Black librarians at public, 2-year colleges in the U.S. to better understand how they navigate, cope, and succeed amongst the challenges of academic librarianship. The following question guided the study: what are the experiences of Black librarians at public, 2-year colleges? Methods: Using Critical Race Methodology’s composite counterstory (CCS) and through two, ninety-minute interviews with four narrators, the experiences of Black librarians were leveraged to construct and reconstruct the storied lives of Black librarians in community college libraries. Results: The findings show the hostile environments Black librarians encounter in their work as educators at community colleges. Across and within their stories, four themes were found: retaliation, derailment, gendered racism, and violence. The narrators reported their work is made difficult in these environments, often creating barriers to retention (profession), promotion (organization), professional acknowledgment, and success. Conclusions: Implications for practice and research suggest bold action to counter the cultures of white supremacy to include intersectional audits for the organization, changes in HR policies, training and practices, and an emphasis on cohort hiring from national organizations among other recommendations.
One proposed strategy to overcome labour shortages in male-dominated jobs is to attract female workers. This has been the case for lorry driving in the UK. These efforts, however, often work to reproduce binary gendered stereotypes, or seek to include women without questioning how working conditions and everyday embodied work itself constructs gender roles and difference and is differentially experienced. In this paper, we highlight differentiated lorry driving bodies at work, centring lorries as an essential part of global logistical systems. Empirically drawing from interviews and mobile ethnographies with freight drivers in England, we tell a series of composite stories which uncover gendered ideals of worker-bodies, and embodied experiences of mobilities. With the gendered, embodied life’s work of lorry driving remaining largely invisible and poorly understood, we illustrate the complex intersections between places, people, materialities and forms of work. Through this paper, we show how (gendered) narratives and bodily difference are both reproduced and disrupted through lorry driving work. We argue that only through recognising – and destabilising - the gendered re/production of mobile work will other logistical futures be made possible.
Using critical race theory counterstorytelling, I tell a story about the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at a private, predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, and document analyses, I highlight the various ways MMAX students experience discrimination on campus. More specifically, discrimination and unsettledness are experienced by MMAX students through the following ways: 1) Racist Name Calling and Racial Slurs; 2) Discrimination by Professors; and 3) Class Discussions as Microaggressions. Through counterstories like this one, I argue that we can shed light on injustices while staying true to our ancestral ways of knowing and make our research accessible to communities historically excluded from academia.
Background/Context
In New Orleans, Louisiana, in the years following Hurricane Katrina, predominantly white education reformers have used entrepreneurial support to dismantle the predominantly Black city’s public education system. Using racial domination without community approval, these education reformers have educationally disenfranchised the Black community by implementing No Excuses (NE) Charter School Management Organizations (CMO). The rise in these organizations has also led to the mass firing of the city’s majority Black educator base and the hiring of majority white educators. Scholarship on NE CMOs notes their use of dehumanizing behavioral practices meant to control their student populations. Accounts, however, are limited from those who have witnessed, experienced, or resisted these dehumanizing behavioral practices.
Purpose/Objective/Focus of Study
Through the critical race theory (CRT) lens of racial realism, this paper provides a critical race personal counternarrative (CRPCN) that characterizes the racist and racialized disciplinary and surveillance practices used to control Black students’ bodies. It examines my experiences as a teacher within an NE CMO, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) school in New Orleans. Furthermore, this paper underscores my own Black fugitive pedagogic acts alongside my Black students, acts that allowed us to create fleeting moments of freedom inside and outside our classroom.
Research Design
I relied on critical race methodology to construct a CRPCN against KIPP, which prides itself on positive behavior practices and social justice. The evidence I drew on included free-written notes, conversations with former students and teachers, media (e.g., photos and videos), and scholarly literature. To analyze data, I drew on CRT concepts of racial realism and the permanence of racism in U.S. society to underscore Black fugitivity, anti-Black surveillance, and discipline.
Conclusion/Recommendations
Racial realism provides a lens for identifying the evolution of racialized surveillance technologies on Black bodies within the United States. Although critics characterize racial realism as overly pessimistic, this paper notes one way that scholars, educators, students, and parents can draw on this tool of racial resistance to accept the current racial reality, uncover racially oppressive schooling practices, and highlight strategies of survival through fugitive acts.
This chapter describes how qualitative educational researchers applying critical theory dialectically interrogate oppression while working toward collective transformation for more just educational practices, policies, and beliefs. Critical researchers critique exploitation in schools, asserting teachers', students', and communities' humanity through research and solidarity with local and global communities. This chapter outlines foundational concepts central to critical theory and describes applications of these ideas to research methodology. While both Western and Global critical traditions are cited, the authors call for greater efforts to center African, Asian, and Latin America critical philosophies, research methods, and general approaches to knowledge production.
This systematic literature review examines research on U.S. professional development (PD) in which practicing teachers are asked to engage explicitly with race and racism. Using Kennedy’s PD theories of action, this review examines 64 studies published from 1981 to 2019 and analyzes race-related PD goals, pedagogical approaches, and documented outcomes of PD. The body of scholarship shows an array of PD program goals, often-limited pedagogical explicitness and detail, and descriptive and developmental outcomes. Recent scholarship has centered racial-equity-oriented teachers and teachers of Color and identified PD characteristics associated with positive outcomes. Extant literature has seldom directly documented PD transfer and incorporation in schools or documented PD impact on students. Areas for future research include further leveraging scholarship on change processes including teacher learning and PD effectiveness, documenting teacher development beyond PD sessions, probing affordances of different PD settings and formats, and examining how PD ultimately impacts student experience.
“The Lion Refugee in Europe” is a critical race/anti-Blackness fictional counterstory that offers a perspective on the European refugee/immigrant situation. The story follows Asad, a young Somali refugee who ventures to Italy in hopes of gaining political asylum. By centering Asad as the main character, this fictional counterstory is meant to expose the realities experienced by refugees on their passages, specifically those leaving Africa. The lead author conducted the research for the counterstory during the summer of 2019. Much of the story reflects real events involving the state of refugee affairs related to the anti-immigration policy implemented under Italy’s previous right-wing government. Asad’s story is meant to reflect the experiences of refugees and the anti-immigrant sentiment that is prevalent throughout Europe. An immigration/refugee fictional critical race theory (CRT) counterstory told from this point of view is meant to confront a European nationalist stance on immigration and promote a more critical race/anti-Blackness/Afrophobia awareness and response toward the experiences of Black immigrant/refugee populations in Europe.
The teacher workforce has undergone macrostructural economic and political changes tied to privatization, deunionization, and deregulation. These forms of neoliberal restructuring have resulted in employment precarity or job insecurity for teachers, but have acutely impacted teachers of color. Drawing on the literature from economic sociology and the sociology of work, this conceptual paper outlines three defining features of precarity in teaching: (1) precarity as a process of neoliberalism; (2) precarity as a socioeconomic condition; and (3) precarity as an ontological experience. By applying these aspects of precarity, this article casts light on the historical and contemporaneous work experiences of teachers of color that render them at risk for job insecurity and social and economic vulnerability.
Oral historians have declared the methodology a social justice project. This essay advances that discussion, positing that oral history methodology may represent a more specific racial justice project when coupled with critical race theory. An examination of the history of African American education scholarship, we argue, supports this contention. Two central questions guide this essay: (1) What does scholarship on the history of African American education demonstrate about the compatibility between oral history methodology and critical race theory? and (2) How does this methodological-theoretical pairing advance a racial justice project? We aim to show how critical race theory and oral history methodology complement one another as research tools that can strengthen the history of education’s capacity to inform current educational issues. Our essay draws on the work of historians of African American education to exemplify possibilities for any historian of education who examines systematically underserved communities of Colour. Ultimately, we argue that critical race theory and oral history methodology are compatible because they share several propositions apt for helping researchers subvert the silencing, marginalisation, and objectification of systemically underserved communities of Colour, thereby furthering a racial justice project. This essay, therefore, contributes primarily to interdisciplinary education and historical research methods literature.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) has provided academia a theoretical framework to engage in a conversation and explore the lived experiences of people as they are impacted by the endemic nature of racism. The creation of subsets within CRT have made space for minoritized populations in ways that are specific to them. The author proposes the creation of MusCrit as a means to explore the experiences of Muslim Americans with a CRT lens by sharing six tenets that are unique to the lived reality of this demographic.
This essay utilizes critical race theory composite counterstorytelling to tell a story about Alberto, a first-generation Xicano doctoral student who is presenting his dissertation research proposal to his qualitative research class. Through Alberto’s character, I discuss my complicated process of designing and conducting a research study. Specifically, I reflect on why I decided to study the experiences of Mexican, Mexican American, and Xicanx students in higher education, why I used critical race theory, Latinx/a/o critical race theory, and critical race spatial analysis as theoretical frameworks, why I utilized critical collaborative ethnography as my research approach, and why I chose counterstorytelling as a research method to distribute my findings.
This article presents an autoethnographic reflection from three education scholars—a white man, a Latinx woman, and a Black woman—on the institutional presence of whiteness in the academy. We started developing this reflection when jointly conducting a study of faculty and students of color in a predominantly white institution (PWI). Ongoing discussion of that study’s interviews and themes led us to write about how that work affected us personally. As our reflection progressed and we continued to analyze what we wrote, what started as a reflection on conducting race research became a set of narratives about our experiences with whiteness in the academy more broadly. We share those narratives to highlight the visceral nature of whiteness, i.e., the emotional weight and harm of whiteness’ looming presence in the academy. We also explore how the research act—when conducted as critical, collaborative autoethnography—can serve as a form of antiracist community building and help carve out space for speaking back to the othering and silencing white narratives of white racial spaces like PWIs.
This article asserts that despite the salience of race in U.S. society, as a topic of scholarly inquiry, it remains untheorized. The article argues for a critical race theoretical perspective in education analogous to that of critical race theory in legal scholarship by developing three propositions: (1) race continues to be significant in the United States; (2) U.S. society is based on property rights rather than human rights; and (3) the intersection of race and property creates an analytical tool for understanding inequity. The article concludes with a look at the limitations of the current multicultural paradigm.
This chapter is structured around the exposition of various sources (authors of CRT articles and philosophers who influenced these authors), followed by commentaries that summarize and critique the more descriptive discussions. The reason for this unusual structure relates to the twofold purpose of the chapter. The first purpose is to describe the major theoretical elements undergirding CRT. The second purpose is to discuss the potential implications of this body of literature for the scholarly articulation of race and equity in educational policy and research. This discussion will offer a critique of CRT writing that asks whether the methods of analysis and argument, and the research agenda represented by the CRT scholarship described here, are valuable in two ways. First, do they provide insights capable of radically transforming educational policy or the study of education? Second, do they provide insights into equity issues in education that are substantial and novel?
This article addresses how critical race theory can inform a critical race methodology in education. The authors challenge the intercentricity of racism with other forms of subordination and exposes deficit-informed research that silences and distorts epistemologies of people of color. Although social scientists tell stories under the guise of “objective” research, these stories actually uphold deficit, racialized notions about people of color. For the authors, a critical race methodology provides a tool to “counter” deficit storytelling. Specifically, a critical race methodology offers space to conduct and present research grounded in the experiences and knowledge of people of color. As they describe how they compose counter-stories, the authors discuss how the stories can be used as theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical tools to challenge racism, sexism, and classism and work toward social justice.
The displacement of Black educators after the Brown v. Board of Education decision was an extraordinary social injustice. The wholesale firing of Black educators threatened the economic, social, and cultural structure of the Black community, and ultimately the social, emotional, and academic success of Black children. The author presents a historical perspective of the work of Black educators in the pre-Brown era; discusses the impact of Brown on the professional careers of Black teachers, principals, and superintendents; describes some of methods used to fire Black educators; and concludes with a discussion of the impact of these losses on the Black community and an agenda for Black education.
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 illustrate or emphasize a point. This article focuses on those stories. The article begins with a discussion of the function of stories in culture and the way that historical and social positionality shape the stories we tell. Concepts from discourse analysis and critical race theory inform the analysis of the story data. Scott's (1990) theory of hidden and public transcripts offers a framework for differentiating stories that support mainstream views of and assumptions about race and racism from those counter-narratives which challenge the mainstream discourse. The article then provides a thematic presentation of counter-narrative stories, told predominantly by respondents of color, followed by examination of the hegemonic narratives told predominantly by whites. In particular, this section analyzes the prevalence and effects of color-blind ideology in white stories. Finally, the article discusses the value and importance of listening to the stories people tell as a way of understanding the reproduction of racism and the possibilities for intervention through using story in anti-racist teaching.
The oppositional culture explanation for racial disparities in school performance posits that individuals from historically oppressed groups (involuntary minorities) signify their antagonism toward the dominant group by resisting school goals. In contrast, individuals from the dominant group and groups that migrated freely to the host country (immigrant minorities) maintain optimistic views of their chances for educational and occupational success. Because of its historical and cross-cultural appeal, this explanation has been well-received by academics, although key implications of the theory have not been carefully tested. Proponents have failed to systematically compare perceptions of occupational opportunity and resistance to school across involuntary, dominant and immigrant groups. Using a large sample of African American, Asian American, and non-Hispanic white high school sophomores from the first follow-up of the National Education Longitudinal Study, we provide the first rigorous test of the oppositional culture explanation. Upon close scrutiny, its key predictions fail.
This article explores the use of the methodology of portraiture and the analytic framework of critical race theory (CRT) to evaluate success and failure in urban classrooms. Portraiture and CRT share a number of features that make the two a viable pair for conducting research in urban schools. In combination, portraiture and CRT allow researchers to evoke the personal, the professional, and the political to illuminate issues of race, class, and gender in education research and to create possibilities for urban school reform as social action.
The author draws on principles of critical race theory to reflect on his elementary education at a successful urban Catholic school. He contends that his education was built on the integration of two epistemological pillars: centric and conflict theories. The implementation of this matrix of theories served as the necessary ingredients to foster his movement from the inner city to the ivory tower and a career in mathematics education research. The article concludes with a discussion of the tension created by his "voice" within traditional academic discourse.
Many black youths and adults express a high regard for education even though their academic performance is poor. Utilizing a sample of 1,193 high school seniors, this article resolves the attitude-achievement paradox by demonstrating that attitudes toward education are multidimensional. The first dimension is composed of abstract attitudes that reflect the dominant ideology. The second dimension is composed of concrete attitudes that inform achievement behavior. Unlike abstract attitudes, these concrete attitudes are rooted in life experience in which educational credentials may not be fairly rewarded by the opportunity structure. The paradox of poor grades but positive attitudes toward education among blacks vanishes when concrete, rather than abstract, attitudes are related to high school grades. Substantively, the study reported in this article illustrates how race and class, which are large components of the social context of achievement, influence school outcomes.
Using critical race theory as a framework, the article utilizes counter-storytelling to examine the different forms of racial and gender discrimination experienced by Chicana and Chicano graduate students. After describing the critical race theory framework and counter-storytelling method, the article moves to a story of two composite and data-driven characters, Professor Leticia Garcia and graduate student Esperanza Gonzalez. Various theoretical and conceptual issues such as self-doubt, survivor guilt, impostor syndrome, and invisibility are woven into Esperanza's graduate school and Professor Garcia's pre-tenure experiences.
This chapter examines the public school reforms that have been undertaken in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, along with their implications for African American students, parents, and teachers. After the Katrina disaster, New Orleans embarked on an aggressive makeover of the public school district that entailed school closures and the proliferation of the charter school model that combines public funding and private management. The chapter considers the responses of stakeholders—parents, teachers, and community members—as well as their understanding of the hybrid nature of public schools in New Orleans that contain both traditional public schools (that is, schools that exist and existed as part of the New Orleans Public Schools) and charter schools. Specifically, it explores what happens when traditional public education is replaced by a hybrid, free-market model and how these reforms affect African Americans, particularly as they relate to educational and racial equity. In the process, it casts doubt on the triumphalist narratives on the virtues of “school choice” that have gained momentum nationwide.
Reviewed by Assaf Meshulam Pedagogy, Policy, and the Privatized City is an exceptional work of collaboration between urban high-school students, their teachers, and leading scholars and social activists. The book compellingly illuminates Freirian liberatory pedagogy at work, on the one hand, and the destructive forces of neoliberalism in urban (un)development and educational policies, on the other. An expansion on Kristen Buras' previous work with Michael Apple in The Subaltern Speak (2006), this powerful book shows not only that the subaltern can and do speak, but what has been done to silence their cogent voices and how they can resist this. At its heart are the evocative and provocative essays of students and teachers in a critical writing program called " Students at the Center " (SAC), launched in 1996 in New Orleans high schools. The intimate and revealing narratives offer insight into the writers' lives, schools, neighborhoods, and city, while vividly exposing how New Orleans became a neoliberal " experimental arena " after Hurricane Katrina on the foundation of the appalling racism and poverty that has long plagued the city. Building on Harvey's (2006) conceptualization of " accumulation by dispossession " and Harris' (1995) " whiteness as property " , the book explores class and racial dimensions of the transformation and restructuring of the public education system in New Orleans and the ongoing struggles for justice and liberation of marginalized groups. Neoliberal reforms accelerated the attack on everything " public " following Katrina, particularly education, with policies decentralizing the public system, pushing to transform all public schools into selective admission charter schools, and ousting almost all unionized teachers, replaced largely by uncertified, inexperienced Teach For America teachers. The tremendous power of this book is the unique historical and spatial contexts of New Orleans, both as a site of racial and economic oppression and neglect, which intensified after Katrina, and as the site of a long tradition of social resistance to this. Buras begins with a deep description of SAC, based on her research in two schools offering the program. She analyzes SAC's work as exemplary of Freirian pedagogy in the context of the struggles over education in New Orleans, with its student participants " engag[ing] in historically informed writing initiatives aimed at transforming their schools and communities " (p. 8). Chapters 2, 3, and 4 then each present a set of personal accounts written by SAC students and teachers, each chapter centered around a different theme. The essays are followed by commentary and analysis from critical educators and activists, who reflect on the writers' experiences and contextualize them in relation to pedagogy and policy-making.
Demographic correlates of whether an extended family has incorporated a fictive kin relative was examined among a national sample of black adults. Fictive kin are defined as persons who are treated like a relative but who are not related by blood or marriage. Two out of three respondents indicated there was someone in their family who was regarded as a fictive kin. Multivariate analysis revealed that gender, age, education and region were all significantly associated with the probability that a family would incorporate fictive kin members. These findings are discussed in relation to previous work on fictive kinship relationships.
In this article, Kristen L. Buras examines educational policy formation in New Orleans and the racial, economic, and spatial dynamics shaping the city's reconstruction since 2005. More specifically, Buras draws on the critical theories of whiteness as property, accumulation by dispossession, and urban space economy to describe the strategic assault on black communities by education entrepreneurs. Based on data collected from an array of stakeholders on the ground, she argues that policy actors at the federal, state, and local levels have contributed to a process of privatization and an inequitable racial-spatial redistribution of resources while acting under the banner of "conscious capitalism." She challenges the market-based reforms currently offered as a panacea for education in New Orleans, particularly charter schools, and instead offers principles of educational reform rooted in a more democratic and critically conscious tradition.
In this article, Dolores Delgado Bernal outlines a Chicana feminist epistemological framework that is new to the field of educational research. This framework, which draws from the existing work of Chicana feminists, questions the notions of objectivity and a universal foundation of knowledge. A Chicana feminist epistemology is also grounded in the life experiences of Chicanas and involves Chicana research participants in analyzing how their lives are being interpreted, documented, and reported, while acknowledging that many Chicanas lead lives with significantly different opportunity structures than men or White women. As part of this framework, Delgado Bernal also introduces the concept of cultural intuition to name a complex process that acknowledges the unique viewpoints that many Chicana scholars bring to the research process. In the latter half of the article, she illustrates the importance of this framework in educational research by describing an oral history project on Chicana student resistance and activism as seen from this framework. Her conceptual discussion and research example together demonstrate that employing a Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research is one means of resisting traditional paradigms that often distort or omit the experiences and knowledge of Chicanas.
The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. education. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is misplaced. Instead, we need to look at the “education debt” that has accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy with the concept of national debt—which she contrasts with that of a national budget deficit—to argue the significance of the education debt.
Replies to several criticisms of critical race theory, especially those directed at the use of narrative and legal storytelling. Counsels that narrative jurisprudence is only one of critical race theory's tools and that criticism of it should not be imputed to the entire field. Acknowledges the diversity of outsider voices and narrative approaches. Concludes that mainstream academics should proceed cautiously in criticizing new and unfamiliar forms of discourse.
Researchers depict African American teachers in the South during segregation alternately as either victims of oppressive circumstances or as caring role models. These disparate portraits fail to reconcile the relationship of each depiction to the other. This article addresses this omission by providing a historiography of African American teaching between 1940 and 1960, with supplementary data from Georgia. Results indicate that African American teachers in the South worked in dismal, unfair, discriminatory positions, but did not allow themselves to become victims of their environments. Rather, they viewed themselves as trained professionals who embraced a series of ideas about how to teach African American children that were consistent with their professional discussions and their understanding of the African American community.
For too long, the histories, experiences, cultures, and languages of students of color have been devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings. In this article, the author uses critical race theory (CRT) and Latina/Latino critical theory (LatCrit) to demonstrate how critical raced-gendered epistemologies recognize students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. In doing so, she discusses how CRT and LatCrit provide an appropriate lens for qualitative research in the field of education. She then compares and contrasts the experiences of Chicana/Chicano students through a Eurocentric and a critical raced-gendered epistemological perspective and demonstrates that each perspective holds vastly different views of what counts as knowledge, specifically regarding language, culture, and commitment to communities. She then offers implications of critical raced-gendered epistemologies for both research and practice and concludes by discussing some of the critiques of the use of these epistemologies in educational research.
There are too few positive images of African-American teachers in the education literature. In this article, the author reports the results of two ethnographic studies of 18 exemplary African-American teachers. Using the teachers' words, their backgrounds, educational philosophies, and the relationship between the two are described. The author emphasizes the differences that teachers' backgrounds make in their conceptions of the purpose and function of schooling and its relationship to education. She also argues that their knowledge of their community's norms and of the position of that community within the larger society explains their success with students.
Not much about New Orleans, or Louisiana as a whole, is ordinary. People down here take a particular pride in being distinctly different from everywhere else. This difference is evident not only in the culture, music and food but in the intricacies of local government. Truly understanding the post-storm landscape of education in New Orleans and the metro area requires a grasp of some of the pre-storm realities of New Orleans public schools. This piece will provide a brief overview of three arenas important to understanding the educational landscape of New Orleans – parish governance, desegregation and private schools.
Geography is crucial to understanding the patterns of migration out of New Orleans particularly after desegregation and during the era of middle-class flight out of urban centers that spanned the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unlike most school systems in America that are governed at a city or town level, Louisiana public schools are collected in parish districts – the equivalent of counties in other states. This parish designation is a throwback to the state's Roman Catholic heritage and an era when civil government was intricately tied to ecclesiastical governance.
Each parish, there are 66 in the state, has an elected school board charged with overseeing all public schools. While most parishes include both rural and urban areas and frequently encompass several municipalities, the boundaries of the city of New Orleans and Orleans Parish (Figure 2) are congruent so that all Orleans Parish public schools are within the city's limits. Orleans Parish is bordered to the east and west by Jefferson Parish, to the southwest by St. Bernard Parish, and to the north by St. Tammany Parish (Figure 1).
The New Orleans white power structure did not move to desegregate the city's schools until 1960. In that year, the School Board subjected black students who applied to attend a white school to an admissions test and finally allowed a carefully selected group of black girls (boys were deemed too threatening) to attend William Frantz and McDonogh No. 19 elementary schools.
Although more than 137 African-American kindergarteners applied for admission and were tested, only five were ultimately allowed to proceed into the two elementary schools. They five young girls were subjected to harassment, threats and physical attacks and when they could not be scared away, white parents eventually pulled their students out of the two elementary schools. White parents boycotted McDonogh No. 19 and the four African-American girls who integrated that school attended school alone for the year. At Frantz, some white parents continued to send their children to school but the students who would have been classmates of the schools' sole African-American student, Ruby Bridges, did not come to school so she too completed the school year alone. McDonogh No. 19 never again had a majority white student population and Frantz quickly became a majority African-American school.
The dynamics at these two elementary schools played out across the system as the school board implemented its grade-per-year integration plan. By the late 1960s, African-American students outnumbered white students 2-to-1. By 2005, more than 80 percent of students attending public schools in New Orleans were African-American and many schools that had student populations that were 100 percent African-American. The city's demographics before the storm were about two-third African American and just under 30 percent white.
As New Orleans schools integrated, many white families moved out of New Orleans into one of the surrounding parishes, particularly to St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes. Other families transferred their students into non-public schools that have remained a significant presence in New Orleans.
A year after Hurricane Katrina pushed devastating tides through the city's failed levee system damaging 80 percent of the city's public schools; only about half of New Orleans public schools are scheduled to open by August 2006. Most of...
The New Orleans Public Schools is a struggling district of 63,000 students. The district's student population has been decreasing over the past decade. Most of the city's white families have retreated to neighboring parishes or put their children in private schools. Middle-class and professional African-American families rely heavily on the city's many Catholic schools.
Drained of this middle-class constituency and the political support that it provided, the New Orleans Public Schools are spiraling downward. Year after year, attempts to increase local funding for the schools fail to gain support in citywide elections. Year after year, the bountiful profits of the New Orleans tourist industry and the oil and gas resources that have lined corporate pockets and federal coffers so handsomely, fail to find their way into the city's education system.
Mismanagement and infighting on the Orleans Parish School Board feed the perception that the system is broken beyond repair.
But "beyond repair" is not the perception of many of the district's teachers, who commit year after year to working in some of the city's most troubled schools, like Frederick Douglass High School in the 9th Ward.
Teachers at Douglass have created Students at the Center, an elective writing course that serves as a sanctuary for small groups of students at Douglass (and other schools) each year. In Students at the Center, young people are encouraged to find their voices, develop their writing skills, and engage in their communities. Along with teacher Jim Randels, several of the students have joined the Douglass Community Coalition to involve residents of the 9th Ward in supporting Douglass, and to engage students at Douglass in community organizing efforts.
These socially active teachers, and thousands of other employees of the New Orleans Public Schools, are members of AFT Local 527, the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO). The union has a long history of progressive activism and political action.
As the summer of 2005 winds down, students, teachers, and parents prepare for another school year.
New Orleans schools open for the 2005-06 school year.
Tropical Storm Katrina forms in the Caribbean and quickly gains hurricane strength. On Aug. 25 the storm makes its first U.S. landfall in Florida, before heading into the Gulf of Mexico
Hurricane Katrina reaches category 5 status as one of the fiercest hurricanes ever to approach the United States. The massive storm inches north across the Gulf. Evacuation orders are issued for New Orleans and surrounding coastal areas.
Hurricane Katrina slams into New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Levees fail to hold back the storm surge rising in Lake Ponchartrain and the Industrial Canal that bisects the city's 9th Ward as it connects the lake to the Mississippi River. Vast sections of the city, particularly the low-lying and predominantly African-American 9th Ward, are flooded with as much as 30 feet of water.
The city's "Lower 9th," to the east of the canal and already isolated from the rest of the city, is particularly hard hit. Hundreds of mostly low-income African Americans who could not afford to evacuate ahead of the storm drown in the floodwaters.
Some of the city's more white and wealthy neighborhoods, like the famous Garden District and the French Quarter, rest on higher ground. They are largely spared from the flooding.
In Washington and Baton Rouge, while the federal government bungles its response to Katrina, conservative education groups and the education industry lobby (the Education Industry Association represents corporations that market goods to school systems — textbooks, assessments, tutoring services — and also includes major corporate operators of public schools) are ready with a unified message: This is an opportunity to create a new paradigm of publicly funded, market-based schools that provide flexibility for individual families. They begin lobbying heavily in Baton Rouge and hold private meetings in Washington with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
This influential interest group is also quick to dominate the media. Their message is simple: Those who call for rebuilding a centralized public school infrastructure are defenders of the status quo. Either you think the...
Examines events contributing to the decline in numbers of African American teachers, identifying their importance to all students and describing how teacher educators are working to increase teacher diversity. The paper introduces "Teach for Arkansas," which advances diversity and increases the minority teaching force by forming partnerships between four-year and two- year colleges and utilizing distance education. (SM)
As a result of the Brown v Board of Education court decision, thousands of educational positions which would have gone to Blacks in the South have been lost, although gains in school positions for Blacks have occurred in other parts of the country. (RLV)
This is one of the earliest pieces to address legal storytelling or narrative analysis. It explains why it is helpful both to tell and analyze legal stories. A middle section tells a story of a single event – a black lawyer interviews for a position at a top school and is rejected – from several points of view. The article thus is both an exemplar of legal storytelling as well as an effort to analyze and defend the genre.
L'A. s'eleve contre la distinction faite entre les anthropologues « indigenes » (interne a la societe) et « non indigenes » (externe a la societe). Si a l'epoque du colonialisme, les etudes faites par, ou a l'aide, des autochtones etaient davantage estimees car refletant une soit-disant meilleure realite, une approche hybride, ou narration et analyse rigoureuse sont melees, aurait tout autant de valeur.
In this article, the authors critically synthesize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an emerging field of inquiry has been used as a tool of critique and analysis in K-12 education research. The authors point out that CRT has been used as a framework for examining: persistent racial inequities in education, qualitative research methods, pedagogy and practice, the schooling experiences of marginalized students of color, and the efficacy of race-conscious education policy. The authors explore how these studies have changed the nature of education research and stress the need for further research that critically interrogates race and racism in education.
The authors review their previous explanation of black students' underachievement. They now suggest the importance of considering black people's expressive responses to their historical status and experience in America. Fictive kinship is proposed as a framework for understanding how a sense of collective identity enters into the process of schooling and affects academic achievement. The authors support their argument with ethnographic data from a high school in Washington, D.C., showing how the fear of being accused of acting white causes a social and psychological situation which diminishes black students' academic effort and thus leads to underachievement. Policy and programmatic implications are discussed.
Contenido: Parte I.Cuestiones conceptuales en la investigación cualitativa: Naturaleza de la investigación cualitativa; Temas estratégicos en la investigación cualitativa; Diversidad en la investigación cualitativa: orientaciones teóricas; Aplicaciones cualitativas particulares. Parte II. Diseños cualitativos y recolección de datos: Estudios de diseños cualitativos; Estrategias de trabajo de campo y métodos de observación; Entrevistas cualitativas. Parte III. Análisis, interpretación e informe: Análisis cualitativo e interpretación; Incrementar la calidad y la credibilidad del análisis cualitativo.
In this companion volume John van Maanen's Tales of the Field, three scholars reveal how the ethnographer turns direct experience and observation into written fieldnotes upon which an ethnography is based. Drawing on years of teaching and field research experience, the authors develop a series of guidelines, suggestions, and practical advice about how to write useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, both cultural and institutional. Using actual unfinished, "working" notes as examples, they illustrate options for composing, reviewing, and working fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational and descriptive strategies, including evocation of sensory detail, synthesis of complete scenes, the value of partial versus omniscient perspectives, and of first person versus third person accounts. Of particular interest is the author's discussion of notetaking as a mindset. They show how transforming direct observations into vivid descriptions results not simply from good memory but more crucially from learning to envision scenes as written. A good ethnographer, they demonstrate, must learn to remember dialogue and movement like an actor, to see colors and shapes like a painter, and to sense moods and rhythms like a poet. The authors also emphasize the ethnographer's core interest in presenting the perceptions and meanings which the people studied attach to their own actions. They demonstrate the subtle ways that writers can make the voices of people heard in the texts they produce. Finally, they analyze the "processing" of fieldnotesâthe practice of coding notes to identify themes and methods for selecting and weaving together fieldnote excerpts to write a polished ethnography. This book, however, is more than a "how-to" manual. The authors examine writing fieldnotes as an interactive and interpretive process in which the researcher's own commitments and relationships with those in the field inevitably shape the character and content of those fieldnotes. They explore the conscious and unconscious writing choices that produce fieldnote accounts. And they show how the character and content of these fieldnotes inevitably influence the arguments and analyses the ethnographer can make in the final ethnographic tale. This book shows that note-taking is a craft that can be taught. Along with Tales of the Field and George Marcus and Michael Fisher's Anthropology as Cultural Criticism, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes is an essential tool for students and social scientists alike.
The colonial vestiges of education reform The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Assessing the oppositional culture explanation for racial/ethnic differences in school performance
- A Adkins
- James W Ainsworth-Darnell
- Douglas B Downey
Adkins, A. 1997. The colonial vestiges of education reform. PhD diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ainsworth-Darnell, James W., and Douglas B. Downey. 1998. Assessing the oppositional culture explanation for racial/ethnic differences in school performance. American Sociological Review 63, no. 4: 536–53.
With more deliberate speed: Achieving equity and excellence in education – Realizing the full potential of Brown v Board of Education: Part II Time for the teachers: Putting educators back into the brown remedy
- A E Ball
Ball, A.E., ed. 2006. With more deliberate speed: Achieving equity and excellence in education – Realizing the full potential of Brown v. Board of Education: Part II (2006 Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Vol. 105, Issue 2). Maiden, MA: Blackwell. Bell, D. 1983. Time for the teachers: Putting educators back into the brown remedy. The Journal of Negro Education 52, no. 3: 290–301.
Critical race theory
- T Chapman
Chapman, T. 2009. Critical race theory. In Handbook of research in the social foundations of education, ed. S. Tozer, B.P. Gallegos, A.M. Henry, M.B. Greiner, and P.G. Price, 220–32.