Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and the Primacy of Racism (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
The increasing diversity of our classrooms means we must learn to work with, and across, cultural, racial and gendered differences, without falling into diversity management. This paper employs Critical Race Theory (CRT) and paradigmatic frameworks to address social crises in our classrooms—thus demonstrating how we can value (i.e., not erase) our differences and equitably share power in the classroom. Employing an CRT intersectional analysis, I will explore the social, economic, and cultural dimensions of racial (in) justice in diverse contexts (within frameworks that recognize the salience of social identities including, but not limited to, class, and race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, immigration status and ability). Examples will be provided from my own teachings of how CRT has been employed in the university classroom setting and how student’s powerful testimonies and voices connect storytelling to validate their lived experiences. The aim of this presentation is to ...
Dialectics of Race Criticality: Studies in Racial Stratification and Education
A Companion to Research in Education, 2013
This chapter delineates the criteria for a critical study of race in education. In particular, it poses the central problem of whiteness in education within a general critical study of race. In doing this, the chapter does not engage race paradigmatically. It is an affirmation of criticality that does not locate it in any particular school of thought and subject to its assumptions but instead recruits multiple positions on the matter of race. It is guided by the spirit and claim that race in education is a complex issue that requires a critical framework that testifies to this very complexity. It is an attempt to build a project around race criticality that is less possessive and more dialogic. First, it introduces the main frameworks for a critical study of race, mainly Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory of Race, and Race Critical Theory. Second, it frames race work as the dialectic between explaining racial oppression and projecting racial utopia. Third, it presents a synthesis between particularities in racial experience and the universal features of racial oppression. Finally, it ends by arguing that race scholars immerse ourselves in critically understanding the racial formation as a prerequisite to any attempt to abolish it. As such, the ultimate sign of race criticality is imagining the disappearance of one’s craft, the eventual obsolescence of one’s racial interventions.
Critical Race Theory and Education: Racism and anti-racism in educational theory and praxis
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2006
What is Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what does it offer educational researchers and practitioners outside the US? This paper addresses these questions by examining the recent history of antiracist research and policy in the UK. In particular, the paper argues that conventional forms of antiracism have proven unable to keep pace with the development of increasingly racist and exclusionary education polices that operate beneath a veneer of professed tolerance and diversity. In particular, contemporary antiracism lacks clear statements of principle and theory that risk reinventing the wheel with each new study; it is increasingly reduced to a meaningless slogan; and it risks appropriation within a reformist "can do" perspective dominated by the de-politicized and managerialist language of school effectiveness and improvement. In contrast, CRT offers a genuinely radical and coherent set of approaches that could revitalize critical research in education across a range of inquiries, not only in self-consciously "multicultural" studies. The paper reviews the developing terrain of CRT in education, identifying its key defining elements and the conceptual tools that characterise the work. CRT in education is a fast changing and incomplete project but it can no longer be ignored by the academy beyond North America.
British graduates of African Caribbean parentage who achieve educationally are an under-researched group. This paper uses intersectionality and critical race theory to explore the higher education (HE) experiences of a small group of British African Caribbean graduates. The theory of intersectionality provides a powerful tool for examining the structuring effects of ‘race’/ ethnicity, social class and gender in order to understand how multiple identities converge to create the specific experience of British African Caribbean students in a UK higher education context. Intersectionality lends itself to a qualitative methodology (Crenshaw, 1989) and critical race theory suggests that it is important to hear the voices of minoritised people in order to understand and challenge racism (Yosso, 2005). As such, a narrative approach was used to elicit what participants considered to be key features shaping their higher education experiences. It transpired that subtle racism in the forms of low expectations and lack of diversity positioned them as ‘outsiders within’ (Collins, 2000). In response, participants used independent learning strategies and emotional withdrawal to navigate their way through the sometimes hostile HE environment. Closely linked to ‘race’/ ethnicity were issues of social class, which influenced where participants studied and heightened their concerns about their own academic abilities. Consequently, African Caribbean support networks served as a vital source of social capital to overcome these challenges. The research involved both male and female respondents and a gender dynamic was evident in the prevalence of the women studying for Masters degrees at post-graduate level and identifying pleasure as a prime motivation to study. However, class related issues re-emerged as a barrier to doctoral study and academic careers. One of the conclusions of the research is that increased diversity in academic staff, higher education curriculum and cultural activities would improve the experience of British African Caribbean students. Another conclusion is that untapped potential exists amongst British African Caribbean postgraduate women. If harnessed, this could serve to bridge the gap between universities and communities in order to enhance social inclusion and genuinely improve diversity in higher education.
Intersectionality, Race-Gender Subordination, and Education
Review of Research in Education, 2018
In this chapter, we unpack intersectionality as an analytical framework. First, we cite Black Lives Matter as an impetus for discussing intersectionality’s current traction. Second, we review the genealogy of “intersectionality” beginning with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s formulation, which brought a Black Studies provocation into legal discourse in order to challenge existing antidiscrimination doctrine and single-axis theorizing. The third, and most central, task of the chapter is our account of intersectionality’s utility for social analysis. We examine some of the issues raised by the metaphor of the intersection and some of the debates surrounding the concept, such as the tension between fragmenting and universalizing perspectives mediated by the notion of “strategic essentialism.” Fourth, we review how education researchers have explained race and gender subordination in education since Ladson-Billings and Tate’s Teachers College Record article. We conclude with some remarks concerning...
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.