Critical race pedagogy 2.0: lessons from Derrick Bell

In this article, we attempt to honor the rich legacy of Derrick Bell by detailing how exploring his specific contributions to critical race theory (CRT) provided lessons for developing and refining critical race pedagogy (CRP). We examine Bell’s racial realism thesis in connection with his pedagogical work. In doing so, we find that he was as committed to developing a ‘community-based’ law classroom as he was to articulating a strong critique of the law (Radice 1991). As part of his teaching philosophy, Bell wrote extensively about the value and importance of a student-centered humanist pedagogy (Bell 1980, 1982, 1997; Bell and Edmonds 1993; Delgado and Stefancic 2005). We draw parallels between Bell’s humanist student-centered pedagogy and the tenets of CRP as a way to expand the accessibility of this framework. Finally, as the ultimate homage to the work of Derrick Bell, we end with a futuristic mini-chronicle that takes place in a school district boardroom. The chronicle features a fictitious character who happens to be a distant relative of Bell’s. As we will discuss, we believe that the use of chronicles and storytelling hold the possibility for helping us to name extant challenges and illuminate further possibilities of CRP as a tool for battling globalized oppression at the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality in education.     

Decolonising Eurocentric disability studies: why colonialism matters in the disability and global South debate

The words ‘colonised’ and ‘colonising’ have recently been adopted in global North fields such as disability studies, highlighting notions of colonised bodies by colonising practices, with the implication that some or other ‘decolonisation’ is required. But these words remain little more than abstract and dehistoricised metaphors in these Eurocentric academic projects. This paper critically maps out some arguments as to why the colonial encounter is not simply a metaphor and cannot be bypassed in any global disability analysis. The paper argues how this historical event transcends the discursive, a violent materiality framing disability as a historical narrative and human condition, while (re)positioning disability as a useful optic through which to examine the dynamics of imperialism. The colonial provides the landscape for understanding contemporary Southern spaces within which disability is constructed and lived – neocolonised spaces hosting what I call neocolonised bodies. The paper concludes that decolonisation, just like colonialism, is not a metaphor. Instead, it is a continuous violent and political process owned by the global South but open to collaboration, drawing on forms of resistance that have long colonial lineages.     

英俄角逐中亚与1873年英俄协定

本文以19世纪前期的中亚为背景,勾勒了该时期英俄争夺中亚,并达成1873年英俄协定的历史概貌,以便使我们对英俄进行殖民掠夺的本性有一个全新的认识.     

Trayvon Martin and the curriculum of tragedy: critical race lessons for education

In what ways do the tragedies centered on the lives of black youth, particularly black male youth, inform teachers, education policymakers, and teacher educators about what knowledge is most worth knowing? In this counter/story, we will examine the details of the life and death of Trayvon Martin. From these details, we will extract and interpret a curriculum of tragedy that draws from Derrick Bell’s particular contributions to critical race theory (CRT) applies its central tenets. This article will conclude with lesson for black education for teachers, education policymakers and teacher educators.     

Narratives of race and nation: Everyday whiteness in Australia

Australia's history as a white nation has been riddled with not only mis-treatment of the ‘other’, but in more recent times of a type of invisibility of the ‘other’ that has disabled many within this nation from recognising the continuation of practices and policies of racial discrimination. This paper presents the findings from research conducted over 2001–03 during the ‘boat people’ crisis in Australia, when a number of everyday individuals volunteered time to assist refugees. It goes on to argue that while the policies of Multiculturalism of the 1970s had attempted to create a more inclusive society and had for the participants in this research transformed into nation-defining narrative, its failure to incorporate everyday people in its inception and continuation was productive of a blind spot in relation to racial treatment because most could believe all was well in this arena.     

Pride and prejudice: opposing constructions of mixed race in Australia

ABSTRACT

In the Australian context, the development of a ‘situated politics of mixedness’ is complicated by the fact that there are (at least) two main categories of mixed race populations – the Indigenous and the migrant/settler. For those with mixed Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal ancestries, and those with mixed White and other migrant ancestries, life chances and identities differ significantly. This paper outlines some of these differences using the trope of pride and prejudice. For those of mixed migrant/settler heritage, evidence is growing that the mixed experience is predominantly one of pride. For them, misrecognition, or being asked about their racial background, is an opportunity for play, often resulting in ‘the big reveal’ of a valorised mixed identity associated with something other than a bland ‘white bread’ Australian-ness. For those of mixed Indigenous heritage however, there remains a significant level of prejudice, not (only) for being Aboriginal, but for not being visibly Aboriginal enough. Using existing studies and a number of media controversies as examples, this paper interrogates the implications of these differences for understandings of the ways in which race is recruited in the construction of legitimate identity claims. It asks particularly how ‘mixed race’ is helpful analytically to describe the identity constructions within these two very different experiences.     

Exploring the intersection of transnationalism and critical race theory: a critical race analysis of international student experiences in the United States

International student mobility to the United States (US) has increased over the past two decades. Despite the increase in numbers, international students may experience racism, nativism, and other forms of discrimination within the US context. Much of the existing literature focus on how international students can assimilate and cope with these issues rather than interrogating the systems of oppression that create negative student experiences. Thus, we utilized critical race theory (CRT) as a framework for interrogating how international student experiences are portrayed in current literature. Although CRT is grounded in US-based legal theory, we argue that CRT must move beyond the rigid confinement within US borders and expand to consider how transnationalism and global exchange contributes to the fluidity and applicability of this theory. We also provide recommendations for critical race praxis, with an emphasis on implications for practice, theory, and future research.     

Inspecting the inspectors: race equality and quality in initial teacher education

Equalities legislation in Britain has in recent years shifted towards requiring public bodies to proactively promote equality rather than simply prevent discrimination. This paper reports on a study of how this requirement, with specific reference to race equality, is enacted in the regulation and inspection of initial teacher education (ITE) in England. The study included a review of statutory guidance and inspection frameworks and quantitative analysis of how overall inspection outcomes reflect the quality of ITE providers’ engagement with race equality issues. The study also included case studies of ITE programmes judged by their students to be either particularly good or particularly weak at preparing them to address race equality issues in their teaching.

The study concludes that there is a significant gap between government rhetoric on race equality and the policy enactment of agencies involved in ITE. It argues that in the context of the high stakes accountability systems in place throughout all aspects of educational provision, this means that race equality issues are marginalised within institutional policies that focus on procedural compliance rather than substantive challenge to practices that normalise and so perpetuate structural inequality.     

Diversity as interest-convergence in academia: a critical race theory story

This paper presents a critical race theory story regarding diversity and affirmative action in academia. The story's purpose is to raise issues regarding the treatment of diversity as a commodity in academia and how white faculty seek to privilege themselves in the diversity discourse. The story raises questions regarding the costs and benefits of diversity and affirmative action for minority faculty. The story illustrates how white faculty privilege themselves in diversity discourses by silencing diversity.     

Necronationalism: managing race,death and the nation's skeletons

This paper examines the construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center ‘Museum of Tolerance (Jerusalem)’ over Mamilla Cemetery, one of the largest Muslim burial grounds in the region. Tracing the politics of death as exercised through the excavation of the cemetery, I consider how access to settler colonial memory is managed and renewed through the purging of Indigenous corporeality. Inspired by Achille Mbembe's sobering account of necropower, this paper conceptualizes power as a system of domination inscribed through the colonial management of deceased racial subjects and asks how we might understand systems of settler colonial power arranged through dehumanization of the already dead. I contend that the capacity to govern life after death is still firmly rooted in the reach of colonial power, and that by attending to the excavation and erasure of Mamilla Cemetery's deceased Palestinian subjects, we see a particular configuration of sovereignty defined through a calculus of absence. Identifying this practice of settler colonial nation building as ‘necronationalism’, I consider how power over life after death becomes the very terrain through which a nation is imagined.     

Counter-narrative as method: race,policy and research for teacher education

The authors argue for a research and conceptual agenda that complicates and disrupts common narratives in teacher education that have serious implications for race. Building on the pivotal work of legal scholar Derrick Bell and through a critical race theory (CRT) lens, this article challenges researchers to broaden and complexify traditional ideologies related to: (1) characteristics of ideal teachers recruited into the field; (2) the amount of time teachers should be expected to remain in the field through alternative programs such as Teach for America; (3)weight placed on teacher entrance examinations; (4)racial diversity of P-12 teachers; (5)racial and ethnic makeup of teacher educators; and (6)over-reliance on subject matter knowledge in teacher preparation to the exclusion of other aspects of learning to teach. The authors argue given the present racial divide in schools between teachers and students it is imperative for teacher education programs to complicate and intensify the utility of race in their recruitment, retention, and support of teacher education practices and policies. The authors offer a counter narrative framework and agenda to advance policy and research through a CRT lens.     

Hebcrit: a new dimension of critical race theory

ABSTRACT

I believe that it is essential to identify a new facet of Critical Race Theory that specifically addresses the needs of the Jewish people. Often overlooked and ignored in multicultural, diversity, and ethnic studies, Jews continue to face specific concerns and obstacles in the both the United States and around the world. In this article, I outline the foundational structure of this new critical theory that investigates issues affecting Jewish people in American society. HebCrit (pronounced ‘heeb’) is rooted in Critical Race Theory, History, Social Psychology, Education, and Jewish Studies. This new theoretical framework provides a way to address the complicated positionality that many American Jews navigate on a daily basis.     

National art and Britain made real: the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony

Danny Boyle's opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics presented an extraordinary spectacle to the watching world. This article is about what it said to people in Britain, how it said it and why. By comparing (1) Boyle's version of a new Jerusalem with William Blake's ‘Jerusalem’, and (2) the content of the ceremony with the realisation of Britain in works of art around Blake's time as analysed in Anthony D. Smith's The Nation Made Real, it is possible to see how Boyle reworks old themes and where he breaks new ground. There follow discussions of the ceremony's reception according to polling evidence, its broad-left political message, and the singular character of an event that sparked something akin to a moment of ‘collective effervescence’.     

The roots of black resistance: race,gender and the struggle for urban land rights in Salvador,Bahia, Brazil

In Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, during the past ten years, the city has transformed its historical centre into cultural sites for leisure tourism. This process has included projects of ‘slum clearance’, negatively impacting black communities who have historically occupied these areas. In this essay, I present an ethnographic account of Gamboa de Baixo, a black coastal community in the centre of Salvador, and its political movement against urban renewal programmes. Specifically, I focus on the articulation of racial and gender politics in black women's grassroots activism against land expulsion and for access to material resources. This case in Salvador unearths one aspect of institutional racism in Brazil and the formation of an anti‐black racism resistance movement. Resistance to urban renewal plans in Salvador demonstrates how struggles for urban land rights are a crucial part of engaging in the broader national and international politics of race. In black communities in Brazil and throughout the African diaspora, urban land and territorial rights are the local idioms of black resistance.     

近代中英关于西藏“宗主权”的交涉

20世纪初,英国以仅承认名义上中国对西藏的“宗主权”和事实上视西藏为“独立国”作为策动西藏独立的策略,持续近50年,极大地损害了中国主权.清朝、中华民国历届中央政府始终坚决反对英国的“宗主权”谬论.中荚交涉西藏“宗主权”的实质是维护中国主权与制造独立的斗争.     

Retroactive phantasies: discourse,discipline, and the production of race

The present inquiry considers how the practice and notion of race can be figured as a type of discipline that functions to achieve the subjection of the individual – to form the individual as a racial subject. Focusing on the constructions of blackness and whiteness within US racial rhetoric, and engaging the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, I propose that racial identity is a retroactive phantasy that is always conditional on the subject enacting the very power that marks them: the formation and maintenance of subjectivity is premised on the individual being formed and forming themselves in relation to a normalized identity site and is, thus, always an action. Precisely due to this necessity to act, and to the incoherence of power, innovative acts of anti-discipline re-negotiate the ways in which racial subjectivity is lived and realized.     

Race science and surveillance: police as the new race scientists

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between race and the urban in the United States through an examination of the role of surveillance – a growing global phenomena in contemporary western cities – and its uses in creating and maintaining boundaries of race, particularly because surveillance of racial and ethnic minority groups tend to be grounded in specific and bounded geographic locations. Using historical evidence and data from the New York Police Department (NYPD) Stop and Frisk program during the 2003–2013 period, this article asks whether or not, strategies of state surveillance of racial and ethnic minority groups should be interpreted as a ‘new’ type of scientific racism given the state’s desire to deploy and its hyper-reliance on technologies to fulfil its surveillance role.     

1888～1911年英俄在西藏的角逐

1888～1911年英俄围绕西藏展开了角逐.从过程来看,英国在与俄国的角逐中处于强势地位,然而从实际效果来看,似乎俄国更占优势.英国政府致力于确立西藏的"中立化"自治地位,然而,由于清政府的坚决反对,英国在英俄协定中所确认的"宗主权"就不具备合法性,随之而来的某些条款更不具备实际操作性.相反,俄国人利用英俄协定,限制了英国对藏政策,并为其随时过问英国对藏政策提供了条约保障.     

Strict versus flexible categorizations of mixedness: classifying mixed race in Singapore and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Classifying and recording population data along racial and ethnic lines is common in many multiethnic societies. Singapore and New Zealand both use racial and ethnic categories in their population records and national censuses, although on different scales, using different methodologies and to different ends. Mixed race identities are particularly difficult to classify within traditionally singular racial categories, and each country has dealt with this in various ways. This paper explores the effects of different forms of classification on mixed racial and ethnic identities. Narratives from 40 men and women of mixed descent highlight the tangible and intangible impacts of categorization along racial lines, and the ways in which mixedness can be tied with belonging. The contrasting examples of Singapore and New Zealand illustrate the ways in which individuals of mixed heritage navigate both strict and fluid forms of classification, and how stories of identity are closely intertwined with institutional classificatory structures.