The legacy of Derrick Bell and Latino/a education: a critical race testimonio

In this article, we trace Bell’s influence in our lives from graduate students to teacher educators and engaged scholars, and note how we have always read Bell alongside and inseparable from Latino/a Studies and Latina/Chicana feminist thought. We highlight the powerful and fruitful tensions of these interconnections in addressing our curricular struggles and innovations, professional identities and scholarly trajectories. We address Bell’s theory of interest convergence to discuss the tensions and possibilities of personal ‘success’ in the academy by interweaving our testimonios with Critical Race and Latino Critical Race (LatCrit) scholarship in Latino/a education. Latina feminist scholars have re-worked the Latin American tradition of testimonio as a way to link individual stories to a collective story of Latina/o racialization in the US, and to epistemological racism in the academy. Our collective story centers the intersections of race with indigeneity, class, citizenship, language, gender and sexuality. We begin from the earliest influence of Bell’s counterstorytelling method for examining Latino/a students’ racializing experiences in higher education and move through other critical race work in Latino education that both directly and indirectly addresses Bell’s scholarship as these intersect with our intellectual journeys. Finally, we offer a story of the complex legacy of Bell’s anti-subordination and social justice scholarship for intellectual alliances, coalition building, and inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary engaged scholarship.     

Counternarratives of students’ experiences returning to comprehensive schools from an involuntary disciplinary alternative school

Educators’ excessive uses of exclusionary discipline have led to increased placements of students in disciplinary alternative schools, but few studies examine student experiences after their alternative school placements. Using a theoretical framework informed by critical race theory and the role of the discourse of safety in student discipline, we compose the counternarratives of nine middle school students’ experiences with the transition from an involuntary disciplinary placement back to a comprehensive school. We then analyze across cases to identify commonalities in their stories. Findings show that students experience dehumanization and exclusion that reflect second-class citizenship. We discuss how educators can resist perpetuating this under class even as the overtly racist rhetoric of populist nationalism replaces the neoliberal color-blind version of the discourse of safety.     

An exploratory study of the academic engagement and beliefs of Latino male high school students

This study provides insights to the school experiences of Latino male students through an exploration of how they describe their beliefs about education and how they engage in school for academic success. Data is drawn from interviews and surveys conducted with Latino males that participated in New York University’s Black and Latino Male School Intervention Study (BLMSIS) between 2006 and 2011. The findings revealed a dynamic interplay among how the students ‘do school’ (behavioral engagement), their intellectual involvement (cognitive engagement), and their strong beliefs in the education for social mobility shaped schooling for them. This focus on the experiences of young Latino males seeks to assist researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike design and implement programs and policies to promote their educational progress and success.     

The salience of Black mentors on the teaching praxis of Latino male teachers

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing population of Latino students, little has been done to recognize the potential cultural assets and resilience that Latino communities and Latino teachers can bring to the educational environment. Using Critical Race Theory, in this article, each participant shares their experiences with their Black mentors. This article shares the ways in which Black teachers continue to exemplify Black teaching excellence now with a group that isn’t Black.     

‘They were constantly on the losing side of things’: the pedagogical power of an African-American teacher candidate bearing witness in teacher education

The stories of students and teacher candidates of Color (Just as singular racial/ethnic identities are capitalized (i.e. African-American, Asian, Latina, Native American etc.), I capitalize Color to honor the various identities that many ‘non-white’ people hold near and dear. I recognize the nuances in doing so- such as the reality that the term ‘people of Color’ actually erases identity while the term also highlights a shared experience (though also nuanced) of being ‘non-white’ in a white supremacist society.) hold powerful lessons and insights for teacher education programs and educational reform efforts. Yet, rarely do educators and policy-makers solicit or critically engage the educational narratives of these stakeholders. In particular, research confirms that we know little about how students’ of Color educational experiences are impacted by race(ism) and culture and how those experiences subsequently inform their ideas about teaching. This study, framed by critical race theory (CRT), examines an African-American (African-American is used intentionally here as this is how Ariel identifies racially.) teacher candidate’s racialized K-12 and postsecondary school experiences to more fully understand the connection between lived experience and developing teacher identity. Ariel’s story reflects her own school experiences; her focus on her peers’ school experiences when asked about her own; and how those experiences, informed by race and culture, contribute to her development of pedagogy. Analytical considerations illustrate that memory and remembrance, witnessing and bearing witness, and testimony are deliberate and powerful acts in the development of pedagogy and should be central to teacher education curriculum.     

Race and opportunity in a public alternative school

This qualitative case-study explores questions about the stratifying role of public alternative schools created for ‘at-risk’ youth by analyzing the school experience of students who attend a single continuation high school and the process of student enrollment and referral to that school. Drawing on the concept of whiteness as property, this article demonstrates how the continuation high school maintained and protected the property functions of whiteness through acts of symbolic violence and the systematic removal of non-white students from the school district’s mainstream high school. Instead, students were placed in a substandard alternative school lacking in material and intellectual resources. Furthermore, teachers, counselors, and administrative staff at the mainstream and continuation high schools alike drew upon the racial ideology of merit to rationalize the overrepresentation of non-white youths at the study school and to ‘deracialize’ the student referral process.     

Negotiating domination and resistance: English language learners and Foucault’s Care of the Self in the context of English-only education

This article explores the basis for resistance to the normalizing technologies associated with English-only legislation and resulting educational practices. The dominance of English-only education in US public schools has normalized English first language speakers and English language learning by appropriating the technology of language in order to become ‘Americanized.’ Because of the growing number of English language learners (ELL) in US public schools, it is important to understand how the normalizing educational practices and disciplinary power associated with English-only education also cultivate possibilities for resistance. I draw upon Foucault’s analytic care of the self to explore the space of English-only education by asking: ‘What alternatives to the normalization of ELL students might be mobilized for resistance?’ This analysis suggests that to shift from a normalized ‘American’ identity requires questioning the racist and nativist discourse on English-only education, and focusing attention on contradictory and multilayered notions of ‘American’. The article concludes with recommendations for teacher education on how to cultivate prospective teachers’ resistance to English-only education.     

Inconsistent Latino Self-Identification in Adolescence and Academic Performance

Research has documented important connections between ethnic identity and academic success. In the multiethnic context of the US, ethnic self-identification is a dynamic process that develops through social interaction within institutions. Understanding the emergence of a Latino self-identity within schools can provide insight into the meanings adolescents confer to a “Latino” identity and the relationship between a Latino self-identity and academic success. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine (1) the association between a Latino self-identification in-school but not at home and academic well-being, (2) the association between a Latino self-identification in-school but not at home and school processes, and (3) whether school processes help to mediate the relationship between Latino self-identification in-school but not at home and academic well-being. Results suggest that while adolescents who identify as Latino at school but not at home come from families and neighborhoods with higher levels of economic and human capital, by the end of high school they have accumulated less educational capital then either consistently identifying Latinos or non-Latino whites. Much of this association can be explained by prior academic experiences, yet other factors associated with resistance to institutional norms and attending low performing schools may also be important. Results suggest that non-minority, underachieving adolescents may choose to self-identify as Latino in schools as a way to save face and avert identity crises and that perhaps youth in schools have come to associate a Latino identity with poor school performance.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.     

Role models without guarantees: corrective representations and the cultural politics of a Latino male teacher in the borderlands

In recent years mentorship has become a popular ‘solution’ for struggling boys of color and has led to the recruitment of more male of color teachers. While not arguing against the merits of mentorship, this article critiques what the author deems ‘corrective representations.’ Corrective representations are the imagined embodiment of proper and productive masculinities that male of color educators are asked to perform. This discourse perpetuates confining representations of identity and locates the problem of boys of color within their own actions. Designed as an ethnographic case study, this article explores the life of one Latino male teacher as he navigates discourses of corrective representation as coordinator of his school’s Latino boys program. This project provides a detailed account of the cultural politics of Latino male mentorship and offers the notion of a critical borderlands approach to identity as an avenue to problematize essentialist and deficit approaches to Latino boys.     

Missing misters: uncovering the pedagogies and positionalities of male teachers of color in the school lives of Black and Latino adolescent boys

ABSTRACT

Educational stakeholders often recruit male teachers of color as solutions to the problems facing Black and Latino boys and young men in PreK-12 schools. However, given the assumptions made of these teachers’ role in the lives of boys of color and their disproportionally low presence, few studies have considered what boys themselves report as missed because of the absence of Black and Latino male teachers. This case study drew from the voices of five Black and Latino adolescent boys in one urban secondary school in the United States to theorize what the participants missed (e.g. yearned for connections, reflections of self) and missed out on (e.g. seeing positive images of men of color) by not having a more robust presence of Black and Latino male teachers of color or misters. Findings indicated the need for boys’ voices in advancing nuanced recruitment and retention discourses for their male teachers of color.     

‘It wasn’t racism; it was more misunderstanding.’ White teachers,Latino/a students,and racial battle fatigue

This article explores how and why a group of Latino/a high school students identify and explain racism differently over the course of an 18-month participatory action research (PAR) project. To do this we examine what recent scholarship has termed racial microaggressions in what is thought of as the Post-Racial America public school system. Pulling examples from student and teacher interview, focus group, and class discussion data we first examine how these students’ teachers conceptualize and talk about racism, cross-racial relationships, and racial misunderstandings, and then we juxtapose that with students’ discursive work to make sense of the ways their teachers make their conceptualizations known and/or seen in school. Focusing on the K-12 context, this study finds racial battle fatigue may be why students switch between how they label these aggressions.     

An exploration of the relationships between student racial background and the school sub-contexts of office discipline referrals: a critical race theory analysis

A growing body of research indicates that exclusionary school discipline practices disproportionately impact students of color. Some scholars have theorized that racial disparities likely vary across school sub-contexts, as implicit bias in perceptions of student behavior may be more influential in locations where students and adults have weaker relationships (e.g. bathrooms and hallways, compared to the classroom). Guided by Critical Race Theory, this study used administrative data from a large urban school district (n = 20,166 discipline incidents, 9,170 students, and 185 schools) to consider the relationship between student race and the locations where youth are disciplined. Results indicate that Black, Latino/a, and Multiracial youth were no more likely than White students to have a discipline incident take place outside the classroom. These findings suggest attention is needed to the role of systemic bias and colorblind policies and practices in discipline disparities.     

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.     

Southern assumptions: normalizing racialized structures at a university in the Deep South

Informed by critical race theory (CRT), we examine how African-American and white college students, at a predominantly white, structurally diverse, Southern US university, understand their cross-racial experiences. Black–white interactions are understood within the context of the so-called ‘post-racial’ environment, against the backdrop of high-profile cases of racial injustice, and within the added context of the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation in the rural Southern United States. Our study suggests that many students, regardless of race, recognized the persistence of racial segregation, especially in nightlife and campus Greek letter organizations (GLOs). African-American students were the most vocal and troubled by this division. Unexpectedly, however, students appeared to take for granted that in the American South, racism is persistent and indestructible. Building on Bell’s (1991) notion of racial realism and Bonilla-Silva’s (2013) notion of naturalization, we expand the view that racism is inherent or related to individual preference, to place and time, with a construct we term southern assumptions. Southern assumptions are the mechanisms in which participants connect collective historical racism in the south to the race problems of today.     

Understanding the role of schools in the Asian-white gap: a seasonal comparison approach

Asian Americans are the most highly educated racial group in the United States and are commonly heralded as the model minority for their high academic success. Nevertheless, previous research suggests that Asian Americans may face certain disadvantages in school settings. For example, Asian Americans’ academic advantage over non-Hispanic white students diminishes between kindergarten entry and the next several years of schooling. This study provides a closer examination of the educational progress of Asian American students compared to white students through a seasonal comparison approach. Using the Northwest Evaluation Association, we analyze reading and math scores for over 130,000 Asian American and white students in grades K-7 in approximately 675 public schools across the US. We find that Asian Americans have higher academic achievement than white students in general, but that these advantages are maintained primarily through faster rates of learning during the summer months. When school is in session, the Asian advantage either remains unchanged or shrinks, consistent with the view that some school processes undermine the educational progress of Asian American students relative to white students.     

Korean American social studies teachers’ perceptions and experiences of teaching profession in multicultural urban high schools

This study explores two Korean American social studies teachers’ perceptions and experiences of the teaching profession in multicultural, urban public high schools. Drawing upon critical race theory (CRT) and its interconnection to the model minority myth, the most dominant form of racism against Asians as theoretical underpinnings, this study focuses on: (1) Korean American teachers’ unique experiences of being racial minority educators teaching a contentious subject like social studies within culturally and linguistically diverse school settings; and (2) the influences of the model minority racial stereotype on the teachers’ career choice, professional experiences, and associated coping strategies. This study aims to shed light on the heterogeneous stories and ethnoracially contextualized teaching experiences of Asian American teachers and to provide meaningful insights into and practical implications for the preparation and retention of teachers of color.     

“I am here for a reason”: minority teachers bridging many divides in urban education

Minority teachers are overwhelmingly employed in urban schools in underserved, low-income communities with large minority student populations. They receive little in the way of multicultural preparation, mentorship, and professional induction to meet the demands of teaching diverse student populations. This grounded theory study explores the experiences of novice teachers from various minority backgrounds working in urban classrooms. A tentative grounded theory, ‘I am here for a reason’ emerged, suggesting that minority teachers rely on their personal backgrounds and experiences to help them take an insider’s perspective with minority students in light of poor multicultural preparation and limited support in schools. The shared cultural perspective with students enables teachers to connect with and advocate for students, which represents both a strength and challenge for minority teachers. Finally, minority teachers are motivated by a strong desire for social justice as they work to bridge many divides, and are intentional in their work despite facing significant obstacles in training and teaching.     

In hindsight and now again: black male teachers’ recollections on the suffering of black male youth in US public schools

This article draws from data in a larger qualitative study on the lives of black male teachers in US public urban schools. I examine their schooling experiences as black male youth. By coupling theories of social suffering with life history methodology, this research analyzes how three black male teachers experienced frustration, marginalization, and misery as students. For these participants, academic tracking was a site of social suffering. This suffering persisted into their adult lives as classroom teachers, as they witnessed and attempted to mitigate the struggles of their own black male students. The findings in this study have implications for further research on black male teachers as well as their recruitment and retention in US public schools.