Of models and myths: Asian(Americans) in STEM and the neoliberal racial project

This paper examines historical and contemporary racializations of Asian(Americans) within the STEM system. The prevailing perception of Asian(Americans) as model minorities masks how their multiple and contradictory positionings in the STEM system perpetuate the neoliberal racial project and reproduce systems of racism and oppression. Through a multidisciplinary analysis of STEM education and industry, we demonstrate that the shifting racialization of Asian(Americans) secures advantages for White Americans by promoting meritocracy and producerism and justifies White supremacy. By serving these functions, the racialization of Asian(Americans) within the STEM system is central to the neoliberal racial project. This paper also suggests how STEM education researchers can reveal and resist, rather than veil and support, the neoliberal racial project in STEM.     

Disrupting an imposed racial identity or performing the model minority? The pursuit of postsecondary education by young African immigrant men in Southern Ontario,Canada

ABSTRACT

This article examines how young African immigrant men in Southern Ontario cope with the dominant racial identity at school in an effort to improve their academic performance and access postsecondary education (PSE). Critical race theory in education is employed to explain how the young men distance themselves from stereotypes about Black masculinity by regulating their own behaviour and differentiating themselves from their Caribbean immigrant peers. Sixty-seven young men who had immigrated to Southern Ontario from several African countries over the last 10 years were interviewed individually and in focus groups for the study. The findings suggest that the research participants adopted a model minority status within an educational system that clearly embodies racist and systemically oppressive frameworks.     

Teaching in color: a critical race theory in education analysis of the literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US

In this article I take seriously the call for recruiting and retaining more preservice teachers of color by critically considering some of the pressing challenges they might encounter in teacher preparation programs. I draw from critical race theory (CRT) in education to review the extant literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US. I excavate how the dominant, (dis)embodied and normalized culture of Whiteness, White privilege and White hegemony pervades contemporary teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.     

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.     

Thinking through the flesh: a critical autoethnography of racial body politics in urban teacher education

Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field’s overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher education. The inquiry threads Critical Race Theory and feminist theorizing on (Black) bodies, affects, and assemblages, and extends from extant literature illustrating that the dichotomous thinking characteristic of whiteness undergirds the disembodied approaches to teaching and learning prevalent in teacher education programs. This, I discover, leaves one White pre-service teacher ill-equipped to discern and disrupt the materialization of whiteness in an (inter)corporeal encounter with a Black youth in an urban classroom. Additionally, a pedagogy of disembodiment hinders this pre-service teacher from developing robust understandings of how latent within his lived-in, socio-historically situated White body is the potent potential to exacerbate the psychic pain that racism inflicts upon the racially othered children and youth who navigate urban classrooms under the scorching glare of whiteness. These findings underpin my call for urban teacher educators to embrace a pedagogy of embodiment in order to build pre-service teachers’ capacities to teach racially marginalized children and youth in ways that broaden the boundaries of the human beyond the scope of whiteness.     

Racial capitalism and STEM education in Chicago Public Schools

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the role of STEM initiatives designed by city and corporate elites in a large urban district and outlines an alternative, grassroots vision for (STEM) education and city schools. Within a neoliberal context of gentrification, displacement, disinvestment, and privatization, STEM schools have become strategic components of Chicago’s ‘portfolio district’ that serve the interests of racial capitalism in three ways. First, STEM schools provide a claim to fairness in the midst of racist school closures. Second, STEM high schools are a corporate strategy for racially stratified labor force preparation that restricts curriculum and reifies tracking. Third, curriculum restriction prioritizes corporate interests over students’ capacity to shape their communities and the world. The authors draw on the wisdom of Chicago communities who have led resistance against corporate education reform to critique Chicago STEM policy and point to critical mathematics and science education as part of a model for sustainable community schools.     

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.     

Educational Cultural Negotiators for students of color: a descriptive study of racial advocacy leaders

The research presented in this study focuses on Educational Cultural Negotiators (ECNs). The participants were teachers, administrators, and graduate students in an after-school program in the Midwest and a community-based school/university partnership in the Western U.S. We posit that the roles of the ECNs function as advocacy leaders to invoke racial affirmation, and academic intervention on behalf of African-American and Latina/o students at these school sites. Relying on critical race theory as the methodological analysis of the findings, this study seeks to identify the role of the ECNs as advocates for students in these settings to promote their academic and personal growth and success. This work illustrates how these particular educational leaders provide academic direction and challenge racial neglect and color-blindness within the public school system.     

Surviving teacher education: a community cultural capital framework of persistence

In this article, we communicate the experiences of a bilingual/biracial Peruvian-Anglo European student teacher, Serina, enrolled in a ‘teacher education for diversity’ program. Although the majority of the 13 (mostly Anglo European) students in Serina’s cohort expressed satisfaction with the social justice focus of the program, Serina was frustrated by the mixed messages she received about teacher professionalism as both teaching for social change and as deference to power. Serina was often vocal in her critique and, as a result, endured and negotiated cumulative microaggressions throughout her teacher education program. Despite these challenges, she drew on her community cultural capital to become a credentialed science teacher in an underserved urban middle school. Serina’s experiences compel us to think about how teacher educators might better support pre-service Teachers of Color – particularly as we strive to more actively recruit Teachers of Color to our teacher education programs. Implications for ‘becoming’ more socially just teacher educators are also discussed.     

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.     

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.     

Fabulachia: urban,black female experiences and higher education in Appalachia

Abstract

This article draws on focus group conversations with black female college students attending a small, liberal arts institution in Kentucky. Based primarily on group interviews and discussions, as well as observations and analysis – a theoretical domain (referred to throughout the article as ‘Fabulachia’) emerged as a site-specific outcome of events and ideas regarding race, gender and identity experienced by the research participants. Specifically, ‘Fabulachia’ functions as a theoretical hybrid space in which urban (e.g. ‘ghetto fabulous’) black college student-voices find a sense of empowerment as they construct their own narratives of leaving ‘the hood’ to attend college in rural Appalachia. This project revises and updates previous research on race and rural identity/ies in order to situate the urban black female experience into an Appalachian context. Drawing on hip hop feminism and urban education based theoretical paradigms, the Fabulachia study seeks to give voice to black females in contemporary Appalachia, with attention to their self-proclaimed ‘ghetto fabulous’ identities honed in and through their urban upbringings. The unique experiences of (Fabulachian) black females are an important and largely absent part of larger conversations of the growing body of Urban education research that seeks to situate the black student/black youth and schooling experience in the US. In the Fabulachia study, a group of black female students shared personal narratives (part-oral history and part direct response) to prompts and queries about the role of hip hop culture, race and gender identity in their lives. They also discussed and debated what it means to be a black female in contemporary (often racist) Appalachia, and about how their families and urban surroundings influenced their processes of being and becoming in the context of higher educational achievement.     

The politics of indigeneity,identity and representation in literature from north Australia's Gulf Country

The Aboriginal author Alexis Wright's novels Plains of Promise, Carpentaria and The Swan Book have prompted scholars and critics towards enthusiastic comparisons with the ground-breaking work of a range of international writers. With her novels all set partly in the remote Gulf Country of north Australia, Wright's work arises from intellectual and political commitment to Indigenous people, and aspires to the idea of a distinctive ‘Aboriginal sovereignty of the mind’. Much less known yet, we argue, of complementary significance, are a broader suite of writings about this region, and we address representations of cultural identity and connections to place by authors with both Aboriginal and European ancestries. With our interest in a deliberately cross-disciplinary methodology, ethnographic research complements our focus on texts to facilitate analysis of diverse identities in a setting produced through both the resilience of Indigenous cultural traditions and the legacies of European settler colonialism. We argue that the range of authorial representations arising from this sector of Australian society provides a focus for understanding shared and contested postcolonial imaginaries about place, culture and identity.     

Using our voices,losing our bodies: Michael Brown,Trayvon Martin,and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy

Abstract

The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in the streets of America by police but also are metaphorically gunned down in the academy. That is to say, white colleagues and students attempt to use what we call the bullet of rejection, the bullet of silencing, and the bullet of disrespect to destroy us and our academic agenda. We conclude with a call to action for teacher education programs as a way to deepen their understanding of the racialized experiences of Black males in the academy and Black males in America.     

‘The world they’ve been born into’: Black male teachers on Blackness,masculinities and leadership

ABSTRACT

In this article, life history methodology and principles of counterstorytelling are used to examine moments when one Black male preservice social studies teacher and three Black male social studies teachers challenge Black masculinist visions of leadership, and moments when they seem complicit in perpetuating these visions. Findings indicate that these educators’ understandings of Blackness, maleness, and the pursuit of Black masculine recognition are fluid, developing and sometimes contradictory. We argue that while necessary across disciplines, interrogations of Black masculinity are uniquely imperative in social studies teacher education due to how assumptions about Blackness and maleness have shaped struggles for Black civic recognition.     

Racism and linguicism: engaging language minority pre-service teachers in counter-storytelling

Abstract

This study examines how language minority pre-service teachers engaged in the discussion of racism and linguicism through counter-storytelling informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT). Counter-stories can act as a medium through which minority students can unpack the power relations embedded in academic learning. This study also explores ways in which having a language minority teacher educator with a similar background facilitated the discussion of race and native speaker status. Drawing on co-teaching experience with a white teacher educator, I suggest that the teaching of race and language be not only about racialized and linguistic identity of instructors, but pedagogical approaches and strategies through counter-stories that actively foster critical reflection on power imbalance inherent in schools.     

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.     

The diversity trap? Critical explorations of black male teachers’ negotiations of leadership and learning in London state schools

ABSTRACT

Black and minority ethnic teachers are significantly underrepresented in British schools. Despite increasing anxieties about Britain’s ‘diversity shortage’ among teachers, recent studies on the experiences of Black teachers generally, and Black male teachers specifically, remain rather sparse. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 Black Caribbean and Black African male teachers with five or more years of experience in London schools, this article deploys Bourdieusian conceptions of organizational habitus to explore the ways in which the national ‘diversity shortage’ can lead to a local ‘diversity trap’ in state schools that limits the range of roles Black male teachers are encouraged to pursue in schools. Findings suggest that pressures for Black male teachers to serve in racialized roles as community liaisons, role models, and school-wide disciplinarians, particularly for ethno-racial minority students, have stymied the long-term progress of Black male teachers towards departmental and administrative leadership – ranks at which the diversity shortage is even more acute.     

Critical race theory meets posthumanism: lessons from a study of racial resegregation in public schools

Critical race theory (CRT) was used to frame a study of the impact of racial resegregation on students in a public school district. Racism operated in the district at multiple ontological levels – such as interpersonal microaggressions, structural economic arrangements, and discursive processes. CRT provided a rationale for the interdisciplinary approach required to track these different manifestations of racism, while maintaining an emphasis on the material reality of racism. Having its origins in the field of law, however, CRT provided limited guidance for methodological decisions often required in a social scientific study. The author found posthumanist philosophy of science offered guidance for these decisions in a manner that complemented the philosophical and political commitments of CRT. This essay reflects on the advantages this combination of theories offers for the analysis of institutionalized racism. Illustrations are drawn from the study on school resegregation.     

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.