Condition Or Process? Researching Race In Education 2f28

Condition or Process? Researching Race in Education

Condition or Process? Researching Race in Education

Edited by

A DRIENNE D. D IXSON , G LORIA J. L ADSON -B ILLINGS , C ECILIA E. S UAREZ , W ILLIAM

T. T RENT, AND J AMES D. A NDERSON

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© 2020 American Educational Research Association

The Books Editorial Board has the responsibility for independently reviewing and approving all book proposals submitted to AERA. This volume emanated from an AERA research conference. The AERA Research Conferences Program awards grants for conferences intended to break new ground in substantive areas of inquiry, stimulate new lines of study on issues that have been largely unexplored, or develop innovative research methods or techniques that can contribute more generally to education research.

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Library of Congress Catag-in-Publication Data Names: Dixson, Adrienne D., editor. Title: Condition or process? : researching race in education / edited by Adrienne D. Dixson, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, Cecilia E. Suarez, William T. Trent, James D. Anderson Description: Washington, DC : American Educational Research Association, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019058020 | ISBN 9780935302806 (paperback) | ISBN 9780935302813 (epub) | Mobi ISBN 9780935302875 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Racism in education—United States. | Discrimination in education—United States. | Minorities—Education—Social aspects—United States. | African Americans—Education—Social aspects. | Educational equalization—United States. Classification: LCC LC212.2 .C665 2020 | DDC 370.89—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058020

Cover Design: Exarte Design

Acknowledgments

This project would not have been possible without a generous grant from the Research Conferences Program of the American Educational Research Association. We are grateful for the opportunity to be “early adopters” in the conference grant competition. We are certain that without the grant, we would not have been able to host our event and produce this volume. John S. Neikirk and Felice J. Levine have been wonderful shepherds for this project. Thank you for all that you have done to see it come to fruition. We are also grateful for the we received from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A number of faculty from the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership (EPOL), namely Lorenzo Baber (now at Loyola University, Chicago), Christopher Span, and Yoon Pak, were very gracious hosts and wonderful session facilitators. Thank you, also, to Christopher Span and Lorenzo Baber for serving as reviewers of manuscripts for the book. We are especially appreciative of our talented graduate students in EPOL. They were not only enthusiastic participants but also willing volunteers, who took on tasks at the last minute and anticipated quite a few potential crises. From being impromptu tour guides to providing media relations, the graduate students in EPOL highlighted why this work is so much more meaningful than professional service. There are too many names to list, but these students set the bar pretty high in of coming through in a clutch! Also, we are grateful for academic “family” who made the trek from Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, to attend the event. Cory T. Brown, Jamila D. Hunter, Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., and Shameka Powell, thank you for ing our work with not only your presence, but also your energy and ideas. We are especially grateful for our colleagues from around the country who took time out of their very busy schedules to travel to Champaign and share their scholarship with us. Due to a number of starts and stops and life happenings in between, not all of the papers presented at the conference appear in this volume. We are appreciative of the intellectual generosity that all of the presenters

displayed and their willingness to read and review the manuscripts. Finally, we extend special gratitude to our families and friends who listened to the ideas that informed the conference proposal, gave and suggestions on how to manage the conference, and celebrated us when we sent the final manuscript to the publisher. Asante sana and muchas gracias para todos tu amor.

Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION Is Race a Condition or a Process in Education? Adrienne D. Dixson, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, Cecilia E. Suarez, William T. Trent, and James D. Anderson

1The Pursuit of Promising Educational Practices at the Crossroads of Race and Culture A. Wade Boykin

2Race, Space, and Education Research: Revisiting Tobler’s First Law of Geography Kelly M. Harris, Brittni D. Jones, and William F. Tate IV

3Deamonte Driver and the Perils of Race and Health Care in the Affordable Care Act Era Richard M. Mizelle, Jr.

4The Contrarieties of (Mixed) Race: The Meaning of Race From a Multiracial Perspective

Celia Rousseau Anderson

5Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: Addressing the Color of Privilege Mitchell James Chang

6Breaking Down the Ghetto Girl Stereotypes to Dismantle Systems of Oppression: (De)ciphering the Humanity of Black Language and Black People Elaine Richardson

7Decolonizing Knowledge Through High School Ethnic Studies Zeus Leonardo and Jocyl Sacramento

8How I Came to Work in the Field of Racial Microaggressions: A Critical Race Theory Journey From Marginality to Microaggressions Daniel G. Solorzano

9Talking Old Soldiers: Research, Education, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Praxis in the “End Times” David O. Stovall

10 Hired On, Not Hired In : Early Career Scholars’ Experiences With Race in Education Cecilia E. Suarez and Ivory M. Berry

AFTERWORD Trying to Make It Real—Compared to What? Gloria J. Ladson-Billings

About the Contributors

Introduction

Is Race a Condition or a Process in Education?

A DRIENNE D. D IXSON University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

G LORIA J. L ADSON -B ILLINGS University of Wisconsin, Madison

C ECILIA E. S UAREZ University of Florida

W ILLIAM T. T RENT University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

J AMES D. A NDERSON University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The question of why we need to think about how we research race demands a conceptualization of race that captures both its social construction and its temporal evolution. We need both an understanding of race and clarity about how we talk about it in our design and conduct of research, but especially in how we interpret and apply it in our findings. What inspires and excites us about this volume is that it extends and deepens our competencies as social and education scientists. It does so by explicitly setting forth theoretical and conceptual reasoning that holds the promise of strengthening our capacity for addressing the persistent and growing educational disparities that students of color and students of color who live in poverty face in U.S. P–20 education. In 2016, Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States, departed from the White House after serving for eight years. Political pundits predicted that on the heels of Barack Obama’s presidency, the nation would elect its first woman president. Instead, the United States found itself in a moment that critical race theorists had predicted: one of nativist backlash accompanied by White nationalist rhetoric, protests, and violence. Those of us who study concepts of race, racism, and educational inequity find ourselves quite busy in the Trump era of U.S. history. Nearly every facet of Trump’s policy platform has implications for education and the potential to disproportionately impact people and communities of color and poor and working-class Whites. Notwithstanding the unpopularity of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her decision to scale down her department’s Office of Civil Rights, many other public infrastructure issues, such as affordable housing, health care, tax reform, funding to make higher education affordable and accessible, net neutrality, and immigration, will have a disproportionate impact on people of color. Thus, for scholars of race and education, it is not a matter of staying vigilant for the unintended racialized consequences of public policy; rather, it is a matter of analyzing the extent of, and crafting strategies to resist or dismantle, policies that appear to target people of color.

Race: A Condition or a Process?

The title of this book and the book’s content speak volumes in situating and framing the scholarship on race and education. The violent confrontations in

Charlottesville, Va., in 2016, along with efforts to particularize the enforcement of immigration and repeal DACA (the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy), remind us of the centrality of the problem of race in the 21st century. It is striking to note the coexistence of surprise and outrage, on the one hand, and the absence of surprise or any expression of higher expectations, on the other hand, particularly among so many people of color and underserved communities. As a nation, and indeed as a research field, we can use scholarship in this area to help construct change that is socially just. The preceding events also remind us that the processes that demand that we attend to issues of race as condition are very much alive, giving clear meaning to the conceptualization of race(ism) as process. The Reagan presidency, in the 1980s, ushered in an era of retrenchment that justified changes to, or the eradication of, legislation aimed at addressing racial discrimination across a number of domains, including education (Crenshaw, 1988). Dismantling funding for the study of segregated schooling, the Reagan istration directed federal funds to education research that focused on “disadvantaged students” and “atrisk students,” thereby ending over a dozen years of research focusing on the harms of segregated schooling. Thus, some 28 years after Brown, the energy and enforcement apparatus—processes—and personnel who were needed to continue to pursue the dismantling of the dual school systems under segregation were reduced, sending a reminder that the forces of discrimination—processes—had been given new expression, new voice, new energy, and new power. We would see these forces also in the academy in the form of the National Association of Scholars; we would see them in the courts as some people began to appropriate the language of the Civil Rights Movement and cast themselves as victims of reverse discrimination. We saw the emergence of the new language of states’ rights framed as privileging choice, and the emergence of privileging the private over all things public, especially in education. Fast forward to 2005, where we would argue that the Reagan era, with help from the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, set the stage for the wholesale remaking of public education in New Orleans—from a traditional school district with an elected school board directly running schools to a district entirely comprised of charter schools run directly by independent charter organizations. This outcome necessitates a practice of research that seeks to look beyond test score data as measures of “success” and “effectiveness” (Dixson, 2011). In the highly politicized and polarized context of education reform, not only in New Orleans but across the country, it is imperative for researchers to document and theorize on how the reforms impact

students, teachers, and communities. Similar in impact to the 1966 Coleman Report (Equality of Educational Opportunity), which generated a cottage industry exploring the question “Does money matter?” and renewed a policy embrace of the 1965 Moynihan Report (The Negro Family: The Case for National Action), the High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study (1981) initially gave to the idea that Catholic and private schools performed better “even with disadvantaged students.” Ideas about the centrality of structure, order, discipline, and choice became popular policy interventions until the first follow-up data from High School and Beyond (1981) became available and researchers were able to conduct a true cohort analysis rather than the synthetic cohort analysis that undergirded the earlier findings. Almost none of the initial findings were replicated with the updated data. Nevertheless, some horses had left the gate, and the challenge to public schools had been mounted; thus, increasingly went to school choice initiatives and the emerging charter school movement. The preceding of the nation’s fits and starts in addressing the challenges of macro-level social change resulting from growing demographic and economic change does not do justice to the rate, breadth, and scale of changes that enveloped and gave shape to those years. Our purpose is to underscore the persistence of the discriminatory actions—processes— and the normalization of the use of race (and class)—conditions—to justify the existing and growing disparity between the quality of life and opportunity for middle-class and more affluent Whites and that for people of color and people of color who live in poverty. It is this persistent denial of humanity and citizenship rights to some Americans that compels us to offer this volume, which seeks to deepen and enhance our understanding of race, not for our intellectual satisfaction but to continue our search for effective solutions. One growing aspect of the change in well-being for a significant population segment is the social displacement of White, working-class men. Viewed in of Wilson’s discussion in When Work Disappears (1996), this phenomenon has clear potential to accentuate the treatment of race as a condition, and to give strong impetus to processes that discriminate in unjust ways. One can argue that race, viewed as a condition, is “used” in shaping or influencing the probabilities of a range of outcomes: zip code, exposure to

environmental harm, quality of schooling/education, quality of health care, and access to work, among others. Note, for example, how the 1964 Civil Rights Act has come to be interpreted as authorizing protection against the use or targeting of many people’s conditions in ways that disadvantage them: for example, age, pregnancy, national origin, race, ethnic background, religious belief, and sexual orientation. Despite the legal status of these categorical conditions, we continue to see vivid examples of the direct and indirect effects of being an incumbent in one of them (see Douglas S. Massey’s Categorically Unequal, 2008). The emergence of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989)—a helpful lens for understanding how the confluence of social locations or being at the intersection of particular locations can alter one’s probabilities on any number of attainment measures—has helped us identify the processes that undergird the differentiations among intersections. For race, specifically, the persistent efforts on the part of racialized communities to prevent and limit the exploitation of race is broad-based and well documented. Nonetheless, these efforts have not thus far succeeded in preventing the normalization of racialization—the process—and its consequences—the condition. Note our expanded use of the term condition to indicate the condition of being discriminated against on the basis of race as a condition. This apparent normalization might be viewed as offering one or more examples of what Hansen and Gertsl (1967) have discussed as one of four meanings or uses of the term institution. In their view, racialization is a process institutionalized to address a societal issue/problem that is actually or potentially disruptive. It is like a set of rules, practices, and policies—processes—that are to be invoked or followed, depending on the stipulated racialization features for the targeted intersection. We raise the issue of intersectionality not as a mere ing thought, but because we believe that future research must contextualize and take seriously the confluence of social locations, particularly those marginalizing social locations —gender, class, sexual identity, citizenship status, and disability, among others —that function as both processes and conditions in education and that work in tandem with race. Thus, if we are to make sense of race and education, our research questions, methods, and epistemologies must be sensitive to, and conscious of, the ways that the processes and the condition of race impact educational equity in of both opportunities and outcomes. The emerging research in Black girlhood studies (e.g., Brown, 2009) and the

research on Black girls’ literacies (Richardson, 2007) help to demonstrate that research that takes intersectionality seriously looks radically different in tone, texture, and execution from our traditional ways of knowing. Brown, while illuminating the experiences of Black girls in and out of school, demonstrates that traditional research practices are inadequate in efforts to engage Black adolescent girls. Similarly, Richardson calls upon researchers to think carefully about how we make sense of the linguistic practices of Black girls and how their use of language and ways of “reading the world” provide rich insights on corporate culture, Black cultural products like rap, and Black girls’ sexuality. Brown’s and Richardson’s research challenges us to move beyond the participantobserver paradigm, to become intentional about the very research spaces we endeavor to create for and with our participants, especially for Black girls and women. As editors of this volume, we wonder what more we can learn and understand about the process and condition of race if we dare to ask bold questions about race and racism and commit to methods and analyses that respect the experiences and knowledges of our research participants and partners.

Overview of the Volume

Although a great deal has transpired since work began on these chapters— for the nation as well as for the contributors and editors—this book is both timely and important. Indeed, it is imperative that we have a volume that can speak directly to the manifestations of race and provide clarity on how we should think about our research on race and educational equity. This book emerged out of generous from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Research Conferences Program. The conference theme was “A Condition or a Process? Researching Race in Education.” In keeping with the requirements of the grant competition, we hosted 25 scholars who represented a range of disciplines and perspectives on race, racism, and racial equity in education. The conferees met on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We organized the presentations into s, each focusing on one of the following questions: (a) Is race a condition or a process? (b) How do we understand race in education? (c) How do we use or construct race in education

research? (d) What is the central role that race plays in education and education research? (e) What counts as “quality” race research in education in of methods/methodology, theory, and analysis? We invited graduate students and junior faculty to attend from the University of Illinois system; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Eastern Illinois University; and Murray State University. from presenters and attendees was positive, and the theme itself generated a great deal of excitement and requests for follow-up. It was our hope to build on the conference in some way, whether through a subsequent conference, a at the AERA annual meeting, or some sort of collaborative project. This book is a reflection of that desire to build on the knowledge and excitement generated by and during the conference. The chapters in this volume align with the conference theme and research questions. Although not all of the scholars who attended the conference contributed to the book, a majority of the contributors to the book presented their chapters at the conference. We framed the conference on the initial organizing question: Is race a condition or a process? All of our presentations implicitly addressed the second question: How do we understand race in education? With our framing question—Is race a condition or a process?— we wanted scholars to answer whether racial disparities and differences in educational opportunities, access, and achievement reflect race as a condition (is race an ontological distinction for people of color?), or whether racial disparities emerge out of a set of circumstances or processes. With our fourth question—What is the central role that race plays in education and education research?—we wanted to examine the extent to which race impacts and/or informs education and education research. Scholars who responded to this question did so with divergent, but complementary, perspectives on race research in education. In answering the final question—What counts as “quality” race research in education in of methods/methodology, theory, and analysis?—we wanted to engage in a substantive discussion on the very nature of our research questions and the utility of the methods and methodologies we employ to answer those questions. In other words, do we ask research questions that capture what is happening with regard to racial equity or inequity in education, and do we have sufficient research tools to answer those questions? What must we do differently as researchers to engage in meaningful research on race and racial equity in education? Rather than offer a linear set of guidelines, we believe that these chapters push researchers to think about our commitments for “truth” and “knowledge” in an effort to think differently about what counts as quality

research on race and racial equity.

Orientation to the Volume

The order of chapters in this volume follows very closely the presentation order of the conference. We invited scholars from a range of academic disciplines whose scholarship focused explicitly on race or on race and education in order to offer a diversity of perspectives. The scholars in education represented educational psychology, sociology of education, education policy, educational leadership, and teacher education. They also represented the full range of educational levels: elementary, secondary, and postsecondary. Two legal scholars (who did not submit their papers to this volume) and one historian who studies race and medicine also participated in the conference. As a way of anchoring the volume, the first three chapters represent the conference’s disciplinary diversity and offer a perspective on research on race and education that touches on the key issues that inform education broadly. Specifically, Chapter 1, penned by educational psychologist A. Wade Boykin, examines how race impacts classroom dynamics and learning for African American students. Boykin offers a compelling review and discussion of the literature on the influence of pedagogical practices on classroom dynamics for African American students and how particular practices create a classroom atmosphere that in some instances has reversed achievement disparities. Chapter 2, by Kelly M. Harris, Brittni D. Jones, and William F. Tate IV, uses the state of Missouri as a case study to illustrate the relationship between race, space, and education from historical and geographical perspectives. Chapter 3, by historian Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., while seemingly out of place in this volume, illustrates from a different disciplinary perspective the points that Harris, Jones, and Tate raise relative to social environment, race, and place. Mizelle explicates the relationship between race and health care in the tragic story of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, who in 2007 died essentially from a toothache. These three chapters offer multiple angles of vision on education research and race as we endeavor to better understand race, opportunity, and place. The election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 not only ushered in a new

era of national politics but also raised our collective awareness of race and racism in U.S. society. In particular, like racial microaggression became popular as Obama was subjected to persistent subtle and overt racial insults, not only from of Congress, governors, and local politicians but also from rank-and-file Americans who appeared to be angry that he had been elected to the nation’s highest office. In an attempt to minimize his “Blackness,” discussions about his race were related to his parentage and multiracial background. In this sense, as a nation, we have had a front row seat to understanding how race is constructed. In Chapter 4, Celia Rousseau Anderson examines the construction of race through the lens of multiraciality. Her examination is both personal and academic, as she shares her narrative of identifying as multiracial while examining the extant literature on multiraciality. Her chapter is far from a celebration of multiraciality as putting an end to race and racism; instead, she demonstrates the paradoxes of the multiracial lens that ostensibly applauds the hybridity and assumed border-crossing ability of multiracial persons while also imposing on them a hyper-awareness of their racial differences. With the “browning” of U.S public education, scholars who study race and education may want to be prepared to for how racial microaggressions marginalize students, families, and educators of color. In addition, researchers may want to develop a more nuanced understanding of multiraciality and the limits of the postracial or “anything but racism” discourse. In Chapter 5, Mitchell James Chang examines how researchers on race and education often fail to “see” particular groups, specifically Asian Americans. Chang challenges not only the Model Minority myth but also the persistent and contradictory discourses about merit and work ethic attached to college issions policies. In Chapter 6, Elaine Richardson, an applied linguist and scholar of African American literacies, demonstrates through her work with Black adolescent girls the process of race through linguistic practices and stereotypes about Black women and girls. Her work also captures the ways that the young women understand how they are constructed discursively and how to challenge and disrupt racist discursive constructions of Black girls and women. The authors of Chapter 7, Zeus Leonardo and Jocyl Sacramento, use high school ethnic studies curricula as a case study to argue for examining school curricula as sites of decolonization. These two chapters challenge us to think beyond what are considered commonsense discourses on race research. We conclude this volume by thinking about epistemology, positionality, and

activism in race scholarship. The final three chapters push us to consider our research commitments in an effort to think differently about what counts as quality research. In Chapter 8, Daniel G. Solorzano offers his personal narrative on how he became a critical race theory (CRT) scholar, focusing on his interest in racial microaggressions as a way of identifying and analyzing racial inequity in education. Similarly, David O. Stovall, in Chapter 9, challenges race and education researchers to consider our research as creating fugitive spaces through our utilization of university resources for what he calls “justicecentered” efforts within communities of color, spaces which many of us who identify as CRT scholars see as sites for our research and scholar-activism. In Chapter 10, Cecilia E. Suarez and Ivory M. Berry recount their personal experiences as newly minted Ph.D.s being interviewed for their first academic positions. Their stories illustrate the first supposition of Harris, Jones, and Tate in Chapter 2: that in U.S. society, racism is endemic and deeply ingrained, legally, culturally, and psychologically. Suarez and Berry found that, despite their training and expertise, in the interview process they were often rendered as nothing more than representations of their racial groups rather than as scholars who could make intellectual contributions to a community of scholars. Finally, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings’s Afterword pushes us to think about this “project” of race. That is, what are we looking for? What do we understand race to be? We must think carefully about those questions as education researchers and scholars in a time of intense national discourses about who belongs, what it means to be a nationalist or a globalist, and what it means, for that matter, to be a patriot. The contributors to this book encourage us not to be blind to color and culture but rather to see and engage them in order to contribute to the full development of the child/student. The contributors encourage us to acquire more knowledge and insight that would enable us to better teach each student. In short, these authors seek to provide insights that would limit

•the inclination of educators to look at persisting differences in performance and not see the reasons for and patterns of those differences; •the likelihood of educators’ looking at performance differences that widen over time—the longer children of color and their White counterparts are in school

together, the more academically different they become—and seeing this as normal; •the willingness of educators to see the performance of their schools and choose to use the racial, ethnic, and economic composition of a school as the justification for its performance—justifying and tolerating the consistently poor treatment of some of the children in their charge.

In this way, the authors in this volume move our understanding of race as condition and racism as process in ways that could enable us to follow this prescient prescription from W. E. B. Du Bois (1935, p. 328):

The proper education of any people includes sympathetic touch between teacher and pupil; knowledge on the part of the teacher, not simply of the individual taught, but of his surroundings and background, and the history of his class and group; such between pupils, and between teacher and pupil, on the basis of perfect social equality, as will increase this sympathy and knowledge; facilities for education in equipment and housing; and the promotion of such extracurricular activities as will tend to induct the child into life.

References

Brown, R. N. (2009). Black girlhood celebration: Toward a hip-hop feminist pedagogy. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Coleman, J. S. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 200704-27. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3886/ISR06389.v3 Crenshaw, K. W. (1988). Race, reform and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in anti-discrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1331–

1387. Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist policy. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167. Dixson, A. D. (2011). Whose choice? A critical race perspective on charter schools. In C. Johnson (Ed.), Neo-liberal deluge: Hurricane Katrina, late capitalism and the remaking of New Orleans (pp. 130–151). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1935). Does the Negro need separate schools? Journal of Negro Education, 4(3), 328–335. Frankel, M., Kohnke, L., Buonanno, D., & Tourangeau, R. (1981). High School and Beyond sample design report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Hansen, D. A., & Gertsl, J. E. (1967). On education: Sociological perspectives. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The Negro family: The case for national action. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor. Richardson, E. (2007). “She was workin like foreal”: Critical literacy and discourse practices of African American females in the age of hip hop. Discourse & Society, 18(6), 789–809. Wilson, W. J. (1996). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York, NY: Random House.

Chapter 1

The Pursuit of Promising Educational Practices at the Crossroads of Race and Culture

A.W ADE B OYKIN Howard University

For several decades, educational policy makers, decision makers, and thought leaders have pushed to the forefront of discussion the critical importance of improving the quality of education in our society. Many initiatives, many answers, many quests, many urgent and clarion calls for change, and many efforts at school reform have been suggested and undertaken. Yet the results of these initiatives have failed to meet the expectations and goals of their advocates. In this chapter, we will consider the pursuits and panaceas attempted over the years and reflect on where we are today in the continuing quest to educate all of our youth to high levels of learning and achievement. Even after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, court-ordered busing, the compensatory education movement, the age of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, efforts at community control of schools, the push for open classrooms, and the Back to Basics movement; even after declaring, in the

influential and landmark book A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983, p. 9), that there was “a rising tide of mediocrity” in the American schooling process; even after the Effective Schools movement, the New American Schools initiative, the standards movement, and the comprehensive school reform movement; even after the call for No Child Left Behind and the pursuit of a Race to the Top; even as the jury is still out on Common Core, as its momentum seems to slow; even after the advent of magnet and charter schools, in the midst of school choice, in the continued push for greater teacher ability, and with the recent age of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we still are greatly challenged about how to educate virtually all of our students to desirable levels of academic accomplishment. And the urgency and sincere commitment to changing this reality is more insistent, more imperative, and more consequential than it has ever been, in light of societal trends. The intention of this chapter is not to foment further pessimism about the possibility of ever implementing effective and sustainable educational practices. Instead, the purpose is to examine what lessons can be learned from prior school improvement ventures, and in turn what alternative routes are needed to address effectively the challenges that will be illuminated. I begin here by advancing key presuppositions about what should constitute effective schooling, suppositions that may have greater heuristic value than more conventional stances. Then, using such insights as a backdrop, I offer examples of potentially promising research that could lead to educational practices and interventions whose pursuit could promote pervasively greater learning opportunities for students of color, if not for all students. There is no presumption that what will follow in this chapter is exhaustive in its breadth or sufficiently penetrating in its explanatory depth. However, a case will be made that the directions proposed here align well with the research evidence gleaned, and in turn with the concrete practice examples that will be described. This convergence gives some plausibility to the overall line of reasoning advanced in the chapter. Thus, what is presented may provide pathways that lead ultimately to the implementation of promising educational practices and replicable interventions. In turn, these interventions could contribute to a greater number of success stories for heretofore educationally marginalized youth in the American social order.

Documenting Achievement Disparities

Over the last several years, the push for school reform in our nation has been animated by evidence of marked disparities in the academic achievement of African American and Latino students on the one hand, and European American and certain Asian American students on the other. These gaps have yet to be closed substantially. Particularly noteworthy is that the comparatively lower performance of Black students relative to their White counterparts is documented across several educational assessment data sets, appears across several topic areas, and manifests across the pre-K-to-12th-grade continuum. Such racial group disparities in achievement have shown up in children as young as 3 years of age (Burchinal et al., 2011) on standardized assessments of “school readiness” skills. Such gaps have been found in reading and math with respect to national longitudinal samples of students who were initially 4 years of age, and these gaps not only persisted through Grade 5, but actually increased over this time period (Burchinal et al., 2011; Condron, 2009; Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Murnane, Willett, Bub, & McCartney, 2006). Black students consistently obtain lower scores than their White peers on statewide “high-stakes” tests such as the Illinois State Assessment Test (Luppescu, Allenworth, Moore, de laTorre, & Murphy, 2011). Over the decades, findings from successive istrations of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have shown that African American students score markedly lower than White students in the areas of reading and math in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. The data patterns for eighth and twelfth graders prove challenging to explain (comparable data are not available from NAEP for fourth graders). From at least 1994 through more recent NAEP istrations, with the data broken down for White and Black students by their parents’ highest level of education, the gap in the mean NAEP scores in both reading and math has consistently been substantially greater between Black and White students whose parents have college degrees than for students whose parents did not finish high school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017a, 2017b). Moreover, it has been consistently found that the average score for Black students whose parents are college graduates is virtually the same as that for White students whose parents did not finish high school. This pattern of findings simply cannot be explained away in of differences in

socioeconomic status (SES), or disparities in family resources per se (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017a, 2017b). It certainly does not lend itself to explanations rooted in experiential deficiencies in the home environments of the students’ parents. Certainly, alternate explanatory schemes must be advanced. This requires further elaboration.

Focus on Integrity

It can be asserted that any given explanatory approach is undergirded by a set of assumptions or presuppositions as to how a given phenomenon should be represented properly. For the present line of reasoning, the issue at hand is what should be the foundational representation that likely s for the educational problems Black and other marginalized students experience, and what remedies would likely lead to better outcomes for such groups. For several decades, the deficit or deficiency stance has been the dominant perspective for understanding, and in turn ing for, the problematics of school achievement for Black and other marginalized student groups in the nation (Boykin, 1986; Peretti & Austin, 1980; Valencia, 2010). From the deficit perspective, the line of reasoning typically has been that something is lacking in the experiential backgrounds of students from a given demographic group that has handicapped them in the pursuit of academic success. Over the years, the deficit narrative has been invoked in ing for the educational outcome disparities and in turn the interventions to be pursued in order to minimize problematic educational outcomes. The intervention goal is to compensate for what is lacking, for the gaps in experience or exposure, and this is typically done by providing more “mainstream” encounters, or enriched experiences in schooling settings. The deficit stance has been known for being needlessly pejorative in capturing the extant experiences of students from certain ethnic minority backgrounds (Milner, 2008; Valencia, 1997). This has led to an alternative framework that has been labeled the difference stance (Bernal, 2002; Gopaul-McNicol & ThomasPresswood, 1998; Nasir & Hand, 2006). The notion is that the cultural and/or other lived experiences—for example, of Black students/people— are distinct and unique and as such cannot be captured through a deficit lens. In turn, it is asserted that these experiences are not acknowledged in general, and thus do not inform the schooling practices to which Black students are typically subjected;

this is what leads to the low levels of school performance for such students. The cultural difference view has garnered sizable attention across time. However, it has been justifiably critiqued in that it has fallen prey at times to advocating for an either/or depiction of a group’s extant experiences, and as such has seemed to over-play the uniqueness of differing groups. This may lead to overgeneralizations or to commonalities among ethnic/racial groups not being given sufficient attention (Gutiérrez, 2002; Nasir & Hand, 2006). This chapter argues that we should consider the extant experiences of varying groups not in of deficits or differences, or weaknesses or strengths, per se. Instead, we should recognize that there is integrity manifested in the extant lived experiences of people from diverse backgrounds. The notion of integrity conveys that there is complexity, depth, and coherence attendant to these experiences. In this conception, complexity conveys that there are strengths and weaknesses, uniformities and diversities, consistencies and contradictions captured in such experiences. Depth speaks to the notion that these experiences cannot be construed superficially or in stereotyped forms. Coherence speaks to the notion that it is possible to systematically capture behavioral, social, and affective patterns that can be rendered as understandable (Boykin, 1986; Boykin & Ellison, 1995; Boykin & Noguera, 2011). As a central consequence of this integrity perspective, students from “educationally marginalized” backgrounds should not be construed through a simplistic approach whereby their “uniquely exotic” characteristics for the singularly special ways that they should be handled or otherwise understood in of pathologies, deficits, and weaknesses. Their improvement should not be predicated upon “fixing” them because they are “broken.”

Human Capacity Building

This discussion raises another crucial consideration. What would be a focal goal for schooling that is appropriately aligned with this integrity-based frame of reference? To be sure, schools should be designed to “educate” students. But this purpose alone is too general and thus not sufficiently illuminating. One such purpose advanced in recent times is the agenda for educational equity (Lipman,

2004). From an educational equity standpoint, it is a moral imperative for all children and youth in our society to have access to a high-quality education. However, the educational equity framework recognizes that there is widespread inequality in the educational processes provided and in the outcomes attained in our nation’s schools. Indeed, those who fare the worst are most often from poor or ethnic minority backgrounds. This is socially unjust, and such an injustice must be eradicated. As the argument goes, the desired end results are the dedication of greater resources and s to schools serving minority and/or poor children in order to increase their chances of being academically successful, and a striving to approach equity in the outcomes attained via the schooling process. However, one caveat that many observers have advanced is that what is done on behalf of poor kids should not be at the expense of the resources made available to more privileged students. It should not undermine the future prospects of students who are currently doing well in their schooling settings, or lower the standards for what is required to do well in school. As the argument goes, high-level excellence in school should continue to be acknowledged and rewarded, even if this goal is not attained by the preponderance of ethnic minority and low-income students. This is not a trivial challenge. In a phrase, we should not sacrifice true excellence in the pursuit of equity. This notion has also been emboldened by the persisting, even if tacit, belief that schools perform a crucial sorting function for society at large (Boykin, 2000). Some students will excel, some will do moderately well, and some will fail. It could be further argued that such results should be independent of one’s racial or demographic background. In all, then, the educational equity argument is that schools must strive to eliminate bias in the input and the output of the schooling process. The biases and barriers to successful schooling outcomes for all students should be eliminated. However, certain critics of the educational equity stance argue that its pursuit permits access for less qualified people to opportunities that they have not earned or do not deserve. Stating this last point differently, the claim is that we should not diminish the pursuit of excellence in order to satisfy the principle of equity. Furthermore, another danger that critics raise is that the seeking of equity masks the actual deficiencies, either inherent or experiential, among diverse or nonmainstream groups because of the preoccupation with inclusiveness in the pursuit of fairness. The persistent achievement gaps and challenges that have been discussed in this chapter, it is argued, are testimony to the problematics of the educational equity argument.

Some scholars have advanced an alternative purpose for schooling: the human capacity building stance (Boykin, 2015; Wallace & Chhuon, 2014). This approach asserts that the function of schooling should be the simultaneous pursuit of equity and excellence. This stance affirms that it is in the best interests of our society at large to promote widespread, high-level knowledge, skills, and abilities across the domains of intellectual, technical, and civic participation. Indeed, this should apply to successive cohorts of the diverse American population, as our society seeks to address the challenges, perils, and opportunities that will present themselves in the future. Capacity building is predicated on the reality of integrity attendant to the life experiences of people from diverse backgrounds. Moreover, schooling itself should not be aimed at the recapitulation of what has already been done, known, or acquired per se. It should be linked more to knowledge production than to knowledge consumption. The capacity building approach also recognizes the societal challenges we face as America becomes more diverse. Projections indicate that by the middle of the 21st century, the majority of Americans will be non-White (Frey, 2015). Moreover, our society will have to more greatly rely on a labor force and knowledge production citizenry comprised of demographic groups that historically have faced the most problematic social and academic challenges, even up to the present day. If we do not educate (with different outcomes and aims) a critical mass of our citizens to very high levels of attainment, not only will presently marginalized (Black and Brown) communities suffer, but our society at large will simply fall short of providing the talents and skills that we will greatly need in the years and decades ahead. Furthermore, a human capacity-building stance is predicated on providing authentic and widespread learning opportunities, especially for students who historically have been educationally marginalized; the education afforded to them should be enlightening, empowering, and sensitive to the educational roadblocks that may be or have been (either implicitly or explicitly) placed in their way.

Quantitative and Qualitative Research

The underlying assumptions and lines of reasoning presented above are bolstered

by bodies of accumulated research. Such research is aimed at discerning what are effective educational practices that can prepare successive cohorts of students to successfully handle the challenges posed by the rigors and the realities of the 21st century. The various promising educational practices that are advanced in this chapter are each based on convergent or consistent findings obtained across several investigations. The relevant research findings have been gleaned from both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Evidence from both types of studies is needed to make clear what practical conclusions should be drawn from the data presented. In basic , researchers using quantitative methods typically compare average scores from project participants who have been placed in various categories or conditions to determine if the average scores for categories differ from each other in ways that are not likely to have happened by chance alone. Other quantitative research is designed to see whether the average scores based on data obtained from the same individual are related to (i.e., correlated with) each other. In a positive correlation scenario, the higher one’s score is on one measure or questionnaire, the higher it is on the other. In both the comparison and relational research cases, to get results that allow the researcher to draw proper conclusions, it is imperative that the factors under scrutiny be crisply (and therefore narrowly) defined a priori, that the methods be consistent, and that the procedures be rigorously uniform across participants. Yet the evidence available is relatively obvious. The findings are systematic and replicable given the same conditions and participant categories. Replication and precision are seen as great virtues within the canons of the scientific method. Data in qualitative research is often gleaned from interviews, discussions, or written reports. The methods very likely will have some consistency across participants, but there is ample room for variation depending on the transpiring interactions. The evidence obtained is not typically obvious—it must be “dug up” or created after the fact. The major conclusions to be drawn will likely arise from the response patterns obtained. There is great explanatory virtue in a methodological approach that adds substantial value to the pursuit of what conclusions can be drawn in the necessary journey from research to practice. For example, the stories and life narratives of a given project’s participants are often told. The individual dramas that participants must grapple with are illuminated. The voices of participants are not silenced. The “whys” behind the responses are more deeply and richly

known. The uniqueness of each participant is maximized rather than minimized in the service of seeking “typicality.” The possibility exists for situating responses in personal, historical, group, local, and wider social and political contexts.

Technocratic vs. Transactional Approaches to Schooling Improvements

An issue worthy of addressing in the pursuit of schooling improvement involves discerning the appropriate grain size for the interventions pursued by educational policy makers and decision makers. Over the years, the most prominent solution approaches offered for the plight of educationally underserved students have been of the technocratic variety (Boykin, 2015; Boykin & Noguera, 2011). Such solutions point to the need to change organizational or operational structures and procedures in the school setting. Consistent with this approach would be such pursuits as longer school days or school years; smaller class sizes; new curriculum or standards; double-period classes in core subjects; the reconstitution of schools; offering school choice; and the like. It is not difficult to see why technocratic solutions are solutions of choice. It is easy to see that something has been done because such solutions are concrete and definite. They are easy to manage; no constant vigilance or oversight is required to discern that the day is longer, that block scheduling is in place, or that a new textbook is in use. It is also plainly obvious to the public and policy makers and consumers at large that something has been done. While these pursuits may have merit, a growing chorus of concerned scholars and practitioners have called for the inclusion of transactional approaches. When we bring solid, systematic evidence to bear on what closes minority and majority group achievement gaps while raising achievement for virtually all students in general, and better prepares students for the rigors and realities of the 21st century, transactional solutions hold more promise. Transactional approaches focus on optimizing learning exchanges that occur inside classrooms (and other learning settings, for that matter; more on this later) on a daily basis between teachers and students and among students themselves. Such dynamics comprise the everyday bases of teaching and learning. Capturing the texture and contours of classroom transactions is not necessarily straightforward. This

approach does not lend itself to straightforward oversight or ability. The manifestations of transactions that maximize learning opportunities may not be obvious to the uninitiated eye. They may be more nuanced, multifaceted, and fluctuating, rather than straightforwardly apparent and static (Wallace & Chhuon, 2014). Indeed, making transactional changes in classroom functioning requires changes in what classroom activities look like, and what teachers and students talk about, think about, act on, and believe in. This is tantamount to changing what Tyack and Tobin (1994) have referred to as the very “grammar” of teaching and learning. Over 20 years ago, the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner (1996) offered the following insights about teaching and learning that are consistent with a transactional approach:

Of course we need standards and resources to make our schools work well in solving the myriad tasks they face. But resources and standards alone will not work. We need a surer sense of what to teach, to whom and how to go about teaching it in such a way that it will make those taught more effective, less alienated, and better human beings. (pp. 117–118)

The call then is not to dismiss technocratic solutions. Instead, they should be combined with transactional approaches in order to foster higher quality teaching and learning, leading to better academic outcomes for all students and, in turn, closing achievement gaps. Extending the school day an additional hour will not solve schooling challenges by itself if the school day is also one of drudgery for students. Reducing class sizes from 30 to 15 students could be worse for this smaller set of students if they are still in an interpersonally toxic classroom. There is mounting evidence that enhancing classroom dynamics and interpersonal relationships by focusing on transactional factors inside classrooms may hold promise for raising achievement levels in ways that will benefit all students, though African Americans and other educationally underserved groups may especially profit. Indeed, it is argued here that proximal processes and outcomes require more systematic attention rather than a relatively exclusive preoccupation with standardized “high-stakes” test scores. It can be further argued that higher quality proximal factors can lead to higher levels of more

distal educational outcomes. One such proximal factor is student engagement in the classroom learning context. For the purposes and scope of this chapter, this factor will not be substantially addressed.

Promising Practices: Deployment of Asset-Based Instructional Strategies

A class of potentially promising approaches to teaching and learning has been identified as asset-based instructional strategies (Boykin & Noguera, 2011; Wallace & Chhuon, 2014). As the term implies, asset-based instructional strategies acknowledge, utilize, and build upon the assets that students bring with them into learning or performance settings; if no such assets are readily apparent, the pursuit is to create assets for students as needed (Boykin & Noguera, 2011). So what are potential sources of such strategies? These include incorporating students’ interests and preferences; capitalizing on their ions and commitments; and forging links, as appropriate, to their personal, family, and cultural values, as well as to their attitudes, beliefs, and opinions. This approach also includes building upon or taking heed of students’ knowledge and prior experiences; rather than focusing on what they don’t know, or can’t do, these strategies focus on their existing and emerging understandings, talents, and competencies (Boykin & Noguera, 2011). The asset-based strategies to be expounded upon in this chapter are Constructive Teacher-Student Relationships (CTSR); Teacher Expectations; Collaborative Learning and Peer Classroom Dynamics; and Enabling Cognitive-Focused Strategies. Other categories of promising practices certainly exist. But for present purposes, these four exemplary approaches will be reviewed.

Constructive Teacher-Student Relationships

The potency of high-quality teacher-student relationships for African American students has been well documented in recent years (Boykin & Noguera, 2011). CTSR generally refers to classroom interpersonal relationships, typically

originating with teachers, that manifest as genuine care for students while holding them to high standards. This notion is also marked by affective and instructional that is linked to a sensitivity to students’ moods and feelings. It also is marked by teachers’ reluctance to unilaterally impose their agenda on the student. This conception resembles the notion of warm demander pedagogy (Bondy & Ross, 2008; Ware, 2006), which has been conceived as an example of culturally responsive teaching that is akin to a culturally based socialization process found in many African American homes. Bondy and Ross (2008) write about teachers who consistently operate with warm demander pedagogy who may out “getting to know you” questionnaires to their students and use that information in the course of their interactions with each student. In doing so, these teachers learn about their students’ backgrounds, prior experiences, and their likes and dislikes. Thus, the teachers convey that they truly care about and are interested in their students as particular persons and not just as class . Recalling a comment that a student made previously conveys that a teacher actually thought about the student and what was on that student’s mind. The teacher also holds students to high standards and is unyielding in pushing them to reach behavioral and academic expectations. One student states that such teachers “remind us often you expect our best, encourage our efforts even if we are having trouble, give helpful and expect us to review … don’t compare us to other students and stick with us” (Cushman, 2003, pp. 64–67). Such teachers tend not to be lenient with their students when expectations are not met, and leave no doubt that they are the authority figure in the classroom. Specific examples of warm demander pedagogy in action are provided in a case study project conducted by Ware (2006) with respect to a Ms. Willis’s classroom. The teacher says: “Chris, out workbooks while I’m doing some housekeeping, and I want everybody to listen. Yesterday I checked for two things, number one, homework. I had about half of the class that turned in their homework. I do not give homework every day, but when I do it’s a practice skill that needs to be done. It’s something you need: It’s not just something for you to do. And I expect you to do it” (p. 436). Moreover, novice teachers deploying warm demander pedagogy are cognizant of the challenges inherent in such a “nonconventional” approach to teaching and learning (Bondy, Ross, Hambacher, & Acosta, 2013). As one such teacher remarked, “It takes more than [school] hours … and it takes more thought and care than you’re being paid for, so I think if you’re just in it for the job, you

probably can’t be a warm demander” (p. 433). There is a delicate balancing act attendant to being simultaneously warm and demanding. Another study conducted by Hambacher, Acosta, Bondy, and Ross (2016) quotes a novice teacher who spoke about the potential pitfalls of being demanding with her students:

Demanding without warmth can be problematic. If you demand those expectations in a way that creates a hostile environment where kids feel scared about making mistakes, or they feel like you made them feel stupid … then you’re going to defeat your own purpose because they’re not going to want to try (or) want to meet your expectations. (p.187)

On the other hand, a recent empirical study (Sandilos, Rimm-Kaufman, & Cohen, 2017) that explicitly examined the possible effects of warm demander pedagogy on academic outcomes found that African American students, in particular, displayed greater academic growth when warm demander pedagogy was deployed, as compared to more conventional teaching. This relationship was not observed for European American students. In recent years, considerable empirical research has been conducted about this teacher-student relationship domain, and the findings illuminate the positive consequences of this general relational dynamic for Black students. A case in point is an investigation by Split, Hughes, Wu, and Kwok (2012). They found that teachers’ self-reports of conflict and warmth directed toward students were differentially distributed in classrooms and had achievement consequences across time. The study was conducted with a large, ethnically diverse sample of children from Grades 1 through 6. “Warmth” took the form of agreeing with questions/statements such as “I enjoy being with this child,” or “I find I am able to nurture this child.” “Conflict” was manifested in agreeing with statements such as “I often need to discipline this child,” or “The child and I often argue or get upset with each other.” Initially and across time, more conflict and less warmth were directed toward the African American students, and the more these dynamics were indicated, the lower their performance. However, when less conflict and more warmth were subsequently reported for these children, their achievement levels increased over time.

Converging findings have been reported with older students, as well. Yeager et al. (2014) examined the role that constructive differentially plays in the academic performance of Black and White secondary school students. They tie this pattern to differences in the levels of mistrust that Black and White students typically have for their teachers. In one study, White and African American middle school students received allegedly from their teacher on an essay that they had completed for a class assignment. The took one of two forms. Half of the students received what was referred to by the investigators as “wise .” These students were given a written message stating that the teacher believed the student had the potential to reach a high level of attainment, and indeed the teacher expected that the student could achieve such performance as a result. The other students received essentially neutral . When students were given the opportunity to revise and resubmit their essays, greater percentages of both Black and White students resubmitted their essays when they received the wise compared to the neutral . But the difference as a function of condition was much more substantial for the Black students. The resubmission rates for White students who received neutral versus wise were 62% and 87%, respectively. For Black students, the resubmission rates were 17% and 72%, respectively. The White/Black difference was statistically significant under the neutral condition. But there was no statistically significant difference under the wise condition. Moreover, teachers gave higher scores to the essays revised under the wise than the neutral condition. Under the neutral condition, the essay scores for the White students were higher than those of their Black counterparts. However, the relative rise in the performance scores of the Black students under the wise condition was substantially greater than that of their White counterparts, to the extent that there was no difference in the essay ratings for Black and White students when these students received wise . It is important to note that when grading the essays, teachers were unaware of what type of the students had received.

CTSR and Teacher Expectations

Matters of teacher expectations have been a long-standing focus in education

research (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Consequently, this component of CTSR will be treated separately. It should be noted that much controversy has surrounded whether the effects of teacher expectations are real or can be documented. More recent work seems to confirm that teachers’ academic expectations can impact ethnic minority students’ academic outcomes in particular. Tenenbaum and Ruck (2007) conducted a meta-analysis about teacher expectations. They found that, in the main, teachers hold higher expectations for White than for Black and Latino students. This involves their directing more positive comments toward White students, and engaging these students more in exchanges focusing on the processes of learning. A recent investigation deploying an experimental design looked closely at the performance consequences of differential teacher expectations for African American elementary (fourth-grade) and middle school (eighth-grade) students from low-income backgrounds (Ivy-Jackson, Coleman, Boykin, & Lee, 2019). Students were first given a pretest on mathematics word problems involving multiplication. Then they completed four days of learning-strategy study sessions (approximately one hour each day). Students were randomly assigned to either a high or low expectations condition. In the low expectations condition, students were told that, after reviewing their pretest scores, they were expected to do fair on the follow-up test that they would take after the four-day study period. Those in the high expectations condition were told that after reviewing their pretest scores, they were expected to excel on the follow-up test. Results revealed that for both the fourth- and eighth-grade students, those in the high expectations condition significantly increased their scores from pretest to posttest. However, for those who had been assigned to the low expectations condition, their scores actually decreased from the pre-test to the post-test. It is important to note that these divergent findings were obtained after only a oneweek experience. One can only imagine what the impact would be on such students who receive low expectations or interaction for one month, one semester, one year, five years, or ten years. There is also evidence from work done in Europe that low expectations for ethnic minority students may well be linked to racial biases of teachers. One study of interest from the Netherlands on this topic (van den Bergh, Denessen, Hornstra, Voeten, & Holland, 2010) set out to determine if there was a connection between the academic expectations that classroom teachers hold for ethnic minority students and the teachers’ expression of implicit racial prejudice. The teachers in this study were istered two measures that were designed to

capture level of racial prejudice. The Modern Racism Scale was used to determine explicit prejudice. To discern implicit prejudice, or attitudes that one is not consciously or deliberately aware of holding, the standard Implicit Attitudes Test was istered. Teacher expectations were measured via a scale that asked questions with respect to individual students in their classrooms, such as “He or she will probably have a successful academic career,” or “He or she is a smart student.” The targeted groups in this study were students of Turkish or Moroccan origin and students of native Dutch ancestry. Students’ academic achievement was determined by performance on the most recent national test in reading and mathematics. All teachers taught in “ethnically diverse” classrooms. Students were all at the elementary level and ranged from Grades 1 through 6. Consistent with recent previous research, results revealed that the teachers expressed comparatively low levels of explicit prejudice (mean of 1.87 on a fivepoint scale), but high levels of implicit racial prejudice toward the immigrant children. It was also found that, as in other studies, there was no relationship between teachers’ levels of explicit and implicit racial prejudice. Moreover, teachers’ expectations for the immigrant children were markedly lower than those for the Dutch children. Finally, when data were analyzed across classrooms, it was found that the more teachers exhibited implicit (and not explicit) prejudice toward immigrant children, the greater were the achievement gap differences in their classrooms; this difference was mediated by teacher expectations. In other words, implicit racial bias was linked to lower teacher expectations. In turn, lower expectations linked directly to lower achievement scores for the Turkish and Moroccan students relative to their Dutch counterparts, thereby contributing to the presence of the achievement gap.

Collaborative Learning and Peer Classroom Dynamics

Several recent reviews of the research literature have indicated that classroom collaborative learning may be especially beneficial for African American and Latino students (Ginsburg-Block, Rohrbeck, Lavigne, & Fantuzzo, 2008; Rohrbeck, Ginsburg-Block, & Fantuzzo, 2003; Slavin, Lake, & Groff, 2009), even leading to outcomes in which achievement gaps close. Some recent work suggests that certain forms of collaborative learning may have cultural

significance for African American students, and consequently may be particularly compelling in enhancing their learning outcomes. An empirical investigation by Hurley, Allen, and Boykin (2009) sought to discern the potential potency for Black students of communalism as a form of group learning. Communalism is seen as a theme that may be culturally salient in the proximal experiences of many (though certainly not all) people of African descent. Communalism captures the importance of the fundamental interdependence, mutuality, and identity tied to group hip. In this study, fourth- and fifthgrade African American and European American students, all from low-income backgrounds, served as participants. The children were first given a pretest deploying math estimation problems. Then they were randomly assigned to one of three learning conditions. These were interpersonal competition, group competition, and communalism. For each condition, students worked in racehomogenous groups of three. In the interpersonal competition, students took part in a learning session approximately one hour long, where they were provided with strategies for how best to tackle math estimation problems. The three students were told to study the materials, and that whoever did best on the posttest would receive a prize of two free movie tickets. In the group competition condition, the students were told to work together, and that if their group’s average performance was among the best in the project, the three of them each would receive two free movie tickets. In the communal condition, the three students were told to work together but were not offered a performancecontingent reward. Instead, they were instructed to work together for the good of the group, and that they should want to see each group member do as well as possible since they were all from the same community. The findings revealed that under the interpersonal competition condition, the White students significantly outperformed their Black counterparts. In fact, on average, the White students performed their best under this condition. But under the communalism condition, the Black students, on average, significantly outperformed their White counterparts. The best performance for Black students was under the communal condition. Furthermore, the performance of the Black students under the communal condition was on par with the performance of the White children under the intergroup competition condition. What is particularly striking about the pattern of results in this investigation is that the “achievement gap” was not simply closed. It was actually reversed. It is crucial to address the Hurley, Allen, and Boykin (2009) results from another angle. It is conceivable that the results from this investigation may cause concern for some. There could be pushback from these findings because they may lead to

the conclusion that there is something inherent in being a Black person that disqualifies him/her from doing well under individualistic or competitive academic conditions. It should be noted that the findings are the average scores obtained for students in the two ethnic categories. Therefore, not all Black students automatically did better than all of their White counterparts under the communal condition, and not all White students fared better than their Black counterparts under the individualistic/competitive condition. Moreover, process data gleaned from the communal condition were also captured via videotape. These group process data revealed that in comparison with their White counterparts, Black students displayed more task involvement, more positive affect, and more adaptively effective intragroup communication while studying together under the communal condition. This is consistent with a cultural compatibility conception which posits that, generally speaking, better performance for African American K–12 students is likely to manifest (although not always) when the learning context allows for or is consistent with elements of African American culture. This notion has been generally confirmed in an extensive literature review conducted by Whaley and Noel (2012).

Enabling Cognitive-Focused Strategies

Recall that the conception of asset-based strategies allows for the possibility that if no such assets are readily apparent or available for certain students, then it becomes incumbent upon teachers to provide such assets for them. This notion has been captured in several recent investigations examining the consequences of explicitly providing cognitive, problem-solving strategies to actualize higher levels of performance. Siegler and colleagues have been in the forefront of this pursuit in recent years. They have advanced the cognitive alignment framework, which aims to more accurately capture the ways and reasons that educational materials and games can be effective, by ensuring that such activities are designed to optimize the grasping of relevant mental representations. For instance, there is research which shows that board games that promote practice at understanding the mental number line can lead to an increase in mathematics knowledge for young children (Ramani & Siegler, 2008). Such improvements do not occur if the game

focuses on counting rather than fostering a grasp of the mental number line (which develops crucial discernment of numerical and spatial information and is essentially linear in its form). Consequently, board games that include counting but are circular in their format would not lead to a marked positive impact on students’ basic mathematical understanding of concepts such as magnitude comparison, counting, and numerical estimation skills. While much of this work has been done under controlled research laboratory conditions, the findings have been more recently replicated in actual classroom settings with small-group learning activities (Ramani, Hitti, & Siegler, 2012). Crosnoe et al. (2010) found that in classrooms that promoted inference-based learning techniques marked by engaging students in activities that required skills such as inductive and deductive reasoning, initially low-achieving math students (disproportionately from non-White, low-SES families) improved their math achievement outcomes more steeply from the third to the fifth grade than did average and high-achieving students (who were disproportionately from middleclass and White families). This gap-closing pattern did not occur in classrooms that primarily manifested “basic skills” instruction, where instruction was designed to yield yes-no or correct-incorrect answers. Moreover, the achievement benefits of inference-based instruction did not occur for initially low-achieving students if teacher-student relationships were marred by conflict.

Further Educational Outcomes

Up to now, attention has been given almost exclusively to academic performance considerations. However, other schooling outcomes are also worthy of our consideration. It can be argued that other factors are also tied to opportunities to learn. In recent years, there has been growing concern in educational circles about the disproportionality of students of color being disciplined and suspended from school. It has been well documented that there is a “punishment gap” between Black and White students in our nation’s schools, especially when it comes to “subjective” as opposed to “objective” infractions (Forsyth, Biggar, York, & Howat, 2015). Recent national data on school suspensions have starkly brought this matter into more widespread focus (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). Consider the following findings from a national

data set gathered during the 2011– 2012 school year. Black children comprised 18% of the enrollment in preschool programs, 42% of all single preschool suspensions, and 50% of all multiple preschool suspensions. The majority of suspended Black children were boys. A disproportionately high percentage of Black children are being put out of school even before they enroll in kindergarten. It should be reinforced that students of any age cannot learn well if they are not in school to receive instruction and have access to the knowledge and skills that are being afforded. According to the report, the most frequent reasons for suspensions were based on teacher reports of a child being disobedient or disruptive (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). Recent research has been conducted to look into this issue as well as how to address and counteract such disproportionality. Consider a recent study by Okonofua and Eberhardt (2015). They examined the potential influence of student race on teachers’ responses to minor classroom infractions. In this study, K–12 teachers were told to assume they were a teacher at a middle school and had to judge how they would respond to behavioral infractions of a given student. The students’ names were “stereotypically Black” (Deshawn or Darnell) or “stereotypically White” (Greg or Jake). One infraction was for a class disturbance, and one was for insubordination. The teacher was to judge each student twice, for the first infraction and then for the second infraction. After each infraction, the teachers were asked to tell how serious the misbehavior was and whether it required disciplinary action. The results revealed that the teachers’ ratings were not different for the students with “Black” and “White” names in response to the first infraction. However, in response to the second infraction, the teachers rated the misbehavior of students with “Black” names as much more serious and rated the infraction as worthy of disciplinary action. As indicated in the study’s title, when it came to the Black students, “two strikes and you’re out.” The implication here is that when a Black student misbehaves a second time, a pattern has been established that marks the student as a troublemaker. Another related study (Okonofua, Paunesku, & Walton, 2016) found that when teachers were trained via a relatively short intervention to promote empathy toward a misbehaving student, the rate of disciplinary action could be reduced by half over a given school year. This intervention prompted teachers to pay heed to the perspective of the student, to understand why the infraction took place, and showed respect for the position taken by a student relative to the incident at hand. The deployment of restorative justice interventions has also been shown to have similar effects on disciplinary disparities (Gregory, Clawson, Davis, & Gerewitz, 2016). It could be argued that

such responses to students are akin to the deployment of constructive teacherstudent relationships. Indeed, using asset-based strategies could likely have the same impact on student behavioral outcomes as on academic outcomes.

A Future Direction: Highlighting Socioemotional Experiences

Moving forward, another factor that deserves further consideration is the socialemotional aspect of students’ classroom experiences. Students’ social-emotional experiences can be defined as their assessment of how they perceive, judge, and/or feel about their status as a valuable, contributing participant in the everyday affairs of their classroom. Two examples of social-emotional experiences are relational mattering and sense of belonging. Relational mattering has to do with the extent to which a given student perceives that others in the classroom setting care about what he/she says, does, and feels in that setting (Elliott, Kao, & Grant, 2004; Joeng & Turner, 2015; Tucker, Dixon, & Griddine, 2010). Sense of belonging involves the extent to which a given student feels attached to the activities that transpire in, and the people who regularly populate, that classroom context (Barbieri & Booth, 2016; Murphy & Zirkel, 2015; Niemi, Kumpulainen, Lipponen, & Hilppo, 2015). It is postulated that teachers’ effective use of the asset-based pedagogical strategies that were discussed earlier in this chapter can promote a student’s sense of belonging and relational mattering, further increasing the possibility of enhanced academic performance. Another distinctive feature of our proposed intervention is to explore relational mattering and a sense of belonging at the classroom level. Work has shown the possible beneficial effects of these socioemotional factors but, to date, more so in regard to attitudinal factors than to academic outcomes. Moreover, little of this work has been done with respect to these factors’ manifestation at the classroom level rather than at the school level. Still, work over the years suggests that students’ experiences of relational mattering and sense of belonging in school settings could likely be related to more positive academic outcomes (Masika & Jones, 2016; Murphy & Zirkel, 2015).

Some Concluding Comments

Several factors must be proactively addressed, it is argued here, if we are to change the direction of previous efforts from dashed hopes and promises to outcomes of increased educational opportunity for all. These include reenvisioning the purposes and functions of schooling, and thus of the substance of teaching and learning activities, to be more consistent with a human capacitybuilding agenda. We must follow the evidence for what works and gain better insight into why such factors and activities work. We must express our pursuit not just as one of equity, but as one of equity and excellence. We must focus more on the proximal processes of everyday classroom dynamics and how these can be optimized. We must appreciate that the convergence of evidence points to a greater focus on student learning assets, and begin paying more attention to the emerging importance of student socioemotional experiences inside classrooms. In many respects, this chapter is still a work in progress. Not enough is said about student engagement. Other classroom processes could be explored. No attention is given to the implications for teacher professional development and strategy implementation, or to challenges that teachers may confront in implementation of the suggested educational practices. Issues of school leadership also deserve attention. Finally, more systematic attention must be placed on what an effective and sustainable change process would entail inside classrooms and schools. Clearly one can’t do justice to all of these concerns in a single chapter. But it is hoped that due consideration of the myriad related issues can help to change the conversation about how schooling can prepare all children and youth to maximize their great potential for ultimately carrying out their roles and responsibilities in our society at large.

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Chapter 2

Race, Space, and Education Research: Revisiting Tobler’s First Law of Geography

K ELLY M. H ARRIS Washington University in St. Louis

B RITTNI D. J ONES Troy University

W

ILLIAM F. T ATE IV Washington University in St. Louis

Racial research has a long and controversial history. At the turn of the 20th century, sociologist and civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois was the first to synthesize natural and social scientific research to conclude that the concept of race was not a scientific category. Contrary to the then-dominant view, Du Bois maintained that health disparities between blacks and whites stemmed from social, not biological, inequality…. Today, scientists continue to draw wildly different conclusions on the utility of the race concept.—Yudell, Roberts, DeSalle, and Tishkoff, 2016

Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.—Tobler, 1970

The argument expressed in the first epigraph above, from a group of biologists, reflects the state of affairs on the use of race as a construct in human genetics. As a result of advances in molecular genetics, scientists have examined populations of species and subspecies and reconstructed their evolutionary histories on the basis of objective methods rather than ideologically based social constructions. The current state of evidence in science indicates that biological races (or subspecies) do not exist among modern humans and have never existed (Sussman, Allen, & Templeton, 2017). Templeton (1998) characterized the extensive evidence of genetic interchange through population movements and recurrent gene flows over the course of history, and captured the current position in genetics: “Human evolution and population structure has been characterized

by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient to make all humanity a single lineage” (p. 647). Thus, a difficult question faces social scientists: Are race-based predictions in clinical and educational settings useful in light of the heterogeneous nature of racial groups, especially as the frequency of ixture rises across populations? Yudell, Roberts, DeSalle, and Tishkoff (2016) argued that scholars need to attend more carefully to their use of racial categories, whether they focus on racism (i.e., social relations) or race (i.e., supposed innate biologic predispositions) in their interpretations of racial/ethnic effects. In this chapter, we describe the relative value of understanding race, education, and the social environment. Here, we do not construct race on the basis of biological predispositions. Instead, the investigation seeks to understand locally differentiated geospatial relations that represent a product of long-standing social relationships influenced by preferences and discrimination. Tobler’s (1970) First Law of Geography, as stated in the second epigraph above, will influence the review and analysis in this chapter. The law applies to the study of schools and education. Neighboring school districts reflect clustering created by spatial proximity that produces unique local contexts and concomitant within-group correlation (Hogrebe &Tate, 2015). In many cases, families and students within school districts tend to share common characteristics on demographic and social factors, such as education, income, and housing. Also, often the fairly homogenous built environment within districts plays a substantial function and gives distinctiveness to the local context. But this similarity in demographic and social characteristics and in the built environment does not begin and end suddenly at district boundary lines. Instead, a case exists for reasoning that similarity based on spatial proximity framed as a continuum, which does not start and stop at socially constructed borders, such as district boundaries, represents a more accurate description. Similarity to dissimilarity across local contexts functions as a continuum in geographic space. Understanding this continuum provides insight into race as a product of long-standing social relationships.

Local Conditions Versus Biology

Du Bois (1906) posited that racial health disparities were the result of social

relations and local conditions, not biological differences. It would be convenient to argue that this chapter represents a continuation of Du Bois’s conceptual approach with more advanced methods and computational capacity. The temptation is great but for Ralph Ellison’s cautionary warning concerning social science and the study of race. In his review of Gunnar Myrdal’s now classic study An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy Ellison (1944) wrote the following about the role of social science over the course of U.S. history:

This was a period, the 1870s, wherein scientific method, with its supposed objectivity and neutrality to values, was thought to be the answer to all problems. There is no better example of the confusion and opportunism springing from this false assumption than the relation of American social science to the Negro problem. And let us make no easy distinctions here between Northern and Southern social scientists; both groups used their graphs, charts and other paraphernalia to prove the Negro’s biological, psychological, intellectual and moral inferiority, one group to justify the South’s exploitation of Negroes, and the other to justify the North’s refusal to do anything basic about it. (Ellison, 1944, n.p.)

Ellison critiqued social scientists’ efforts to appear unconcerned about values, while he simultaneously sought to understand the morality of American capitalism in light of calls for democracy and freedom in the country’s founding framework. Ellison’s argument does not fall outside the norm found in more recent descriptions of American social science. For example, Kenneth Prewitt (2005) posited that, like science more generally, American social science has, since its inception, revolved around two inseparable projects: a science project (more in-depth understanding of institutions, organizations, human decisionmaking, and so on) and a national political project (protecting the nation, building the economy, strengthening democracy, etc.). He reasoned further that American social sciences are American-centric. He described social science as a part of the contingent social systems that attach meaning to and reinforce the meanings interpreted as race. This meaning includes morphology, social processes, and distributions of wealth and poverty with characteristic resulting material conditions (Carter & Goodwin, 1994; Haney Lopez, 1996). The

Ellisonian perspective on social science warrants attention. Specifically, social science must address presuppositions prior to an analysis of race, space, and education. The presuppositions in this chapter include the following:

1. In U.S. society, racism is endemic and deeply ingrained legally, culturally, and psychologically (Bell, 2008; Katznelson, 2005). 2. Statistical methods should not displace historical examinations of social conditions involving schools, education, and race. Rather, statistical methods and history should complement each other. In research on race, ahistorical research approaches are dangerous and risk losing important preconditions (Margo, 1990; Spencer, Tinsley, Dupree, & Fegley, 2012). 3. Racial categories based on biological classifications are unscientific. Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to conduct research on social relationships without using classification schemes deeply influenced by racist depictions based on pseudoscience. Such classifications are acknowledged as a limitation, and, where possible, our language use and interpretation focus on forces, conditions, events, and processes (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995).

The presuppositions inform the approach used in this chapter. The chapter does not include a comprehensive review of the uses of geography in the study of education (see, e.g., Hogrebe & Tate, 2012). Nor does it represent an expansive review of race and education (Tate, 1997). Instead, the chapter contributes a case study of Missouri as an example of analyzing the role of geography, race, and education. First, we review how race and space have been conceptualized and studied to assess influences on developmental outcomes including education. We then offer a historical perspective on the case. Missouri provides a paradigmatic view into social relations and the dynamics of race. Next, we describe an analytical approach used to study the relationship between race, space, and education as part of a state-level analysis. We discuss results in light of Tobler’s First Law of Geography. We aim to demonstrate how race operates differently across space. Finally, we reflect on lessons learned and directions for future research.

Race, Space, and Developmental Outcomes

Within the past two decades, scholars have refocused their attention on the effects of geospatial factors and social context on child and adolescent developmental outcomes, including those related to education and health (e.g., Hogrebe & Tate, 2012; Spencer, Tinsley, Dupree, & Fegley, 2012; Tate & Hogrebe, 2011; Yeakey, 2012). This renewed focus on the influence of geospatial and social-contextual characteristics on development is acutely significant for poor, urban youth living in segregated communities. Compared to their peers in more affluent communities, these youths generally are confronted with differential regulatory experiences and a more limited set of developmental opportunities. Galster (2012) described such constraints as an urban opportunity structure with geographically varying sets of institutions, systems, and markets that shape individual and intergenerational outcomes associated with growth, development, and well-being. The opportunity structure includes local political affairs, criminal justice and social service systems, employment and housing markets, financial services, and schooling. Across socially constructed boundaries, such as school districts, the opportunity structure functions differently and, depending on geospatial location, either facilitates or impedes individuals’ positive life chances. In this section, we briefly review literature examining the influence of school district factors on student academic achievement. We focus specifically on district composition, student behavior, and high school completion factors. We note that most of the reviewed studies focus on the association between schoollevel factors and achievement. However, as previously described, schools within the same district often share similar characteristics. Thus, aggregating schoollevel data to examine district-level relationships is warranted and increasingly common in the research literature (Slavin, Cheung, Holmes, Madden, & Chamberlain, 2013).

District Composition Factors and Student Achievement

In the United States, race and socioeconomic status (SES) correlate highly and influence several key developmental outcomes, including those in education and health (Cheng et al., 2015; Hogrebe & Tate, 2010). Several researchers have demonstrated that both the racial and socioeconomic composition of schools independently affect student achievement (Logan, Minca, & Adar, 2012; Logan & Oakley, 2012; Perry & McConney, 2010; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005; Sirin, 2005). Some evidence indicates that the relationship between district socioeconomic composition and student achievement, for example, varies by geographic location (Hogrebe & Tate, 2013). Schools and districts with high percentages of non-White and low-income students tend to have lower academic achievement. Hogrebe and Tate (2010) found that the proportions of non-White and of low-income students were negatively associated with tenth-grade science proficiency across Missouri high schools. Even more, non-White and lowincome percentages respectively moderated relationships between other schoollevel contextual characteristics and science proficiency.

Student Behavior Factors and Student Achievement

Regardless of a student’s race or SES, attending school daily is necessary for learning and achieving academically (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2012). Although scant, research literature investigating the connection between student attendance and school achievement s this notion (Konstantopoulos, 2006; Lamdin, 1996). Roby (2004) examined, at the school level, the relationship between annual building average attendance and student achievement on the Ohio Proficiency Tests. Across several grades, student attendance and achievement correlated positively, with the correlation strongest for ninth-grade students. In light of his findings, Roby suggested that additional studies, including those assessing the influence of school size on the attendance–achievement connection, be conducted. Extant evidence indicates that school discipline incident rate is also associated with student academic achievement (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Raffaele Mendez, 2003). Raffaele Mendez (2003) found that increased issuance of school suspensions and expulsions, for example, increased the risk of lower achievement. After ing for the effects of demographic factors, Skiba and

Rausch (2004) found that out-of-school suspension rates correlated negatively with school ing percentage on the Indiana State Test of Educational Progress (ISTEP). Compared to students of other races, Black students were more likely to experience negative consequences associated with high suspension rates. This relationship was significant at both the elementary and high school levels, but stronger for high schools. Moreover, the authors noted that school location influenced discipline rates.

High School Completion Factors and Student Achievement

Closely associated with rates of out-of-school suspensions, high school dropout rate represents another factor that negatively affects school-level achievement (Hogrebe & Tate, 2010; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). High school dropout rate may indirectly indicate the quality of the school environment and, more specifically, s’ collective capacity to address challenges. When high, rates of dropping out may point to low collective capacity to respond successfully to problems among students. Comparatively high rates of dropping out may impede achievement at the school level. Thus, school and school district s have an important incentive to increase graduation rates. In 2014, the U.S. graduation rate was 82%, the highest level since states adopted a uniform method of calculating graduation rates in 2010 (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Schools’ and districts’ implementation strategies to increase graduation rates warrant examining the impact of graduation rates on student achievement.

History and Demography of a Border South State

Missouri played a central role in the history of race in the United States. itted to the Union in 1821 as part of a two-part strategy known as the Missouri Compromise, it ed as a slave state with Maine entering as a free state to preserve the political balance on the institution of slavery. Representative

Charles Kinsey of New Jersey captured the essence of the compromise:

We have arrived at an awful period in the history of our empire, when it behooves every member of this House now to pause and consider that on the next step we take depends the fate of unborn millions. I firmly believe that on the question now before us rests the highest interests of the whole human family. Now, sir is to be tested, whether this grand and hitherto successful experiment of free government is to continue, or after more than forty years enjoyment of the choicest blessings of Heaven under its istration, we are to break asunder on a dispute concerning the division of territory…. Do our Southern brethren demand an equal division of this widespread fertile region…. No; they have agreed to fix an irrevocable boundary, beyond which slavery shall never ; thereby surrendering to claims of humanity and to the non-slaveholding states. (ission of Missouri, 1820, pp. 1578–1579)

Representative Kinsey initially voted against allowing slavery in Missouri; however, his position evolved, and, on the floor of Congress, he argued in of Southern congressmen’s desire that Missouri become a slave state. A majority of Congress concurred. In addition, Congress voted to prohibit slavery in all new states granted ission to the Union from Louisiana Purchase lands north of the southern boundary of Missouri. Thus, Missouri served as a geographic racial marker, a symbolic threshold representing the boundary line of basic liberty. According to Morris and Monroe (2009), Missouri’s entry into the Union as a slave state positioned it politically and socially with the historical South. Primarily driven by the desire to maintain or expand slavery, secession from the Union during the Civil War links the states commonly viewed as the South. While not included in the 16 states classified as southern states by the U.S. Census, the view of Missouri as border South captures its alignment with the region’s institutionalized slavery. The city of St. Louis, a major slave auctioning center during the 1850s, housed over two dozen agents serving buyers from the lower Mississippi River (“Preservation Plan for St. Louis,” 1995). The state maintained a Confederate government in exile during the Civil War. Missouri’s origin and role as a political boundary situate it as a part of the history of the

South. In of demographics, new Missourians migrated to the state from the southern parts of the country. Kirkendall (1986) described the influence of southern White migrants, most notably from Little Dixie, an area in northeast and central Missouri, and west of Little Dixie along the Missouri River to Jackson County: “Many identified with the southern way of life and celebrated Confederate holidays” (p. 10). Furthermore, Tennesseeans of both Confederate and anti-Confederate sentiment developed the Ozarks and the Bootheel. With respect to the Black population, by 1910 Missouri was the only U.S. state outside of the census classification of “southern state” to have more than a 5% Black population. The percentage of Blacks in Missouri was larger than that in northern states, yet significantly smaller than that in other former slave states of the South. Over time, Missouri remained largely composed of Whites and Blacks. U.S. Census Bureau estimates (n.d., Quick Facts Missouri) of the 2015 racial composition of Missouri indicated that White (83.3%) and Black or African American (11.5%) races predominated, while Hispanic or Latino (4.1%) and Asian (2%) followed. St. Louis City, which is both a city and county, is the only majority African American county outside the census-based definition of southern counties.

Research Questions/Purpose

Given this history of Missouri as a border South state, examinations of the relationship between social, political, and educational contexts must consider the influence not only of race and other social processes on outcomes such as academic achievement, but also of geography. Place matters and, thus, the nature of the relationships between these social forces may vary according to space. In this case study of Missouri, we sought to examine whether race, poverty, and inschool factors operate differentially across space and specifically how this variation impacts student achievement within school districts in the state. Do relationships between race and other variables impact student achievement in a

stationary or nonstationary fashion? Specifically, we list our research questions below:

•What are the relationships between demographic variables, such as race and poverty, and student achievement? Do these relationships vary geographically across the state of Missouri? •What is the relationship between attendance rate and student achievement? Does this relationship vary geographically across the state of Missouri? •What is the relationship between discipline and student achievement? Does this relationship vary geographically across the state of Missouri? •What is the relationship between district high school completion variables (dropout rate and graduation rate) and student achievement? Does this relationship vary geographically across the state of Missouri?

Methodology

Data Sources

We obtained school composition and achievement data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and shape-files for Missouri school districts from the U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line files for elementary, charter, and unified school districts. For the 2014–2015 school year, the state of Missouri had a total of 558 school districts. Of these, 72 were elementary school districts, 449 were unified school districts (including both elementary and secondary schools), and 37 were charter school districts. The data included in this study include all 558 Missouri districts; however, we collected data specific to graduation rate and dropout rate variables only at the secondary level and these data were available for only 435 and 461 of the 558

districts. Variables and variable descriptions can be found in Table 1. The demographic variables we examined included percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL) and percentage of non-White students. In prior years Missouri has measured attendance as an overall average, or an average daily attendance rate. This has recently changed; now DESE measures attendance as a “proportional attendance rate,” or the rate at which schools or districts have at least 90% of students in class 90% of the time (Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2015). In this study, we used proportional attendance rate as the measure of attendance. We measured discipline using the number of students suspended for 10 or more consecutive days (suspension > 10 days), and school completion measures included both dropout rate and graduation rate. The study examined achievement as the dependent variable in all analyses. We created a composite variable for achievement in SPSS using 2015 Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) and End of Course (EOC) results for each district. Study participants obtained MAP and EOC results for English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, including all students enrolled in each district for a full year, and took all required assessments from DESE. We reported data as the percentage of students scoring below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced in English language arts and mathematics. Percentages for ELA included subject area MAP scores for Grades 3–8 and EOC exam scores for English II. Percentages for math included subject area MAP scores for Grades 3–8 and EOC exam scores for Algebra I. The composite achievement scores for each district were created in SPSS by using a weighted average of the ELA and mathematics district scores for students scoring in the top two categories (proficient or advanced), where the number of “reportable” students for each category served as the weights. The number of reportable students equated to the number of enrolled students with a valid MAP score. The new achievement variable represented the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced in ELA and mathematics for each district.

Table 1. Definitions of Variables Used in This Study

Variable Description Free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL) Percentage of students receiving either free or reduced-p Non-White Percentage of students who are not considered White, b Attendance Measured as the proportional attendance rate, or a meas Discipline (suspension > 10 days) The number of students who are suspended for 10 or mo Graduation rate The number of students who graduate with a regular hig Dropout rate The number of students in Grades 9–12 who drop out d Achievement A composite variable for achievement representing the p

Note. From Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (2015).

Analytic Approach

Considering the presuppositions of this chapter and the possibility that race may operate differentially across space, we believe we must examine both local and global relationships between the variables. To do so, we used both ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis and geographic weighted regression (GWR) analysis in the ArcGIS 10.3 (ESRI, 2016) software. OLS regression attempts to find the best-fit line representing the relationship between two variables of interest and assigns equal weighting for each data point in the analysis. Thus, OLS regression eliminates the significance of location. OLS assigns a global coefficient and R² and assumes that the relationship between variables is consistent across the area in question. The simple regression equation demonstrates a spatial stationarity and, hence, suggests that each value of our dependent variable (Y) equals the intercept (a), or the value of our dependent variable (Y) if our predictor variable (x) is zero, plus the coefficient (b), or slope of the regression line, multiplied by x.

Y1 = a + bx1 (1)

If the relationship between variables changes across the area examined, then the slope of the regression line should vary or be influenced by geographic region or data point location and proximity to other data points. This variability indicates spatial heterogeneity, or nonstationary relationships, and is lost in OLS. In such circumstances, a method for ing for the regional variation or nonstationary nature of the relationships is necessary.

GWR allows for regional variation in the relationships between variables by allowing regression model coefficients to vary across a particular geographic space. In contrast to the global values obtained by OLS regression, GWR obtains local values by running separate regression equations for each feature or data point—in our case, each district—being examined. Differing from multiple regression or multilevel modeling, where slopes may also vary randomly, GWR coefficients are not random but are specific to location by geographic weighting. Each district or polygon is weighted according to its location, such that data points located close to the regression point receive a greater weight than those located further away (Fotheringham & Rogerson, 2009). To assign weights, GWR employs an adaptive spatial kerning method. Adaptive spatial kerning allows for an adaptive or varying weighting function dependent upon the density of data points or optimal number of nearest neighbors (Fotheringham & Rogerson, 2009). In GWR the simple OLS regression equation is modified to for this weighting, where i represents the location for each data point at which Y and x are measured (Fotheringham & Rogerson, 2009).

Yi = β0i+ β1ix1i + β2ix2i + … βnixni + ei(2)

In this analysis, we examined whether the relationships between the variables FRPL, non-White, attendance, discipline (suspension > 10 days), dropout rate, and graduation rate and the variable achievement differ across districts in the state of Missouri or are nonstationary. Both OLS and GWR were completed to assess the relationship between each predictor variable and student achievement. If race and other predictor variables do indeed operate differentially across space, use of GWR will demonstrate improved model fit and illustrate the variability in these relationships. A shapefile consisting of polygons representing school districts across the state served as the unit of analysis. A global OLS regression model and a GWR model examined the relationship between each predictor variable and the composite variable for student achievement. Adaptive spatial kerning in GWR determined the best-fit local regression equations for each district based on the district location and its optimal group of nearest neighbors. The study used the Akaike information criterion (AIC) to determine the optimal number of nearest

neighbors for each district polygon. GWR local R² values were mapped to visualize the strength of the relationships in the school districts across the state. In addition, t tests were completed for the beta coefficients to map the statistically significant R² values across districts within the state at the alpha .05 level. The Benjamini-Hochberg procedure for controlling the Type 1 error rate for multiple comparisons was used to determine significance levels (Thissen, Steinberg, & Kuang, 2002). Missouri has a total of 558 districts: 72 consisting of elementary schools only, 37 comprising charter school districts, and 449 comprising both elementary and secondary schools. While student achievement data were available for all 558 Missouri school districts, graduation and dropout data were collected only for districts with secondary schools. Consequently, when examining the relationship between achievement and the graduation rate and dropout rate predictor variables, we removed districts consisting of only elementary schools from the analysis. DESE provided graduation rate data for 435 districts and dropout rate data for 461 districts. Thus, OLS and GWR analyses for these two predictors include only these school districts.

Table 2. OLS/GWR Results

Note. OLS = ordinary least squares; GWR = geographic weighted regression; AIC = Akaike information criterion; FRPL = free or reduced-price lunch. a For OLS measures, N = 558 for all variables except graduation rate (N = 435) and dropout rate (N = 461).

Results

For all variables examined, GWR models yielded lower AIC values and higher R² values, where both figures served as indicators of model fit. Table 2 provides R², adjusted R², and AIC values for each independent variable for both OLS and GWR analyses. Better fit models are those for variables with lower AIC values and higher R² values. Both overall R² and adjusted R² values are provided. Overall R² values indicated the proportion of variance in achievement that can be ed for by each independent or predictor variable, and can range from 0.0 to 1.0. GWR provides adjusted R² values, as well, to for the addition of predictor values in the model. This calculation normalizes the R² equation according to the degrees of freedom and, thus, is typically lower than the overall R² value. In addition, given that the number of degrees of freedom is dependent upon the number of neighbors for each model, which may vary significantly, the adjustment in R² values has the potential to be quite substantial. In this analysis, we created separate models for each independent variable and, accordingly, R² values could be used. When comparing OLS and GWR models, models with lower AIC values, specifically those that are lower by more than 3, are deemed to be better fitting models (ESRI, 2016). Figure 1 shows a comparison of OLS/GWR R² values for each predictor variable. Figure 2 shows a comparison of OLS/GWR AIC values for each predictor variable. R² values range from 0.135 for suspension > 10 days up to 0.443 for FRPL for GWR models and 0.002 for suspension > 10 days to 0.290 for FRPL for OLS models. For all variable relationships examined, GWR R² values were higher than those for OLS models. In addition, all AIC values for GWR models were lower, indicating that local regression models are better fitting models and that

the relationships examined do indeed demonstrate nonstationarity. In examining only the global model, we lose the ability to examine the geographic variability in individual relationships. The option provided in local regression models to weight relationships according to the optimal number of nearest neighbors represents additional significance. This can also be seen in Table 2 in the range of neighbors used to examine the variables from 42 to 149 school districts.

Figure 1. OLS/GWR R² comparison. Achievement is the dependent variable for all OLS/GWR comparisons. FRPL = free or reduced-price lunch; GWR = geographic weighted regression; OLS = ordinary least squares.

Figure 2. OLS/GWR AIC comparisons. Achievement is the dependent variable for all OLS/GWR comparisons. FRPL = free or reduced-price lunch; GWR = geographic weighted regression; AIC = Akaike information criterion; OLS = ordinary least squares.

Figures 3 and 4 address our initial research questions, “What are the relationships between demographic variables, such as race and poverty, and student achievement?” and “Do these relationships vary geographically across the state of Missouri?” The overall R² for the GWR model was 0.443, indicating a strong relationship between poverty (measured as FRPL) and achievement. In Figure 3, map (a), we see that this relationship between FRPL and achievement varies across the state and is strongest in the two largest urban areas in the state, St. Louis and Kansas City. Local R² values in these two areas are higher than the overall R² of 0.443 for the GWR analysis, ranging from 0.679 to 0.834, indicating that poverty has a strong impact on student achievement in these areas. More rural areas in northeast and south central Missouri demonstrate the weakest relationships between these two variables, with local R² values much lower (between 0.00 and 0.06). This analysis shows that poverty s for nearly half of the variance in student achievement scores overall, and as much as 67–85% of the variance in scores in the urban areas of the state, which highlights the importance of the local context. Map (b) in Figure 3 shows the statistically significant R² values by categorizing the t-test values for the beta coefficients for FRPL into those that are significant and not significant at a .05 alpha level. The Benjamini-Hochberg procedure for controlling the Type 1 error rate for multiple comparison was used to determine significance levels. The lighter areas indicate districts with significant R² values. Maps (a) and (b) in Figure 4 demonstrate a slightly more striking pattern for the relationship between race and student achievement, specifically the relationship between student race as non-White and achievement. The overall relationship is relatively strong, with an overall R² of 0.353, and, as with poverty, context matters as the relationship varies across the state. While the strongest relationships exist in the two largest urban areas, St. Louis and Kansas City, a moderate relationship also exists in the southeast portion of the state, or the Missouri Bootheel region. It is important to note that the relationship is limited

throughout the remainder of the state. Local R² values range between 0.32 and 0.66 in the three strongest areas, while local R² values do not exceed 0.12 in most districts throughout the remainder of the state. Compared to the overall R² value for this GWR of 0.353, race has a stronger relationship with achievement in both St. Louis and Kansas City (local R² values between 0.49 and 0.66) and weaker throughout the remainder of the state. Map (b) in Figure 4, showing beta coefficient t-test results, demonstrates a consistent pattern. Map (c) in Figure 4 demonstrates the percentage of non-White students in districts throughout the state. Consistent with these findings, the non-White student population is highest in St. Louis, Kansas City, and southeastern Missouri, whereas much less racial diversity exists throughout the remainder of the state. Central Missouri cities, including Columbia and Jefferson City, have slightly higher percentages of nonWhite students; however, race still seems to have a smaller influence on student achievement in these two districts. This indicates that while race matters substantially in urban regions within Missouri, it has a smaller impact on achievement in more rural regions.

Figure 3. Map (a) illustrates GWR showing local R² values for FRPL and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (b) shows statistically significant beta coefficients (lighter areas) for FRPL and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. GWR = geographic weighted regression; FRPL = free or reduced-price lunch.

Maps (a) and (b) in Figure 5 address our second research question, “What is the relationship between attendance rate and student achievement? Does this relationship vary geographically across the state of Missouri?” The relationship between attendance and achievement demonstrates a similar pattern, varying geographically throughout the state. An overall R² value of 0.469 indicates an overall strong relationship between the two variables; local R² values vary between .000 and .760, indicating that while in some areas attendance exerts limited to no impact on achievement scores, in other areas it exerts a very strong impact on achievement. R² values are highest in the urban centers of Kansas City and St. Louis, as well as in central Missouri. The Bootheel region in southern Missouri also shows slightly higher R² values than other more rural areas of the state. Similar to other predictors, model fit statistics improve with GWR, and variation is seen throughout the state. T-test results indicate significant beta coefficient values in the same areas (Figure 5, map [b]). Maps (a) through (c) in Figure 6 address our third research question: “What is the relationship between discipline and student achievement? Does this relationship vary geographically across the state of Missouri?” Maps (a) and (b) show the relationship between discipline (suspension > 10 days) and student achievement. The overall R² value for this relationship is small at 0.135, indicating a weak relationship. Local R² values range between 0.00 and 0.25, and are highest in the Kansas City region, ranging between 0.13 and 0.25. Interestingly, the St. Louis region does not show a similar pattern. Beta coefficients were only statistically significant in the Kansas City and northwestern region of Missouri (see Figure 6, map [b]). When examined alongside student achievement scores, the lack of variability in achievement and the lower rates of achievement in St. Louis may explain this phenomenon (see Figure 6, map [c]). While model fit statistics improve with GWR for this variable as well, the larger number of neighbors necessary for the analysis (N =

149) and the limited variation seen throughout the state are indicative of a weak overall relationship. The overall rate for suspension >10 days explains little to no variance in achievement.

Figure 4. Map (a) illustrates GWR showing local R² values for the relationship between non-White and achievement. Map (b) shows statistically significant beta coefficients (lighter areas) for non-White and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (c) shows the percentage of non-White students in each Missouri school district. GWR = geographic weighted regression.

Figures 7 and 8 address the final question in this analysis, examining the relationship between district high school completion variables (dropout rate and graduation rate) and achievement. Maps (a) and (b) in Figure 7 demonstrate a relatively strong relationship between dropout rate and achievement, with an overall R² value of 0.330 and variation in local values across the state. While little variation exists in the more rural regions in northern and southern Missouri, a stronger relationship exists in the urban areas of Kansas City and St. Louis, again indicating the importance of local context. In addition, two clusters of six to seven districts in rural areas of northeastern and southwestern Missouri demonstrate a moderate relationship between these variables, with R² values ranging from 0.144 to 0.247. Urban areas demonstrating this stronger relationship have local R² values ranging from 0.387 to 0.55. Beta coefficient values are also statistically significant in these areas (see Figure 7, map [b]). Similarly, GWR for the relationship between graduation rate and achievement shown in maps (a) and (b) in Figure 8 demonstrates a strong relationship with variation across the state, with a slightly higher overall R² value of 0.382. The urban areas of the state (Kansas City and St. Louis) have the highest R² values; the rural areas of northeastern and southwestern Missouri, as well as the Bootheel region, also demonstrate high local R² values. Both dropout rate and graduation rate analyses indicate that high school completion factors do demonstrate a moderately strong relationship with student achievement, as well as local variation across the state.

Figure 5. Map (a) illustrates GWR showing local R² values for attendance and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (b) shows statistically significant beta coefficients (lighter areas) for attendance and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. GWR = geographic weighted regression.

As noted, all GWR models demonstrated improved model fit over the OLS models, indicated both by higher R² values and by lower AIC values. The values for attendance, non-White, dropout rate, and graduation rate represented the most notable differences. The study showed improvements in the GWR model for FRPL and suspension > 10 days, although they were less substantial than with the other four models. These relationships are all highly dependent upon spatial context and demonstrate strong relationships in the urban areas of the state, St. Louis and Kansas City.

Lessons Learned and Directions for the Future

Missouri’s history as a border South state has largely shaped its local social and political landscape. Still today, demographics in Missouri’s urban centers resemble those of the “South.” Missouri’s tense relationship with race reaches as far back as the Civil War and beyond and extends into the present with the persistent and deep impacts of stark racial housing and education segregation that continue to demonstrate effects on poor minority youth today. In this case study we examined that relationship in a larger geospatial context. More specifically, we focused on understanding the relationships between race, poverty, in-school factors, and education, and the extent to which local social environment matters. Results of this analysis clearly suggest that relationships between demographic characteristics, in-school factors, and academic outcomes vary widely across the state. While families and students who are clustered within school districts and neighborhoods are more likely to share similar demographic and social

characteristics, the impacts of historical conceptions of race and poverty do not adhere to these artificial boundaries. When considering these relationships, geography matters. Relationships between these demographic and in-school factors and academic outcomes exist across the state, but the strength of the relationship is largely dependent on the local geographic context.

Figure 6. Map (a) illustrates GWR showing local R² values for suspension >10 days and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (b) shows statistically significant beta coefficients (lighter areas) for suspension >10 days and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (c) shows student achievement by district throughout Missouri. GWR = geographic weighted regression.

For example, while attendance and poverty as represented by the variable FRPL have strong overall relationships with achievement, as demonstrated by high R² values, the urban areas of the state demonstrate even stronger relationships, with local R² values nearly twice that of the overall value. This suggests that perhaps the local context is not as homogenous in these areas as it may be in more rural portions of the state. The Bootheel region in southern Missouri also demonstrates a relatively strong relationship between poverty and achievement, suggesting that some rural areas may also demonstrate greater heterogeneity than previously assumed. A similar pattern can be found when examining the relationship between non-White and achievement as well as graduation rate and achievement, with higher local R² values in the Bootheel region and urban centers (St. Louis, St. Louis County, and Kansas City). These patterns offer an opportunity for local and regional policy to intervene on a population level to improve achievement and benefit students in these districts.

Figure 7. Map (a) illustrates GWR showing local R² values for dropout rate and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (b) shows statistically significant beta coefficients (lighter areas) for dropout rate and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. GWR = geographic weighted regression.

Figure 8. Map (a) illustrates GWR showing local R² values for graduation rate and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. Map (b) shows statistically significant beta coefficients (lighter areas) for graduation rate and achievement in school districts throughout Missouri. GWR = geographic weighted regression.

While discipline demonstrated a weak overall relationship with student achievement across the state, Kansas City demonstrated a more moderate relationship, indicating that again local context matters. Although St. Louis and St. Louis County include three of the six districts with the highest elementary school suspension rates in the nation, unlike in the previous pattern this region did not demonstrate a stronger relationship (Jones, Harris, & Tate, 2015). Lower rates of achievement and limited variability in achievement in St. Louis and St. Louis County may be a factor; however, methodological concerns exist. Inconsistency in discipline policy and identification may also serve to explain the nature of this relationship. With the exception of expulsion, suspension for 10 or more consecutive days represents one of the harshest discipline policies used; it may not be used consistently across the state, while measures such as discipline incidents may not be defined consistently in all school buildings and districts across the state. Further research is warranted on the use of race and discipline indicators associated with schools and districts across the state, as well as research on local interventions and on the variance in discipline policies across the state. Like demographic characteristics, school completion factors demonstrated a moderately strong overall relationship with achievement across the state and significantly stronger relationships in the urban areas of St. Louis and Kansas City. Characteristics specific to the local contexts may be exerting a greater influence on the relationship between school completion factors and student achievement. For both school completion factors and discipline, research into the potential impacts of health disparities, mental health prevalence and interventions, and other social and political policy may shed greater light on these relationships. Place matters. Considered alongside the political, social, and cultural history of a

region, local variation exists and exerts influence on student outcomes. This case study of Missouri demonstrates this clearly. Race as defined by the social and political history of the state, along with poverty and other in-school factors, operates differentially across the state, influencing student achievement in a nonstationary fashion. Recognizing that these relationships vary across space offers an opportunity and an impetus to consider the ways in which local and regional policy may work to benefit the students most consistently impacted by these factors. Further, when conducting research on these relationships, considering methodology that allows geographic variability is essential. In regions where local relationships may vary, global statistics may not apply. As social scientists, we must not only examine these relationships but also consider the social, political, cultural, and historical factors involved, as well as the unintended consequences that overgeneralization and failure to consider the local context may cause. Race matters differently across space.

Acknowledgments

We thank our colleague Mark Hogrebe, at Washington University in St. Louis, who provided insight and expertise that significantly assisted in the completion of this chapter. We also thank Edna Cash for editorial assistance provided in the preparation of the chapter.

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Chapter 3

Deamonte Driver and the Perils of Race and Health Care in the Affordable Care Act Era

R ICHARD M. M IZELLE , J R . University of Houston

In February 2007, a 12-year-old African American boy died from a toothache in Prince George’s County, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. His name was Deamonte Driver. In medical terminology, he died from infected abscesses on his gums and teeth that resulted in meningoencephalitis and subdural empyema, rare bacterial infections of the brain, spinal cord, intracranial spaces, and outer coverings of the brain (dura mater, arachnoid mater, and pia mater). Immediately after his death, commentators seized on the paradox of how a child might die

from a toothache in a medical marketplace where private citizens, patient advocacy groups, and national research centers constantly wage war against disease. His life could have been saved with routine dental care and early prevention. The initial tooth that caused so much pain could have been pulled for around eighty dollars through early detection, which would likely have staved off major infections. Instead, the Driver family, the state of Maryland, and the federal government incurred close to $250,000 in medical expenses from surgeries in a vain attempt to save his life. Deamonte Driver’s death occurred at a historical moment when health insurance and children’s health were at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. Poor oral health involves a complex set of illnesses that can result from harsh environmental spaces, poverty, and biology. Lack of dental insurance and health insurance, and low socioeconomic status prevent access to dental resources throughout the country. Harmful bacteria that cause tooth decay and poor oral health can also be ed from person to person, particularly from mother to child. Deamonte was the third of five children, and at least one of his siblings— younger brother DaShawn Driver—also suffered from poor oral health and went through his own long ordeal before his older brother. Alyce Driver and her children moved around quite a bit in Prince George’s County, spending time in rural areas including Clinton and Brandywine, and living temporarily at a homeless shelter in Adelphi. Alyce Driver was one of millions of Americans without private medical or dental insurance, alternating between unemployment and underemployment (Otto, 2007). With a population close to 832,000 in 2007, Prince George’s County encomed close to 500 square miles with 27 towns and municipalities, making it one of the largest metropolitan regions in the country. In contrast to the surrounding counties of Charles, Calvert, Anne Arundel, Howard, and Montgomery, Prince George’s County is predominantly African American—65% compared to 27% White in 2013 (Latinos made up the third-largest ethnic group at 16%). Montgomery County, one of the wealthiest counties in Maryland, was roughly 62% White and only 18% African American (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). Home to the University of Maryland and Bowie State University—a historically Black university—Prince George’s County also has a reputation as a space for Black wealth. But spatially the economic makeup of the county is far from uniform. Bowie and Upper Marlboro, for instance, are much more rural than Landover and District Heights. College Park and Laurel are more affluent than the economically depressed areas of Seat Pleasant and Capitol Heights. Prince

George’s County represents a complicated landscape of access and vulnerability, rural-ness and urban-ness. On January 11, 2007, Deamonte began to complain of pain in his teeth and general mouth, accompanied by excruciating headaches. He was taken to the Southern Maryland Hospital Center and received pain medication for headaches, sinusitis, and several dental abscesses. He returned home and to school, but two days later he continued to complain of toothaches and even more severe headaches and was taken to the Prince George’s County Hospital, where he was given a CT scan. The family was told he had meningitis. They had already suspected that something was seriously wrong. By this time, the normally active and gregarious Deamonte refused to talk (Otto, 2017, pp. 109–114). He was rushed to the better equipped Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where doctors performed additional brain imaging for tumors and decided to perform emergency brain surgery. He suffered seizures as a complication of the operation (also a symptom of meningitis), and a second emergency operation was performed. The single tooth that doctors believed was causing the pain—a molar on the upper left side of his mouth—was extracted. Following two weeks at the children’s hospital, he was moved again, to the Hospital for Sick Children, where he progressed smoothly for a while. “The days ed quietly. Deamonte received physical and occupational therapy, did schoolwork, and enjoyed visits from his mother, his brothers, and teachers from his school” (Otto, 2017, p. 111). But things began to change on the night of Saturday, February 24. Physicians and nurses observed that Deamonte was weaker than he had been in the last few weeks. “He and his mother played cards and watched a show on television, lying together on his hospital bed. After she left him that evening, he called her. ‘Make sure you pray before you go to sleep,’ he told her” (Otto, 2017, pp. 111–112). The next morning, Sunday, February 25, doctors found Deamonte unresponsive. They attempted to revive him for an hour, but he was pronounced dead later that morning—an abrupt, shocking, and heartbreaking turn of events for family and friends who believed the young boy, who loved teddy bears and caring for stray animals, had pulled through the worst of his ordeal (Otto, 2017, pp. 109–114). Public health scholars and historians have defined the term medical citizenship as “access to drugs, information, procedures, and health care services” (Petryna, 2002, pp. 991–1003). Lack of medical citizenship is the result of poverty, segregation of space and place, and medical deserts. (For literature on medical citizenship see Wailoo, Livingston, & Guarnaccia, 2006. On related ideas of biological and sexual citizenship, see Petryna, 2002, and Scheper-Hughes,

1994.) Although it will not be surveyed in this essay due to space limitations, there is now a vast literature on the limits of Medicaid and on bias in medicine— for reasons ranging from physician perceptions of patients based on race and socioeconomic status to the dearth of Medicaid providers in environmentally segregated spaces (see Greene, Blustein, & Weitzman, 2006; Morrison, Wallenstein, Natale, Senzel, & Huang, 2000; Olah, Gaisano, & Hwang, 2013; van Ryn & Burke, 2000; Williams & Collins, 2001). Yet such wide-reaching research often fails to address dental deserts and the gaps in dental care that have impacted so many in Prince George’s County. Similar to medical deserts, dental deserts are defined by a lack of dental providers for a population area with below-average household income. According to a 2018 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report on health professional shortage areas for dental care, close to 80% of Maryland’s dental care needs were unmet that year. At a minimum, there was a need for over 230 dentists in the state to remove most of the dental care shortage area designations (Childress, 2012; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2018). Rural communities are among the areas that suffer the most from dental deserts, as financial considerations prompt dentists to maintain practices in more urban and affluent locales. Prince George’s County has largely been ignored as a dental desert because of its urban/rural character. Parts of the county are rural and others are urban, but the divesting of public infrastructure and business in the 1970s lead to the county being increasingly defined as a suburban Black space; the result being that investment in health resources became scarce. This was a broader trend throughout the nation. As African Americans and other minorities after the 1970s began moving into previously all-White neighborhoods and communities, White homeowners resegregated themselves into other ethnic enclaves. Legal scholar Tom I. Romero (2013) calls this more recent post-1970s residential segregation to the outer edges and borderlands of cities and counties the “exurban periphery.” The postwar suburbanization of America is well documented, but the changing texture of late-20th-century suburbs is not. Highlighting suburban shifts at the turn of the 21st century, Romero (2013) argues that

communities of color began settling in large numbers in those same suburban communities that had effectively excluded them during the second half of the

twentieth century. Importantly, many of those same trends that had pulled Whites into the suburbs continued to pull them into new developments in the exurban periphery, while communities of color moved to the older but affordable housing stock of the suburbs built between the 1950s and 1980s. (Romero, 2013, p. 1049)

Suburban America can be a place of extreme poverty and harsh segregation in ways that belie the presence of single-family homes and manicured lawns that many people associate with these spaces. Neighborhoods such as Compton, Calif., which had been majority White earlier in the 20th century, were transformed into predominantly African American cities by the 1970s. Yet the “urban crisis” of the 1960s and beyond undermines our ability to see similar processes of infrastructural neglect, poor housing, dilapidated and underfunded school systems, police brutality, and poor hospital services in suburban America (Self, 2005; Sugrue, 1996). In Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California (2014), Emily Straus made the important point that schools located in “suburbs were not—and are not—all the same. While some were affluent, many were not. Defining the American school crisis as ‘urban’ has limited the scope of inquiry into school failure and ignored the connection between schooling and geography” (p. 3). Suburban spaces are far from utopias, and as historian john a. powell writes, “We cannot simply assume that the suburbs will be the location of opportunity or that the central city will be the location of decline” (2003, p. 217). The problem of dental care was particularly acute in Maryland, where at the time of Deamonte’s death, it was estimated that only 1 in 10 dental offices accepted Medicaid patients (Public Justice Center, 2008a). The discrepancy between the estimated 360 Medicaid dental providers in the state by the time of Deamonte’s death and the number that accepted patients and were geographically accessible to a large number of people was part of the problem. Roughly half of lowincome preschool-aged children in Maryland suffered from dental decay that included three or more cavities, and the overwhelming majority were untreated. The Maryland dental desert was partly the result of there being only one dental program in the state that trained pediatric dentists—the University of Maryland Dental School. The dearth of Medicaid dentists was exacerbated by the even lower numbers of Medicaid pediatric dentists who were able or willing to deal with complicated cases—including sometimes multiple cases in a single family

that might exert strain on dental offices. At the time of Deamonte’s death, no more than four or five pediatric dentists were listed as serving 50,000 Medicaid children in Prince George’s County; the same was true of many other poor counties (Evaluating Pediatric Dental Care Under Medicaid, 2007). Differences in access to pediatricians and dentists, different rates for insurance coverage between medicine and dentistry, and different levels of awareness regarding medicine and dentistry all played a role in why the Drivers, like many other Americans, did not make dental care a priority. Among the insured, rates of visitation for dentistry are far lower than for other branches of medicine, making a strong case that a visit to the dentist is not understood as a priority, or that there are other inhibiting factors and extenuating circumstances that keep people from visiting the dentist. One Kaiser Foundation report suggests close to 33% of Americans skip needed dental appointments and treatment because of finances (Gann, 2011). Following Deamonte’s death, one official providing Congressional testimony put it this way:

Deamonte was far from the only child in Maryland who hadn’t seen a dentist in 4 or more consecutive years. In fact, nearly 11,000 Maryland children enrolled in United [a dental Medicaid provider in Maryland] had not seen a dentist in four or more consecutive years, putting them in the same precarious position that Deamonte was in at the time of his death. (One year later: Medicaid’s response to systemic problems by the death of Deamonte Driver, 2008)

Frustrating encounters with the Medicaid bureaucracy were not uncommon, including long wait times for appointments, complex entitlement procedures, and difficulty finding dentists enrolled under the Medicaid program. Three years before Deamonte’s death the American Dental Association ranked Maryland 39th in the country for Medicaid dental reimbursement for diagnostic and preventative treatment and last for restorative treatment (Evaluating Pediatric Dental Care Under Medicaid, 2007). Sociologist Jill Quadagno points out that Medicaid patients across the country have been hampered by low participation rates of physicians and dentists, making access to needed services extremely difficult (Quadagno, 2015; also see Evaluating Pediatric Dental Care Under Medicaid, 2007, p. 84).

The lack of automobile ownership in the harsh environment of Prince George’s County was also brought under a microscope after Deamonte Driver’s death. In congressional testimony, parents in Prince George’s County and Washington, D.C., bitterly complained of having to travel a distance of an hour or more by car or public transportation to reach a dentist, a concern exacerbated by the difficulty of securing valuable time off work (Norris, 2007; Public Justice Center, 2008b, interview of Alyce Driver). In 2007 the Children’s Health Fund described transportation as one of the leading causes of missed medical appointments in the country. There clearly exists an “engine divide” where delayed and missed medical appointments are intimately connected to transportation. Over 10 million Americans nationwide did not own a single automobile when Hurricane Katrina occurred. In the aftermath of Katrina, the U.S. Government ability Office released a 2008 report stating that 24% of African American households did not own a car, followed by 17% of Latino households and 7% of White households. Where people live and how they travel within cities and landscapes remain significant markers of technological citizenship and access to medical services (John Renne, “Evacuation Planning for Vulnerable Populations: Lessons From the New Orleans City Assisted Evacuation Plan,” cited in Liu, Anglin, Mizelle, & Plyer, 2011, pp. 121–122). Pediatric dentists describe missed appointments as an example of why participating in the Medicaid program is difficult. Yet we must also take into consideration the centrality of the immediate built environment rooted in issues of transportation, car-lessness, immobility, and potential lost wages when thinking about why some patients and parents of children might cancel a much-needed and difficultto-secure appointment.

Deamonte Driver and the Affordable Care Act

The unprecedented focus on dental care under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not emerge out of a vacuum. Deamonte Driver died 10 years after age of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 1997 under the Balanced Budget Act, designed to provide insurance for low-income children who fell outside Medicaid protections and were not covered by private insurance. In February 2009, Congress successfully pushed for the inclusion of dental benefits in the reauthorization of SCHIP, signed into

law by President Barack Obama. The ACA was signed into law by Obama in 2010, just three years after Deamonte’s death. The ACA was a historical expansion of insurance built on providing universal coverage to all Americans, including provisions for Medicaid expansion and subsidies to help people living below the poverty line to purchase insurance. While the numbers can be debated, it is clear that the ACA dramatically reduced the number of medically uninsured in the United States (Cohen, Colby, Wailoo, & Zelizer, 2015). Yet the ACA’s approach to dental care is uneven. Public health scholars provide a linear narrative of dental protections under the ACA with more recent debates on underinsured children with the SCHIP program, but none have firmly connected Deamonte’s death to these discussions. The timing of his death and the attention brought to the issue of dental deserts by local and national policy makers ultimately set precedents for how dental care was included under the ACA. Three months after Deamonte’s death, Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings sponsored House Bill 2371, known as “Deamonte’s Law.” In his speech introducing the bill to Congress, Cummings recalled: “When I learned of this senseless tragedy, I was deeply shaken. I simply cannot comprehend how in this country, where we have sent men to the moon, we let a little boy’s teeth rot so badly that his infection became fatal” (Cummings, 2007, p. E1140). Without using the term directly, HB 2371 focused on dental deserts by attempting to address two related issues: community centers and increased training of pediatric dentists. The bill pushed for a $5 million pilot program over five years to pay private dentists and fund dental equipment and services at local community health centers in areas of severe shortage. The bill would “ensure that children like Deamonte have access to dental services in the communities where they live,” Cummings told Congress, making the case for how community health centers “provide a health safety net to underserved areas” in both rural and urban spaces (2007). HB 2371 also requested $5 million over five years to provide pilot funds for the recruitment and training of pediatric dentists, and increased resources for pediatric academic programs in shortage areas and for continuing education programs for practicing dentists. Ultimately, Deamonte’s Law failed to garner enough momentum and Congressional to become law (Office of U.S. Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, 2011). The ACA would mirror parts of the failed Deamonte’s Law legislation. The ACA lays out a number of oral health-care mandates, including sealant programs

in schools and the implementation of science-based programs to improve data and convey messages about the importance of oral health protection (Compilation of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010). But it was the focus on dental deserts, community health centers, and training of dentists that connected Deamonte’s Law with the ACA. The ACA included grant funding for schools and training programs dedicated to the training of pediatric, general, and public health dentists, as well as providing loan repayment and financial assistance to students in training programs, fellowships, and residencies. Further, the ACA provided funding for the creation of up to 15 demonstration project grants aimed at training and employing alternative dental care providers in rural and underserved communities. The term “alternative” was meant to include dentists, physicians, hygienists, dental aides, and other health professionals. The ACA also provided funding for construction and expansion of community health centers over a span of five years in underserved areas as a way of attempting to improve dental care in vulnerable spaces. In addition to extension of Medicaid coverage for children, the ACA provided oral health prevention education programs through the Centers for Disease Control and mobilized workforce training programs to meet the need for oral health care professionals throughout the country (Compilation of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010, pp. 550–551). After age of the ACA, Cummings recalled, “It was for Deamonte, and families like his, that I insisted on legislation in the Affordable Care Act to improve pediatric dentistry for those in underserved communities” (Office of U.S. Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, 2011, p. 1). The ACA deals concretely with children’s dental health. (It leaves largely unaddressed the dental health needs of adults, particularly those under the age of 65 who do not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare; Vujicic, Buchmueller, & Klein, 2016.) But the connection of children’s dental health and the ACA remains complicated. Policy scholar Marko Vujicic makes the point that while the ACA includes provisions for pediatric dental care, “dental care for all age groups is financed and delivered separately from medical care through dental-only insurance plans and dentist offices that are largely siloed from the rest of the health care system” (Vujicic, 2017). The result is that pediatric dental mandates have not expanded to the extent anticipated by architects of the ACA (Vujicic, 2016, 2017). Such issues remain important to discussions on the future of the ACA. Children like Deamonte continue to suffer from lack of access to dental care. On a local level, Deamonte’s death also resulted in efforts to redress Medicaid

policies in Maryland and other parts of the country through local grassroots efforts mostly aimed at children. The Dental Action Committee (DAC) in Maryland was formed in May of 2007, three months after Deamonte’s death, to help the state increase participation in Medicaid programs. Key goals included providing dental educational campaigns and raising levels of reimbursement for dentists contracted through Medicaid. Advocates from the DAC also pushed to eliminate the several competing dental insurance plans in the state of Maryland in favor of a single plan, serving the purpose of alleviating some of the bureaucratic red tape that previously hampered Medicaid children. Finally, the DAC recommended that a dental clinic be placed in every county in the state of Maryland (Public Justice Center, 2008a, 2008b). The Robert T. Freeman Dental Society Foundation also waged a grassroots war against early tooth decay among low-income children in Prince George’s County. The Freeman Society is a local association of African American dentists with long-standing roots in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. In collaboration with close to 50 local dentists, the Freeman Society developed the Deamonte Driver Dental Project with a mission of turning a crisis into an opportunity to produce meaningful change for children (Public Justice Center, 2008a). The Project targeted schools in Prince George’s County with a traveling van. The first nine schools targeted by the Project screened and identified high-risk children who needed diagnostic, preventative, and basic dental filling services and provided them with dental report cards to track follow-up services. Some children had conditions requiring more complicated procedures, ranging from abscesses on individual teeth to advanced gum disease, again highlighting that Deamonte’s situation was not an anomaly. The Project also reached out to dentists in the vicinity of targeted schools to provide a space for performing emergency procedures that could not be done in a traveling van—helping to alleviate transportation issues of Medicaid patients (Public Justice Center, 2008a).

Teaching About Deamonte Driver in the Classroom

I am no longer sure when and how Deamonte’s story first came to my attention. While there was some news coverage from the Washington Post and other media, this was not a national story. Today, the name Deamonte Driver remains unknown to most people, and to others the name is only vaguely familiar.

In more recent years, courses I have taught on the Civil Rights Movement and survey courses on American history have involved spirited classroom discussions of the “Black Lives Matter” movement and the killings of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Korryn Gaines, and others, resulting in Justice Department investigations and nationwide protests (Johnson, Farrell, Warren, & Bobo, 2015).When Deamonte Driver died, in contrast, there were no protests, demonstrations, boycotts, or lawsuits, and there was little nationwide anger. Few civil rights lawyers or commentators were on CNN or MSNBC demanding change. The harsh truth is that we should have been protesting Deamonte’s death on television, in the streets, and particularly the halls of Congress just as much as the other deaths. The circumstances of Deamonte’s death are fundamental, in fact essential, for understanding the other deaths. His death underscores the historical punitiveness of anti-Black racism by showing the ways in which structural racism disadvantages African Americans and poor people in health care. Deamonte Driver’s story goes well beyond individual choices and decisions and shows the ways in which a racial contract operates to medically disenfranchise poor people, particularly poor African American people. In the aftermath of such a preventable death, those asking questions often focus on individual action. What could Deamonte or his mother have done differently? Why did Alyce Driver not seek help sooner? Were individual dentists, staff, and public health officials racist? Many of these questions miss the broader point. Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael), political activist and advocate for Black power in the 1960s, once wrote:

I don’t deal with the individual. I think it’s a cop-out when people talk about the individual…. because I feel that whenever you raise questions about racial problems to White western society, each White man says “Well don’t blame me, I’m only one person and I really don’t feel that way. Actually I have nothing against you, I see you as an equal. You’re just as good as I am—almost.” (Carmichael, 1968, p. 151)

Ture is making a specific point about focusing on individual acts of racism and

aggression rather than institutional racism and violence, which operate well above and beyond any particular person. Institutional racism is what has upheld housing inequality, school segregation, and public health disparities since the modern Civil Rights Movement; such insidious forms of power are, in Ture’s words, “less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in of specific individuals committing the acts, but … no less destructive of human life” (Carmichael, 1968, p. 151). The essential question is, what would a coalescing around Deamonte’s death look like? Would it involve protests about housing segregation, decentralization of jobs, poor access to dentists and physicians, high insurance rates, inadequate public transportation systems, or the high cost of gas? It would be all of these things and more. The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were easier for people to confront than the more mundane and ubiquitous structural racism that is necessary to grasp if we are to understand what caused Deamonte Driver’s death. But Deamonte experienced violence as well. He was not shot by a police officer, choked to death by several police officers, or murdered by an over-zealous neighborhood resident bent on “protecting” the community from so-called criminals (read “Black people”). But poverty, lack of access to health resources, housing segregation, and implicit structural bias collectively led to his death. In a resource-rich country like the United States, it is considered unacceptable for wealthy White children to die from tooth problems, but a Black child dying from bad teeth is inconsequential. When I lecture about the circumstances surrounding Deamonte’s life and death, an eager student will often ask: “Why didn’t he just brush his teeth regularly or why didn’t his mother make sure he brushed his teeth? All of this could have been avoided.” I have received similarly worded comments from scholars and adults at public talks, often followed by a remark to the effect that the commenter (or someone they know) has not been to the dentist in a specified amount of time and they are doing fine. The implication—conscious or unconscious—is that there must be something wrong with Deamonte and his family; no one dies from a toothache except the most ignorant, most neglectful, and most absent-minded. Interestingly, I have heard almost as many stories from students and the public about near-misses—cases of people who were “almost” Deamonte Driver. What it means to be almost Deamonte is never clear. Does it mean to be poor, Black, and suffering from a potentially deadly tooth infection, or is it just the last of these?

What I push my students to strongly consider is the assumption that this tragic event occurred simply because Deamonte did not brush his teeth. Without a broader analysis of racial inequality and societal policies, such an assumption is an indictment of his Blackness and poverty, as such words are unlikely to be uttered if an affluent White child dies from a tooth infection. Instead, the commenter would likely question how the system failed and how in the world this could happen in a civilized society. Where White death evokes images of broken systems and inadequate safety nets on all levels of society, Black death represents personal failure and moral choice.

Conclusion

The end of World War II ushered in an era of managed care of chronic diseases like diabetes and cancer, whose etiologies were complex. Though poor oral health and gum disease are chronic, they are not on par with other chronic diseases. In the late 20th- and early 21st-century era of managed chronic pain associated with diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, sickle-cell disease, back pain, migraines, and arthritis, poor oral health remains largely invisible. Chronic oral pain is also not involved in the medical culture wars of disease identity—heart disease, cystic fibrosis, lupus, and so forth—in which scientists, patientadvocacy groups, and the public largely engage (Lerner, 2003; Wailoo, 2011, pp. 149–150). We are not bombarded with images of people suffering from chronic oral pain; there is a widespread though misguided perception that poor oral health and gum disease are completely preventable if individuals exercise the personal choice to take care of their own teeth. Even with remarkable advancements of science and biomedical technology in the last fifty years, dental problems remain a constant, if invisible, source of chronic social and bodily pain. But there is a harsh dividing line between sufferers (DeYoung, J., 2010, interviewed by the author; DeYoung was a researcher at the Houston Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Oral Health). Everyone suffers from oral pain, but chronic and deadly oral pain is largely a problem of the poor and the uninsured, or underinsured. After Deamonte Driver’s ordeal, another death grabbed headlines in September 2011. Kyle Willis, a 24-year-old African American man in Cincinnati, Ohio,

endured a similar fate when he died from a tooth infection, largely because he did not have health insurance when his wisdom tooth needed to be pulled. One news unit reported, “[W]hen his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn’t afford both, so he chose the pain medications” (Gann, 2011). As happened with Deamonte, the infection in the tooth spread and caused swelling in the brain, costing Kyle Willis his life. In response to Willis’s death, one dentist, Dr. Irvin Silverstein, observed in an interview that “people don’t realize that dental disease can cause serious illness…. The problems are not just cosmetic. Many people die from dental disease” (Gann, 2011). The unremarkableness of the cases of Deamonte Driver and Kyle Willis is what makes them remarkable. Deamonte Driver and Kyle Willis are important to our understanding of the failures of medicine and citizenship in the 21st century. Deamonte’s death highlights the ways in which a modern epidemic can remain hidden even in a modernized health care system where advancing medical technologies seem poised to uncover truths behind modern plagues. Children were often at the forefront of important health care and civil rights battles during the 20th century. In the public health responses to diphtheria, polio, and smallpox and in the cases of Emmett Till, the Little Rock Nine, and Project C, in Alabama, where segregationists turned fire hoses on adolescents, the neglect of children says something about our national character (Hammonds, 1999; Oshinsky, 2005). Deamonte Driver and Trayvon Martin (among many) are the subjects of reciprocal narratives of lives lost in post–Civil Rights Era America, two sides of the same coin of injustice.

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Chapter 4

The Contrarieties of (Mixed) Race: The Meaning of Race From a Multiracial Perspective

C ELIA R OUSSEAU A NDERSON University of Memphis

We utilize race to provide clues about who a person is. This fact is made painfully obvious when we encounter someone whom we cannot conveniently racially categorize—someone who is, for example, racially “mixed.” … Such an encounter becomes a source of discomfort and momentarily a crisis of racial meaning. —Omi & Winant, 2015

“You don’t look Chinese.” A random time, a random place, and I’m still here. I know this routine inside and out. I’ve got it memorized, can do it blindfolded. If I answer “English” or “Irish,” I’ll get the “No, what else are you?” response. If I answer “Part Chinese,” it’s more along the lines of “Yeah, I can see it in your … (insert physical feature).” And if I answer “American,” I’m in for a longer conversation than I’m usually in the mood for. What are you? I answer the question every day of my life…. —Fulbeck, 2006

Increasing rates of exogamy and the growth of the multiracial ¹ population have been hailed by some as an indication of a post-racial nation, as evidence that we are moving beyond race. Moreover, some have asserted that persons of mixed race are not only a sign of the declining significance of race or the blurring of racial boundaries (Tutwiler, 2016; Waring, 2013), but represent the solution to the problem of race (Leverette, 2009; K. Williams, 2006). For example, Chen (2003) asserts that “through the intensity and virtual involuntariness of the bonds created by marriage or parenthood, family relationships hold the key to the resolution of racial conflicts” (p. 473). Yet, as repeatedly noted in both scholarly and popular writings on the topic, having parents who belong to different racial categories can reify, rather than obscure, those very categories (Senna, 1998). For example, studies of university students reveal that, at least in some cases, multiracial students are more sensitized to issues of race than other students (Brackett et al., 2006; Chang, 2016). Tutwiler (2016) argues that the same is true of K–12 students. “The notion of race is accentuated in the schooling experiences of mixed-race youth” (p. 206, emphasis added). Thus, despite the post-racial symbolism of multiracial persons, evidence suggests that the construct of race remains a powerful influence in their lives (Brunsma, 2005; Rockquemore, Brunsma, & Delgado, 2009). As Omi and Winant (2015, p. 126) note in the quote that opens this chapter, we utilize race on an ongoing basis. And our constant employment of racial categories is not muted or undermined, but rather highlighted, when we

encounter persons of mixed race. Such encounters create a “crisis of racial meaning” and prompt the “What are you?” experiences cited by many multiracial persons (Hamako, 2014; Remedios & Chasteen, 2013; Tutwiler, 2016; T. Williams, 1996). Moreover, this situation represents a paradox, revealed in scholarship on the experiences of mixed-race persons. Those individuals who are positioned as evidence of the declining significance of race often describe a heightened sense of the salience of race. This is just one example of the paradoxes of race reflected in the experiences of multiracial individuals. In this chapter, I examine the construct of race through the lens of multiraciality. I begin by exploring the literature on the experiences of multiracial persons, drawing from work in sociology, psychology, law, geography, and social work. I also examine the literature on multiracial students in schools. Finally, on the basis of this review, I outline what a multiracial lens reveals about the nature of race. In particular, I describe the racial paradoxes or contrarieties highlighted by the multiracial experience. I should note that this is not simply an academic project for me. I identify as multiracial. Thus, I attach personal meaning to the process of understanding race through a multiracial lens. For this reason, I switch back and forth in this chapter between my personal experiences of multiraciality and the more academic review of the existing literature, opening each section with a personal story. However, my goal in describing my personal experiences is not to engage in navel-gazing regarding my own multiraciality (Ladson-Billings, 2013). Rather, my intent is to illustrate the larger themes that emerge from the research literature through my own experiences of race.

Categorization and the Color Line

I am the daughter of a White father and an Asian American mother. So, for as long as I can , I have considered myself to be mixed race. But I also recognize that my multiraciality operates differently in different settings, depending on how others respond to my racial status. In some spaces, I am Asian. In other spaces, I am multiracial. Sometimes, I am non-White. In still other settings, I am non-Black. However, I am never White.

As Rockquemore et al. (2009) argue, the role of race in the lives of multiracial individuals extends beyond racial identity (how the individual understands his or her identity). It also includes both racial identification (how others identify the individual) and racial category (what identities are available in a particular context). Moreover, these functions of race are intertwined. The available identities for an individual are tied to the larger racial categories that are recognized in a particular context. And these available racial categories shape identification by others. A primary example of this interaction in the lives of multiracial persons is through the historical and contemporary application of the “one-drop rule,” particularly as it has applied to persons of African American ancestry (Brunsma & Rockquemore, 2001; Khanna, 2010; Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002).

Racial Categorization: A Historical Perspective

The history of racial classification in the United States dates back to colonial times. In 1662, a Virginia law broke with English precedent by declaring that the status of the child was determined by the status of the mother (F. Davis, 2001). While the statute did not explicitly establish racial categories, the law ensured that the children of slaveholders and their female slaves remained in slavery, effectively establishing these mixed-race children as Black (Wright, 1995; Zack, 1993). During the period of slavery, different states used different approaches to racial classification. In some cases, statutes focused on physical appearance, defining as Black those persons with a “‘visible and distinct ixture of African blood’” (Wright, 1995, p. 523). Other states defined race using fractional quantities of Black ancestry. While the majority of states classified as Black anyone with at least one Black great-grandparent, the fractional quantities used to determine Black status varied from state to state (F. Davis, 2006; Wright, 1995; Zack, 1993). According to F. Davis (2006), before the Civil War, there were cases in a number of states in which persons with as much as one-fourth Black ancestry were declared to be White. However, after the Civil War, the legal definitions of race began to shift (Elliot,

2003). The laws become more restrictive, as the proportion of Black ancestry that defined an individual as Black moved from one-fourth, to one-eighth, to one-sixteenth, to one-thirty-second. These laws culminated in the one-drop rule (Wright, 1995). Under the one-drop rule, individuals with any Black ancestors were considered Black under the law (F. Davis, 2001, 2006; Wright, 1995; Zack, 1993). The one-drop rule, which had been the social definition of Black status in the South for many years, became the legal definition in the early decades of the 20th century (F. Davis, 2006; Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002; Wadlington, 2003). As the social and legal definition of Blackness shifted to the one-drop rule, a concomitant definition of Whiteness was instantiated. Because Whiteness has historically been associated with racial rights and opportunities, this determination of who is White became critical to the designation of the property of Whiteness (C. Harris, 1993; Wright, 1995). According to Wright (1995), the end of the Civil War stripped Whites of a significant property right in slavery. However, “the laws of the ‘separate but equal’ era gave White citizens a substitute property interest in their whiteness itself to replace the property interest lost through abolition” (p. 533). Thus, the legal codification of the onedrop rule was central to maintaining the property value of Whiteness in the postCivil War era, as it delineated who had access to Whiteness. “Black ancestry in any degree, extending to generations far removed, automatically disqualified claims to white identity” (C. Harris, 1993, p. 1737). These historically contingent definitions of Whiteness and Blackness are important to consider in any discussion of mixed-race persons. According to Zack (1993), the history of the United States reflects “abrupt changes in the status of individuals of mixed race from colonial times until after Reconstruction…. There is no consistent trend except for a move toward the total denial of the existence of individuals of mixed race” (p. 84). Yet, while the law served to categorize mixed-race persons as monoracial, it is important to note that the historical changes in the definition of race are, at least in part, tied to the existence of persons of mixed race (F. Davis, 2006; Okizaki, 2000; Zack, 1993). According to Wright (1995), the more restrictive definitions of race emerged at the beginning of the 20th century in response to the free status of Blacks and the growing difficulty in distinguishing Blacks from Whites, due to generations of racial mixing. As Whites sought to assert the property value of Whiteness, the one-drop rule ensured that White physical appearance and generations of White ancestry were not sufficient to assert a property claim.

Thus, to understand the racial categorization of mixed-race persons in the United States requires attention to the property value of Whiteness and the ongoing role of the legislatures and courts in upholding claims to this property through the definition of Blackness (C. Harris, 1993; Wright, 1995). The one-drop rule and its definition of who is Black is also intricately related to the phenomenon of “ing,” in which persons of mixed racial heritage who had White physical characteristics sought to be treated as White. Only within the framework of the one-drop rule does it make sense to describe an individual whose ancestors could be predominantly White as “ing for White” (F. Davis, 2001). Yet the framework of Whiteness as property offers a lens through which to understand the phenomenon of ing. According to C. Harris (1993), “the persistence of ing is related to the historical and continuing pattern of White racial domination and economic exploitation that has given ing a certain economic logic” (p. 1713). The decision to opened up access and opportunities that were not available to persons identified as Black. In addition to the one-drop rule, definitions of Whiteness and the processes of racial categorization have also been shaped historically through immigration law (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). In immigration cases, the Court could deny naturalization to any person who was not a “free White person.” In Ozawa v. United States (1922), naturalization was denied to a man of Japanese descent on the basis that he was “Mongolian” and thereby not White. Soon thereafter, a Caucasian from India was also ruled to fall outside the statutory meaning of a “free White person.” Thus, while being of the Caucasian race was often the defining characteristic of Whiteness, even persons who were “scientifically” Caucasian could be considered non-White (Okizaki, 2000). In addition, these legal definitions of Whiteness had bearing upon the status of mixed-race persons, insofar as the courts also denied naturalization to persons of mixed-race heritage (McGovney, 2003). In a case involving an individual with an English father and a one-half Chinese and one-half Japanese mother, the court described the plaintiff as a “half-breed.” By labeling mixed-race persons as “half-breeds,” the courts were able to deny citizenship on the basis that such persons were non-White (Okizaki, 2000). Moreover, persons who were as little as one-sixteenth Japanese were subject to internment during World War II (Nakashima, 1992). However, since the Japanese had only been emigrating to the United States since 1885, even a one-eighth qualification effectively became a “one-drop” rule for internment (F. Davis, 2006). In this way, U.S. institutions

have historically constructed mixed-race persons as monoracial. These examples reflect the salience of racial categorization and identification for multiracial individuals.

Contemporary Racial Categorization

With regard to contemporary definitions of race and multiraciality, a variety of studies reveal the ongoing leverage of the one-drop rule, whether in relation to identity or identification (Gullickson & Morning, 2011; D. Harris & Sim, 2002). For example, Gullickson and Morning (2011) considered data from the U.S. Census for 1990 and 2000, with specific attention to the self-report of those persons whose ancestry indicated a multiracial background. Their findings confirm the contemporary application of the one-drop rule. Persons whose ancestors included those of African ancestry were more likely to describe themselves monoracially as Black, when compared to individuals of other multiracial combinations. In a study using data from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, D. Harris and Sim (2002) found that 75% of students with one Black and one White parent identified as Black when asked to choose a single race. Using a different survey, Lopez (2003a) found similar results with high school students on the single-race question. Moreover, qualitative results from a study of Black-White biracial adults confirm the ongoing application of the one-drop rule (Khanna, 2010). Yet multiracial individuals of African ancestry are not the only group who identify monoracially. In contrast to the pattern of hypodes-cent reflected in the identities of multiracials of African descent, in which individuals are identified with the race of the lower status parent, mixed-race Native Americans are more likely to reflect the opposite pattern. In particular, research indicates that of this group are more likely to identify as White (Gullickson & Morning, 2011). For example, D. Harris and Sim (2002) found that nearly 86% of White–American Indian respondents on the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health described themselves as “White” when asked to identify the category that best described their racial background. According to Gullickson and Morning, this pattern of hyperdescent is consistent with historical practices of racial identification for mixed-race Native Americans.

While multiracial combinations involving persons of African or Native American descent follow historical patterns, multiracial persons of Asian descent tend to follow a more contemporary pattern (Gullickson & Morning, 2011). Specifically, mixed-race Asians are more likely to identify as multiracial. Whereas persons with some combination of Black, American Indian, and White ancestry prefer single-race labels even when “mark one or more” options are available, mixed-race Asians prefer to identify their multiracial background by marking more than one race. Gullickson and Morning (2011) describe this as the “immigrant” regime, in contrast to the “historical” patterns reflected by other groups. These patterns of racial identity and identification for multiracial persons are potentially significant for what they reveal about the shifting of the color line. Bean and Lee (2009) have outlined three models of the contemporary color line: White/non-White; Black/non-Black; and a triracial hierarchy. Some research suggests that the patterns of self-identification of multiracial individuals reflect the White/non-White color line. For example, in a study of the selfcategorization of adolescents, Hitlin, Elder, and Brown (2006) found that, while youth reflected fluidity across time in the ways that they categorized themselves, it was typically fluidity between a monoracial identity of color and a multiracial label. The fluidity in identity rarely crossed the White/non-White divide. These patterns of multiracial identity reflect the ongoing prominence of the White/nonWhite model insofar as the boundaries among non-White groups are less salient than the boundary separating Whites from non-Whites (Bean & Lee, 2009). Yet there are other scholars who, while recognizing the historical prominence of the White/non-White color line, argue that this color line is shifting (BonillaSilva & Embrick, 2006; Yancey, 2006). For example, Yancey (2006) posits a shift to a Black/non-Black binary. This binary would lead to a shift in racial alliances, including those upheld by multiracial individuals. “In a White/nonWhite world it is expected that all minorities will a ‘Rainbow Coalition’ to fight against the dominant group. But in a Black/non-Black reality, non-Black multiracials and non-Black minorities may not side with the most disenfranchised group since there is much to gain by adopting dominant group identity” (Yancey, 2006, p. 55). Bean and Lee (2009) assert that there is some evidence to this “new” color line within the experiences of multiracial individuals, insofar as the experiences of multiracials of Black ancestry are notably different from those of multiracials of Asian or Latino ancestry.

Scholars also point to a third possible scenario for the contemporary color line. Specifically, Bonilla-Silva and Embrick (2006) assert that the United States is following patterns of racial stratification evidenced previously in Latin America through the adoption of a loose triracial system. In this system, Whites are at the top. An intermediary group of honorary Whites is in the middle, and a nonWhite group, known as the collective Black, is at the bottom. According to Bonilla-Silva and Embrick, the three-tier system serves to buffer racial conflict, while still maintaining White supremacy. Under the triracial system, Whitelooking multiracials would fall in the White category. Most other multiracials would be included in the honorary White category. Moreover, this model would predict that multiracials of Asian ancestry (included in the honorary White category) would have different experiences of race than multiracials of Black and Latino ancestry. The nature of the color line and its relationship to racial categories is particularly salient for multiracial individuals. Such categories and the ways that they are understood play a significant role in a variety of processes that shape the experiences of multiracial persons. In fact, each of the remaining three themes emerging from my review of the literature is intertwined with the construct of racial categories and their instantiation at individual and institutional levels. In addition, the nature of the color line highlights the potential role of scholarship on multiracial individuals for shedding light on broader issues of race. The experiences of persons of mixed race can provide insight into these racial boundaries. In some ways, the experiences and outcomes of different multiracial groups provide a means to map the potential shift of the color line, as multiracial individuals “walk” the color line every day.

The Role of Race in Identity Formation: Choice?

As a child, I understood myself to be “hapa.” This term comes from the Hawaiian word for “part.” My mother, who is a third-generation Okinawan American, was born and raised in Hawaii. So, the term “hapa” was meaningful in our family context as a descriptor of the White-Asian combination that my sister and I represented. While I understood myself to be “hapa,” that was not an identity that was available for me to assert in the broader social context in

which I lived. I grew up in the South in the 1970s and ’80s. In that space, not only was “hapa” not a viable racial option, but my Okinawan/Japanese background was largely invisible as well. At that time, Chinese Americans were the only Asian American population with whom many people were familiar. As a result, all Asian-appearing individuals must be Chinese. Thus, the identity ascribed to me within this social sphere was either “Other” (neither Black nor White) or “Chinese.” On the school demographic surveys that were collected at the start of each school year, I was “Other.” On the playground, other children referred to me “Chinese” and asked if I was related to Bruce Lee. But I do not really look Chinese (in my opinion). Phenotypically, I look multiracial. When I go to places with larger multiracial populations or significant numbers of Asian Americans, I am generally identified by others as mixed race. However, this was not a category available to me in the space in which I grew up. In that space, I was, and occasionally still am, “the Chinese girl.” As Fulbeck (2006) argues, the “What are you?” question must be answered on an ongoing basis by mixed-race persons. Multiracial persons are confronted with this question when the inquirer needs more information in order to “place” the individual. This recurring question of place is, perhaps, one reason why the literature on multiracial persons has focused primarily on issues of identity formation (Hamako, 2014; Holloway, Ellis, Wright, & Hudson, 2005; Waring, 2013). While a comprehensive review of the literature on multiracial identity development is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worth highlighting the historical trajectory of research on this topic. Specifically, research on multiracial identity has followed one of four approaches: (a) the problem approach; (b) the equivalent approach; (c) the variant approach; and (d) the ecological approach (Rockquemore et al., 2009; Thorton & Wason, 1995). The problem approach, which emerged during the Jim Crow era, reflects research on racial identity development that “takes as its basic tenet the idea that being a mixed-race person in a racially divided world is, in and of itself, a problematic social position that is inevitably marked by tragedy” (Rockquemore et al., 2009, p. 16). This deficit approach focused on the isolation and stigma of mixed-race individuals. According Rockquemore and her colleagues (2009), the equivalent approach emerged in the context of the Civil Rights movement and posited the process of multiracial identity development as essentially parallel to that of monoracial persons of color. From this perspective, the identity development process for Black-White biracials, for example, was assumed to follow the progressions

proposed for Black identity—most notably, Cross’s (1971) stage model. The variant approach emerged in the mid-1980s and 1990s, as researchers asserted that the multiracial population is conceptually distinct from any single racial group. These researchers sought to explain “psychologically, clinically, and developmentally how mixed-race people actively and consciously construct a ‘biracial’ or ‘multiracial’ identity” (Rockquemore et al., 2009, p. 18). This approach sought to address perceived flaws in the previous approaches that implied that a multiracial individual must choose a single racial identity. Finally, Rockquemore et al. (2009) outline an ecological approach that focuses on the context within which identity is developed. According to the authors, the ecological approach rests on a few assumptions:

(1) mixed-race people construct different racial identities based on various contextually specific logics; (2) there are not predictable stages of identity development because the process is not linear and there is no single optimal endpoint; and (3) privileging any one type of racial identity over another (i.e., multiracial over single-race identity) only replicates the essentialist flaws of previous models with a different outcome. (p. 19)

This ecological approach is reflected in much of the research reviewed in this section. In particular, I seek to highlight one prominent theme in the literature that reflects the role of context in the interaction of identity, identification, and racial category. That is the theme of choice. In fact, a more accurate description would be “choice?” Multiracial individuals do not consistently identify in the same ways. Thus, there is some element of choice in identity development for mixed-race persons. However, it is not a completely open choice. According to Rockquemore et al. (2009),

Race is not entirely a structurally imposed status for mixed-race people but instead is characterized by fluidity and constrained choice. As a result, racial

negotiations can be predicated on social, cultural, institutional, legal, and other foundations that parameterize identity options through various racial regimes, racial projects, and racial formations. (p. 30)

These choices are influenced by a variety of factors (Brunsma, 2005). In this review, I focus on three key influences reported in the research: appearance, socioeconomic status, and social networks.

Appearance and Identity

One of the factors repeatedly cited in the literature as shaping identity formation for multiracial individuals is phenotype or appearance. Moreover, a key theme related to appearance is the significance of Whiteness. Research suggests that, for part-White multiracials, only phenotypic Whiteness gives access to a White label. For example, in a study of 57 Japanese-White respondents, Anhallen, Suyemoto, and Carter (2006) found that the only significant correlation between physical appearance and social belonging was between White physical features and White belonging. Similarly, in a study using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, Burke and Kao (2013) found that there was a high level of consistency between students who self-identified as White and the interviewers’ coding of the students’ race. The researchers describe this as a fundamental characteristic of White identity. It is reserved only for those individuals who look White. Finally, Quihuiz (2011) studied 10 multiracial participants whose physical appearance permitted them to “” as White. According to Quihuiz, due to their appearance, these individuals had the choice to disclose their multiraciality or to remain silent. “Choice was perhaps the greatest privilege afforded to multiracial people who can as white” (p. 80). Thus, appearance and phenotype still matter, just as they have historically. And for those who appear White, appearance can provide access to choice and to a White identity. Yet the importance of appearance is not limited to those multiracials who can as White. The significance of reflected appraisals (how multiracial persons

think others view them racially) is repeated throughout the literature on mixedrace persons (Khanna, 2004, 2010). For example, in her 2004 study of 110 Asian-White biracials, Khanna found that the participants’ perceptions of others’ responses toward their appearance shaped their own racial identity. Essentially, how others interacted with them influenced how the respondents identified. Khanna (2010) reports the same results in a study of 40 Black-White biracials. Even when the Black-White biracial participants identified publicly as biracial or multiracial, reflected appraisals shaped by the one-drop rule ed internalized Black identities. Similarly, in a study of Black-White biracials who as Black, Khanna and Johnson (2010) found that phenotype was a key factor shaping the accessibility and/or effectiveness of particular identity strategies. Finally, in a study of 177 Black-White biracial participants, Brunsma and Rockquemore (2001) also documented the role of reflected appraisals: “The interpretations of Biracial peoples’ appearance by others place serious parameters on their racial self-understandings” (p. 238). While it is clear from the research that appearance and reflected appraisals shape the identity formation process for multiracial individuals, it is also important to note that even this dynamic is tied to context. In particular, some studies have revealed that others’ responses to the appearance of multiracials differ across racial groups. For example, with regard to the appearance of Black-White biracials, Brunsma and Rockquemore (2001) note that, in the case of racially ambiguous physical appearance, Whites construct biracials as Black. In contrast, of the Black community are more likely to identify the individual as biracial. “It appears that the Black community can, and does, distinguish among the variation in skin tones among Biracials, whereas, possibly the White community sees only two ‘colors’—Black and White” (p. 242). Khanna (2010) found similar results in her study of Black-White biracials. Thus, the connection between appearance and racial identity choices can vary depending on the eyes of the beholder.

Social Networks

In addition to appearance, another factor related to identity choices is the nature of social networks (Romo, 2011). For example, Rockquemore and Brunsma

(2002) highlight the significance of both “push” (experiences that push a biracial individual away from a particular identity) and “pull” (experiences that draw a biracial individual toward a particular identity) interactions. According to the authors, their results “point to the deep importance of the racial composition of individuals’ social contexts in establishing the parameters for available and acceptable identity options and in providing interactions that encourage biracial individuals to develop very different racial identities” (p. 16). Other studies confirm the role of “push” factors in identity development. In particular, it appears that social rejection plays a significant role in identity formation for multiracial individuals (Ahnallen et al., 2006; R. Williams, 2011). The “push” experiences shape the identities that are both attractive and perceived as available to multiracial individuals. For example, Rockquemore and Brunsma (2002) differentiated in their research between individuals whose identities were validated and those whose identities were unvalidated. Unvalidated identities were not recognized by others within the respondents’ social network. The significance of social validation highlights the role of social networks in shaping the availability of particular identities, whether multiracial or monoracial (Burke & Kao, 2013; Khanna & Johnson, 2010). Thus, “choice” for biracial or multiracial individuals is constrained by their social milieu.

Socioeconomic Status

Finally, research suggests that identity choices are also influenced by socioeconomic status. In particular, individuals of higher socioeconomic status (SES) tend to exert different identity options than do multiracial individuals of lower SES. For example, in a study of 90 mixed-race undergraduates, Townsend, Fryberg, Wilkins, and Markus (2012) found that middle-class participants were more likely to identify as biracial, whereas their working-class peers were more likely to identify with a monoracial group of color. According to the researchers, the effect of social class was found even after controlling for differences in the racial composition of social networks. Similarly, Khanna and Johnson (2010) found that the availability of certain identity strategies was influenced by social class. Thus, as Townsend et al. (2012) argue, racial identity for multiracial persons is a “choice” that is more available to those with higher status.

Choice?

One of the primary themes of the research on multiracial identity formation is the idea of choice. As powell (1997) notes, multiracial advocates often assert that people should be able to define themselves. However, “while this is a truism in what it says, it is false in what it implies…. This position again suffers from the failure to embrace the significance of identity as socially constructed. It is a false claim and a flawed hope that we can define who we are in isolation” (p. 799). The research reviewed in this section highlights this fact. In several different ways, the research points to the social negotiation of racial identity (Townsend, Markus, & Bergsieker, 2009). Because it is a negotiation process that operates within a social sphere, identity is not strictly a matter of personal choice. Rather, identity for multiracial individuals operates within a set of parameters as a constrained choice (Brunsma, 2006).

Similar but Different: “The Multiracial Experience”

One of the repeated ideas in the literature on multiracial individuals, particularly in publications related to child-rearing, is the difficulty experienced by many multiracial children and youth because they are racially different from both parents. Authors note that it can be challenging for multiracial children when they encounter experiences with race that their parents (even their parent[s] of color) do not share. Their parents could not prepare them for these situations because they themselves had not experienced them. As a multiracial person, I have always taken for granted that my children would, by definition, also be multiracial. So, when I read the child-rearing books about the challenge for multiracial children of having monoracial parents, I dismissed this issue as not applicable to the situation with my own children. As it turns out, my sons are Black/Asian/White/Native American. And recent events have forced me to the realization that their experiences of race and multiraciality will likely differ in fundamental ways from my own. Just like monoracial parents of mixed-race

children, my “race” is different from that of my sons. While the notion of constrained choice represents a similarity across many of the experiences of multiracial persons, another theme of the scholarship on multiracial persons focuses not on similarity but on difference. Some of these differences have been previously outlined in descriptions of research related to the color line and/or identity. However, I submit that the significance of this theme justifies additional attention in this section. In short, much of what research on multiracial individuals indicates is the need to view multiraciality not as a defining characteristic but as simply a starting point to understand the role of race. It appears that there is no such thing as “the multiracial experience.” The meaning of multiraciality, even with regard to who has access to a “multiracial identity,” differs by population (Gullickson & Morning, 2011; D. Harris & Sim, 2002). In addition to the previously described research reflecting different patterns of racial identification and self-identification, it is important to note that the theme of difference also emerges from research focused on outcomes. For example, Bratter and Kimbro (2013) conducted a study of child poverty using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Class. Their results point to disparities in poverty experiences among multiracial children, with children of one White parent having an advantage over children of two parents of color. The same kinds of distinctions emerge when educational outcomes are considered. According to Campbell (2009), research involving the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health revealed that multiracial subgroups differ significantly with regard to how their outcomes compare with those of their monoracial peers. On the basis of these results, she argues the need to consider different multiracial subgroups separately. “The research … demonstrates the importance of adding specific multiracial groups to our analyses of racial inequality when possible rather than grouping multiracial respondents into single-race categories or grouping all multiracial individuals together” (p. 443). These differences in outcomes among multiracial subgroups and between multiracial subgroups and their monoracial peers have been documented by other researchers (Cheng & Lively, 2009; Cheng & Powell, 2007). Thus, one key theme of the research on the experiences of multiracials is that multiraciality covers as much difference as similarity. Moreover, differences emerge not only among multiracial groups but also within the same group across different contexts (Holloway, Wright, Ellis, & East,

2009). For example, in a study of 230 Black-White biracial individuals from three sample regions of the United States (Midwest, South, and East), Brunsma (2006) found that geographical context impacted both the ways that biracials identified and how they experienced validation of that identity. In particular, biracials in the East were more likely than those living in the South or Midwest to have a biracial identity validated by others. Similarly, D. Harris and Sim (2002) found that Black-White biracials living in the South were significantly less likely than those living in other regions to choose White when asked to identify the single category that best described their racial background. In addition to these regional differences, research also points to more localized differences. For example, the composition of neighborhoods or schools has been found to be associated with differences in racial self-identification (D. Harris & Sim, 2002) and identification by parents (Holloway et al., 2009). Thus, where one lives can shape how one experiences race and multiraciality. According to Holloway et al. (2009), “new identities are shaped in place and … claims about race vary geographically on multiple scales” (p. 543). Thus, the racial identity experiences of multiracial individuals differ across groups and locations. The multiracial experience is characterized by both similarity and difference.

The Significance of Counting

I can as an elementary school student being agonized by the same question on every standardized test. Race/ethnicity? What was I supposed to put? At that time, there was no “mark one or more” option. It was “choose only one.” Either monoracial category that I could mark was technically incorrect. In some instances, I had the option to mark “Other.” But I really hated that descriptor (as if I did not experience the sense of “otherness” enough … now I had to call myself that?). At one point, I decided to switch back and forth from one test to the next. Maybe if I alternated between “White” and “Asian/Pacific Islander” it would all even out in the end. The whole exercise was anxiety producing. Yet my anxiety did not stem from confusion or frustration around identity, per se. What bothered me was where I would count and if I would count in the “right” place. One of the watershed moments highlighted in the literature on multiraciality is

the inclusion in the 2000 Census of the “mark one or more” option (D. Harris & Sim, 2002; Rockquemore et al., 2009; Townsend et al., 2012; Townsend et al., 2009; Tutwiler, 2016). This change in the nation’s counting practices had individual implications, insofar as it allowed multiracial individuals to reflect their identities in ways that had been previously unavailable. It also had institutional implications. From an institutional perspective, research on the 2000 Census indicates wide variation in the ways that biracial individuals identified themselves (Brunsma, 2006; Lopez, 2003b). According to D. Harris and Sim (2002), these types of variations indicate that the 2000 Census “was a count of a multiracial population, not the multiracial population” (p. 625). As a result of that variation, some have questioned the utility of the Census data for studying the multiracial population (Brunsma, 2006). Questions about how the Census “counts” multiracial populations were not answered with the addition of the “mark one or more” option. Rather, new questions arose. These questions are important insofar as the way race is constructed and counted on the U.S. Census shapes a variety of programs and policies (Tutwiler, 2016). It matters how we count. It also matters how we count within education. As Lopez notes (Lopez, 2003a, 2003b), it matters not only how we gather the data (e.g., using “mark one or more”) but also how we tabulate or aggregate the data. Different methods can result in very different summaries (Lopez, 2003a, 2003b). In the context of schools, these differences can affect a whole range of policy decisions and resource distributions, including (but not limited to) boundary setting, analysis of achievement test data, allocation of students to choice programs, and curriculum development (Lopez, 2003b; Renn, 2009). According to Renn (2009), “the numbers matter, and being able to accurately for the ‘two or more races’ population will matter increasingly” (p. 169). In addition to being aware of potential pitfalls in the available data, counting more accurately will require that researchers within education think carefully about the nature of race and multiraciality and design ways to more precisely capture the educationally salient aspects of racial categories for multiracial students (D. Harris & Sim, 2002). The research related to counting also points to the interaction between racial categories, identification, and identity. According to Rockquemore et al. (2009), the Census operates as “an indicator of our national racial structure as well as a partial macro-level structure giving grounding and antitheses to multiple racial projects within meso- and micro-level social systems” (p. 30). Thus, how race is

counted matters on a personal level as well as on an institutional level. It both reflects and shapes how race and multiraciality are understood.

Microaggressions and Monoracism

In a previous article that I wrote regarding the multiracial experience in education (Rousseau Anderson, 2014), I used a story about the fictional experience of twin boys in school. At the time that I wrote the story, my own sons were still in day care and too young to have experienced the “monoracial microaggression” described in the story. However, I later experienced a real-life example in my sons’ kindergarten classroom. Unlike the fictionalized that I had written a few years prior, the real version was only experienced as a microaggression by me. My sons were still too young to pick up on the significance of what had happened. I should be clear: I recognize that my sons will likely be subject to a range of racial microaggressions based on their status as males of color in this country. However, in this case, the microaggression was not strictly a response to their status as persons of color. Rather, it was a result of the assumption of a normative monoracial experience (in this case, either White or African American). If they had been a little older, they probably would have experienced the same sense of discomfort that I did when confronted with the clear message that their “in-between-ness” marked them as different and not as part of the normative experience of others in the class. I might say that life was imitating art. But, realistically, I had simply forecast in my fictional story what I knew was almost inevitable. Another of the themes from the literature on the experiences of multiracial persons also crosses micro- and macro-levels and focuses on the various types of discrimination that multiracial individuals can experience as a result of their mixed racial background. Some scholars describe this as “monoracism” (Hamako, 2014; Johnston & Nadal, 2010). According to Tutwiler (2016), this is “a form of systematic and/or interpersonal oppression directed toward people who do not fit into a single racial category” (p. 136). According to Hamako (2014), monoracism can be experienced on interpersonal, cultural, or institutional levels.

On an interpersonal level, monoracism can take the form of “monoracial microaggressions.” As defined by Johnston and Nadal (2010), monoracial microagressions “are daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, enacted by monoracial persons that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights toward multiracial individuals or groups” (p. 73). Johnston and Nadal describe five categories of monoracial microaggressions. These include: (a) exclusion or isolation; (b) objectification; (c) assumption of monoracial or mistaken identity; (d) denial of multiracial reality; and (e) pathologizing of identity and experiences. Examples of these microaggressions are evidenced in a variety of ways in the literature on multiracial individuals (Johnston & Nadal, 2010; Tutwiler, 2016). For example, Black-White biracial respondents in a study by Brackett et al. (2006) reported exclusion and marginalization from both racial groups, based on their multiraciality. Similarly, in a study of multiracial Mexican Americans, Jackson, Wolven, and Aguilera (2013) found that descriptions of monoracist encounters were one of the primary stressors experienced by participants. In addition to the “monoracial microagressions” that occur in interactions, scholars also point to examples of monoracism at an institutional level. While multiracial respondents report experiencing discrimination at levels similar to those of monoracial minorities (Campbell & Herman, 2010), these experiences are not necessarily recognized in antidiscrimination law. Leong (2010) argues that the law perpetuates a normative monoracial perspective through the application of antidiscrimination statutes using only existing racial categories. Leong cites evidence of employment, housing, and child custody cases involving hostility directed specifically at multiracial persons because they are multiracial. Yet these cases were not brought on the basis of multiracial discrimination because the law relies on clearly drawn racial categories. According to Leong, “this dependence on categories renders antidiscrimination jurisprudence inhospitable to people identified and discriminated against as multiracial” (p. 505). Claims of multiracial animus are not validated “as is” but are reformulated with conventional racial categories. As a result, this form of monoracism contributes to the erasure of multiracial identities and distortion of multiracial narratives (Leong, 2010). Another potential example of institutionalized monoracism can be seen in college issions. Sanchez and Bonam (2009) conducted two studies of responses to biracial college applicants as compared to groups of monoracial applicants. The studies reveal a disadvantage for those biracial students who

reveal their racial backgrounds. The results suggest that biracial students are viewed less favorably and are considered less qualified for minority scholarships. According to Sanchez and Bonam, this “is paradoxical in that, even though biracial people are still bearing negative effects of racism, they are less likely than the monoracial minorities to be given access to an opportunity that is intended to provide some compensation for racist perceptions and institutional discrimination” (p. 147). In this way, there is an apparent “cost” for multiracial individuals who reveal their multiraciality in the issions procedure. This is another potential case of institutionalized monoracism. In summary, the literature on the experiences of multiracial persons reveals several themes that can inform our understanding of the nature of race. Issues of categories and the color line provide insight into the shifting nature of race in the United States. The research on identity and the factors influencing identity formation also inform our ongoing understanding of the contemporary meaning of race. And our understanding of race both shapes and is shaped by the way that we count. One caveat from the research on multiraciality is the need to consider the ways in which the racialized experiences across different multiracial populations are both similar and substantively different. Finally, just as monoracial persons of color experience racism and discrimination, the literature reflects attention to both the interpersonal interactions that reflect animus against multiracial persons and the institutional structures that discriminate against mixed-race individuals. These themes emerge from the broader literature on the experiences of multiracial persons. However, they are also reflected in the scholarship specific to education.

Multiraciality in Education

Although some recent publications have begun to focus specifically on the K–12 schooling experiences of multiracial youth (B. Davis, 2009; Tutwiler, 2016), there is relatively little educational research on this population (R. Williams, 2009). The existing literature focuses primarily on achievement and outcomes, with some attention to schooling experiences.

Achievement and Outcomes

Investigations of achievement that take into multiracial populations have shown mixed results in of achievement patterns. Whether achievement is higher for certain multiracial groups, relative to monoracial peers, varies, depending on how achievement is measured and how groups are compared. While the patterns of multiracial achievement are not consistent across studies, a few general conclusions about the process of researching multiracial students can be drawn. First, such comparisons are complex. Not only are there many possible comparisons for the purpose of data analysis (Herman, 2009), the existing research suggests that differences emerge related not only to identification but also to identity (Burke & Kao, 2013). For example, Burke and Kao (2013) found significant differences in achievement between multiracials who self-identified as White and those who did not. Specifically, students who self-identified as White had significantly lower achievement than their counterparts. This finding stands in contrast to other research in which multiracial Whites reported higher outcomes than monoracial Black or Hispanic peers, highlighting the potential significance of identity with regard to achievement and the complexity of seeking to understand patterns of multiracial achievement (Campbell, 2009). A second conclusion that can be drawn from this literature is the need, despite the complexity, for research which attends to outcomes for specific multiracial groups, rather than asg multiracial students to single-race groups or creating a single multiracial category (Campbell, 2009). In particular, both achievement outcomes and sense of belonging in school have been shown to vary by multiracial group (Burke & Kao, 2013; Cheng & Klugman, 2010). Thus, future research on the educational outcomes of multiracial students must, in fact, move beyond the general “multiracial” category.

Schooling Experiences

In addition to the research on achievement and outcomes, there are a small number of studies reflecting the schooling experiences of multiracial students. One finding from the research involving schools echoes the results of the larger review of research on multiracial experiences. Context matters. In this case, schooling context matters. For example, in a qualitative study of Black-White biracial students, R. Williams (2011) found that the racial diversity of the school made a difference with regard to the students’ sense of belonging. According to R. Williams, “this finding is important because it suggests that Black-White biracial students in schools or regions that are not diverse may have to contend with more challenges of which teachers and school officials need to be aware” (p. 188). Cheng and Klugman (2010) found similar results in a study using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Another result from the existing research on multiracial students in education also reaffirms one of the themes from the larger review. There is a need to examine the contemporary color line and the ways that historical and contemporary patterns of racial categorization and identification operate in schools, particularly through the beliefs and actions of teachers. For example, R. Williams’s (2011) study revealed that teachers identified Black-White biracial students through a monoracial lens, typically ascribing a Black identity to biracial students. Similarly, Tutwiler (2016) noted the ongoing application of the one-drop rule in K–12 classrooms. R. Williams also found that teachers ignored the experiences of multiracial students that were potentially different from those of either monoracial group. Thus, future research on multiracial students should involve understanding how teachers’ racial identification of students influences their schooling experiences and outcomes. A third, related theme from the literature on schooling experiences involves the challenges for multiracial students inherent in the curriculum. These challenges are twofold. First, multiracial students report the invisibility of multiracial persons in the curriculum (R. Williams, 2011). In cases in which multiracial individuals are included in the curriculum, they are often not identified as multiracial (Tutwiler, 2016). A second challenge for multiracial students lies in navigating the curriculum from two different perspectives. According to R. Williams (2011), the participants in her study revealed they were torn between their two different heritages in response to some curricular topics (e.g., the Civil War). Notably, they pointed to their teachers’ lack of awareness of this potential conflict. Thus, additional research is warranted on the ways that multiracial students experience the curriculum and the ways that students’ racial identity

interacts with these experiences.

The Contrarieties of (Mixed) Race

So, what does this review of the existing literature on the experiences of multiracial persons reveal about the nature of race? Authors Omi and Winant (2015) describe various contradictions with regard to race and its operation. For example, they note that the contemporary racial regime of colorblindness “simultaneously disavows its raciality and deploys it as broadly as ever” (p. 263). These paradoxes or “contrarieties of race” reflect the contested and conflicting nature of race. I assert that the experiences of multiracial persons highlight several contrarieties of mixed race. One of these paradoxes—that of existing as a symbol for racial progress while simultaneously experiencing the ongoing salience of race—was outlined at the beginning of this chapter. A second paradox reflects the challenge of even attempting a review of the literature on the experiences of “multiracial” persons. In particular, while I have used this term throughout the chapter and it appears repeatedly in the literature, several scholars question its meaningfulness (Leong, 2010). In fact, what is clearly revealed in a review of the literature is that there is no such thing as “the multiracial experience.” While there are some experiences (such as the “What are you?” question or the experience of mistaken identification) that are shared across multiracial groups, what is evident from the research is that not all groups experience multiraciality in the same manner (Brunsma, 2005, 2006; Holloway et al., 2005). Thus, efforts to create a “multiracial” category or to describe a “multiracial experience” are internally inconsistent. The “category” holds far too much diversity to be meaningful. A third paradox is perhaps the most problematic. Specifically, the descriptor “multiracial” is simultaneously border-crossing and border-reinforcing. “Instead of multiraciality being used in an abstract sense to discredit the idea of race, it is deployed in such a way that it reinforces racial boundaries” (Spencer, 2006, p. 86). Specifically, multiraciality relies on essentialist categories in order to ascribe meaning to the different categories that comprise the “mix.” According to Omi and Winant (2015), “to consider an individual or group as ‘multiracial’ or

mixed race presupposes the existence of clear, discernible, and discrete races that have subsequently been combined to create a hybrid, or perhaps mongrel, identity” (p. 109). This is the paradox for those who ascribe meaning to the “multiracial” category. To argue that the category has meaning is to reinscribe the biologically defined “monoracial” categories that are decried by multiracial advocates as problematic in the first place (Chang, 2016; Foster, 2006; Leong, 2010; powell, 1997). Rather than breaking down the existing models of race, some argue that the notion of “mixed” race replicates those same models (Johnston & Nadal, 2010). Moreover, this contradiction highlights the socially constructed and contextually dependent nature of race. Multiracial identity in the United States, particularly for those identified as Black-White biracials, relies on the application of what Spencer (2006) refers to as “selective hypodes-cent.” This application of the one-drop rule is selective to the extent that a distinction is made between a “monoracially” Black parent and his or her “multiracial” offspring. According to Spencer (2006), “one of the principal foundations of multiracial ideology is a claimed alterity between black-white multiracials and Afro-Americans” (p. 88). It is in the midst of this contradiction that perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the multiracial category emerges. Specifically, the focus of those who advocate for the “multiracial” category has been primarily on identity and the right of people to choose how to name themselves (powell, 1997). Lacking is attention to material resources or larger questions related to structural inequality (Foster, 2006). According to Spencer (2006), the label of “multiracial” does not call into question the U.S. racial paradigm. We can use and attempt to ascribe meaning to the “multiracial” category. This might satisfy an individual psychological need for belonging (Chang, 2016). However, it will do little or nothing to alter the color line. As Spencer argues, “minor alterations to the paradigm are insignificant as long as the pure and hierarchical status of Whiteness remains unchallenged and unchanged” (Spencer, 2006, p. 101). As a “multiracial” person myself, I am sensitive to the importance of having an identity to claim. However, there is a real danger in focusing on multiracial identity without challenging the ways in which that multiraciality simultaneously reinscribes Whiteness. Thus, one of the “contrarieties” of the study of multiraciality is, in fact, the construct of multiraciality itself.

Race: Condition or Process?

The question posed by the editors of this volume was: Is race a condition or a process? Throughout this chapter, I have sought to demonstrate that the existing literature on the “multiracial” experience clearly points to race as a process. For multiracial persons, it is a conflicted process. It is a process marked by challenging contradictions and conceptual messiness. The process highlights the shifting nature of the color line. The process involves interactions related to racial identity, racial identification, and racial category that are less straightforward for multiracial persons than for their monoracial peers. The process of “doing” race for multiracial persons offers the ephemeral possibility of choice while simultaneously restricting choices; and the process of “doing” race is different for different groups. Even the process of counting race is complex and conflicting for multiracial populations. Finally, the nature of racism and race-based discrimination is potentially different for multiracial persons, as they can experience racism as persons of color or monoracism as multiracial individuals. In fact, I would argue that the contrarieties inherent in multiraciality are what most clearly give evidence of race as a process. It is much more like a moving target than a fixed position. The research on multiraciality reveals that race is simultaneously recognized as a social construction and utilized to reassert a biological definition of race. Race is simultaneously held up as a fiction and experienced as a salient factor in the lives of multiracial persons. Racial boundaries are simultaneously fading and being redefined through the process of multiraciality. Race is being erased while Whiteness is being fortified. These are the contrarieties of mixed race and the characteristics of race as a process that are revealed through the lens of multiraciality. Yet perhaps the greatest evidence of race as a process is the fact that, for mixed-race persons, it operates as an existential challenge to itself.

Note

1I use the multiracial , biracial , and mixed race throughout this chapter. This usage is consistent with the literature reviewed. However, I also acknowledge that these are conceptually problematic and I address this conceptual messiness at different points in the chapter.

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Chapter 5

Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: Addressing the Color of Privilege

M ITCHELL J AMES C HANG g University of California, Los Angeles

Asian Americans ¹ have “become the immigrant group that most embodies the American promise of success driven by will and resolve,” declared cultural critic Lee Siegel, writing for the Wall Street Journal (2012). He noted that Asian Americans are the country’s best-educated, highest-earning, and fastest-growing racial group. With such “breathtaking success,” he considered it peculiar that “Americans” don’t share the fears once expressed by Tom Buchanan, the racist bully character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, who worried that “the

white race will be utterly submerged” if “we don’t look out.” Siegel speculated that perhaps “physiognomies” and “a deeply ingrained modesty” have “kept most Asian-American groups away from the public glare and thus out of the cross hairs of American bias and hatred.” He questioned, however, how long “they [Asian Americans] will be able to resist attracting the furies of fear and envy.” If Siegel had been a more astute observer of what he termed the “Rise of the Tiger Nation,” he would have noticed that Asian Americans have indeed been recurrent targets of racial panic, and their pursuit of the “American Dream” has not been a magic carpet ride. Curiously, Siegel pointed to one example of this racial panic, noting that “threatened elites at Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale … stand accused of discrimination against Asian-American students who, according to recent studies, must score higher than whites on standardized tests to win a golden ticket of ission.” However, Siegel brushed this issue aside as merely a minor impediment that has not stood in the way of what he described as Asian Americans’ “astounding success.” If this issions problem for Asian Americans had been merely a trivial issue that was nothing more than an insignificant footnote in an otherwise compelling Model Minority success narrative, the problem would have been settled in the 1980s. During the early part of that decade, Asian American activists initiated and advanced claims of discrimination in undergraduate issions against the University of California–Berkeley, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of California–Los Angeles. Dana Takagi (1992), whose book The Retreat From Race examined this controversy, pointed to three basic complaints filed during the eighties. One was that Asian American applicants had lower ission rates than their White counterparts. Another was that the enrollment of Asian Americans at those elite institutions had not risen in proportion to increases in the number of Asian American applicants. Third, university officials used illegal quotas and ceilings to limit Asian American enrollment. Thirty years later, a similar set of complaints has again been waged, but this time, by a different set of even better organized coalitions that have added the elimination of race-conscious issions to their agenda. The purpose of this chapter is to make sense of this persistent issions controversy, which has pressed Asian Americans into the service of particular political agendas. In her study, Takagi focused on discursive strategies deployed in this controversy to show how different interpretations serving particular

political interests “facilitated a subtle but decisive shift in public and intellectual discourse about, and at some universities, in practices of, affirmative action” (1992, p. 10). In the end, according to Takagi, “facts and statistics were less important than what people made of them … the core of the debate over issions pivoted not on the facts per se, but on interpretation of the facts” (p. 11). This study adopts a constructionist approach to the analysis of this controversy with the intent to improve understanding about how race operates in education so that we can identify shortcomings in policy discourse. I first provide a brief backdrop, then draw from critical race theory to reinterpret the complex set of issues surrounding this controversy and redefine the conditions that contextualize this recurrent social problem.

issions Discrimination

Those few select institutions of higher education that regularly place at the very top of popular national rankings—what I will generally refer to in this chapter as “elite institutions”—are widely regarded as occupying an exceedingly special place in U.S. society. In his study of privilege, Khan noted, “One of the best predictors of your earnings is your level of education; attending an elite educational institution increases your wages even further … elite schooling is central to becoming an elite” (2011, p. 7). The increasing enrollment of Asian Americans at these colleges and universities suggests that they too recognize the distinctive role of these institutions as a training ground for achieving the American Dream of upward mobility.² Asian Americans’ faith in and love affair with a very select group of institutions is illustrated well by Jeff Yang, who confessed that

to my parents, it wasn’t enough for me to just go to college. There was only one school they saw as a fitting goal, and it was the reason they came to America, my mother said, hoping that one day they would have kids who would grow up to attend it. That was Harvard University, the only school whose brand name shone brightly enough to reach across the waters to Taiwan. Other schools might

offer a more dynamic curriculum, better access to senior faculty, a greater amount of financial aid. None of that mattered. To them, it was Hafu Daxue or bust. (2014)

Likewise, Amy Chua quipped that the U.S.-born children of Chinese immigrants followed a remarkably common pattern, as they

will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin. They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and sur their parents in income…. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. (2011, p. 29)

Indeed, Asian American enrollment in elite institutions grew at an extraordinary pace, nearly tripling their proportion of the undergraduate enrollment between 1976 and 1985 (Karabel, 2005). By the early 1980s, however, another peculiar trend had emerged. Although the number of Asian Americans applying to elite institutions had been rising every year, their ission rate at those campuses was actually dropping. As noted earlier, complaints were filed, which resulted in formal investigations conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) beginning in 1988. In the fall of 1990, OCR cleared Harvard of discrimination. Although OCR noted that Asian American applicants had been itted at a significantly lower rate between the years of 1979–1988 than similarly qualified White applicants, Takagi claimed that investigators did not attribute this disparity to discriminatory policies or procedures (1992). Instead, OCR concluded that the lower ission rate for Asian applicants was due to plus factors (legacy and athletics) that tipped the scale in favor of Whites. According to Karabel (2005), OCR considered the preferences for children of alumni and recruited athletes to be “legitimate institutional goals,” and subsequently, protected university officials’ wide discretion with respect to the manner of selecting students. While OCR concluded that Harvard could justify those disparities, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), could not. According to Takagi, OCR ordered UCLA to make belated issions offers to

five Asian American applicants who were rejected although their academic records were comparable to those of White students who had been itted. The outcome of those investigations hardly settled the controversy, which has returned with even higher stakes. On May 23, 2016, the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) filed a complaint charging that Yale University, Brown University, and Dartmouth College engaged in unlawful discrimination against Asian American applicants in their undergraduate issions process. The AACE, a coalition that was formed in 2015 to “achieve equal education rights for Asian Americans” (see http://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/about/mission/), noted that their complaint was ed by 130 other concerned Asian American organizations and “Asian Americans students who, because of their race, were unfairly rejected by these Institutions … and/or who seek the opportunity to apply for ission to these Institutions without being discriminated against because of their race” (AACE, 2016, p. 2). The AACE charged that

The evidence is overwhelming that the Ivy League Colleges discriminate severely against Asian-American applicants, placing them at a disadvantage visa-vis individuals of all other races. The holistic approach to evaluating applicants utilized by these Institutions is implicated in the discrimination. There therefore must be an objective investigation into how the Ivy League Colleges use their holistic issions procedures to discriminate, and into what safeguards should be put into place to ensure that this unlawful discrimination ends. (2016, p. 19)

Those unfamiliar with this controversy might find it odd that two of the most selective Ivy League Colleges, Harvard and Princeton, were not listed in the AACE complaint. Those two institutions, however, were among the first to have formal complaints made against them. Regarding complaints that Princeton discriminates against Asian American applicants, the OCR wrote in a letter addressed to the institution’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, that after conducting a compliance review of the University’s consideration of race and national origin in issions decisions, which began in January 2008, “OCR determined that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate that the University violated Title VI or its implementing regulation with regard to the

issue investigated” (September 9, 2015, p. 1). Earlier that year, in July 2015, OCR dismissed parallel complaints that were filed against Harvard in May 2015 because a similar case was pending in federal courts (Lorin, 2015). That similar lawsuit, filed by Students for Fair issions (SFFA) in 2014, seeks to more broadly prohibit Harvard from engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity (Students for Fair issions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2015). According to its website (https://studentsforfairissions.org/about/), SFFA is a “hip group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college issions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” Among their is an Asian American student with an extraordinary academic record and many high school extracurricular activities who was denied ission to Harvard in 2014. Apparently representing such , SFFA charged in its brief that

Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asian-American applicants. This discrimination is shown through both direct and circumstantial evidence, including statistical studies of Harvard’s issions decisions. These studies confirm what Asian-American applicants and their parents already know: Harvard intentionally and artificially limits the number of Asian Americans to whom it will offer ission. (2014, p. 43)

As part of “decisive statistical evidence that Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants,” SFFA pointed in their brief to studies showing that:

Asian Americans needed SAT scores that were about 140 points higher than white students, all other quantifiable variables being equal, to get into elite schools. Thus, if a white student needed a 1320 SAT score to be itted to one of these schools, an Asian American needed a 1460 SAT score to be itted. That is a massive penalty. (2014, p. 44)

Similarly, AACE’s complaint also pointed out that “Asian applicants have 67% lower odds of ission than white applicants with comparable test scores” (2016, p. 13). Such comparisons to White applicants were also at the core of the OCR investigations conducted in the 1980s. While the recent complaints are strikingly similar to those filed decades earlier, one major difference stands out. Unlike previous complaints, the current set points more directly to race-conscious issions practices and the interest in “racial balancing” as the main source of the problem, and subsequently seeks to eliminate such practices. For example, SFFA (2014, p. 104) claimed that Harvard’s violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 entitled the plaintiff to a permanent injunction prohibiting Harvard from using race as a factor in future undergraduate issions decisions. Likewise, AACE maintained in its complaint that because Asian Americans have

been adversely and unlawfully affected by race-based affirmative action in college issions, we do not its continuation or application beyond the strict limits set by the United States Supreme Court. We believe economiccondition-based affirmative action in college issions is a better alternative to the current race-based approach because it would be fair and would target individuals who are actually disadvantaged (rather than just of a particular race). (2016, p. 26)

The targeting of race-conscious issions as the primary source of discrimination against Asian Americans is a continuation of an established political agenda. Takagi maintained that

Between 1989 and 1990, various conservatives and neoconservatives argued that discrimination against Asians was the direct and inevitable result of racial preferences for blacks. In essence, neoconservatives forced Asian Americans and university officials into a reconstructed debate over affirmative action. (1992, p. 139)

Takagi chronicled this deliberative apportionment of Asian American students as the new victims of affirmative action, which recast the issions complaints as a continuation of reverse discrimination toward Whites. Accordingly, Takagi maintained, “Asian Americans were pressed into the service of a broader critique of diversity” (p. 117). She added:

The emergence of a “good”—Asians—suffering discrimination as a result of preferences for “underrepresented minorities”—that is, blacks and Hispanics— offered liberals a difficult choice; scrap affirmative action or change it. (p. 176)

As Takagi warned, the controversy over Asian American issions confronts liberalism with the difficult task of “reconciling equality of individual opportunity with equality of group opportunity in the zero-sum game of issions” (p. 169). The inability to articulate an approach that reconciles those principles has worked in favor of those who call for the elimination of affirmative action. Today, current claims and counterclaims regarding this issions controversy continue to rely on the discourses that Takagi documented. Unlike the original discrimination complaints filed in the early 1980s, however, the current set are also directly targeting the elimination of race-conscious issions and developing a wider network of organizational . As expressed by Swann Lee, who helped to organize the filing of the 2015 SFFA lawsuit against Harvard, “Asian-American applicants shouldn’t be racially profiled in college issions” and “should have the playing field leveled” (Carapezza, 2015). Does a discourse that casts Asian Americans as victims of race-conscious issions also provide appropriate guidance for “leveling the playing field?” Or does this discourse conceal more deeply rooted interests that undermine racial progress for Asian Americans in the long run? To answer these questions, I apply a critical race theory framework to make sense of issions practices at elite colleges and universities and to understand how race operates in education. Based on this analysis, I then reconsider the discourse that presses Asian Americans into the service of eliminating race-conscious issions practices.

Attending to Whiteness

In the groundbreaking article “Whiteness as Property” (1993), Cheryl Harris argued that American law protects settled expectations based on White privilege, which forms the background against which legal disputes are framed, argued, and adjudicated. Through a rigorous historical and legal analysis, she traced, for example, how “slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property” (p. 1721). Related laws set in place a legal recognition of property interest coded in Whiteness, which subsequently reinforced White privilege and reproduced Black subordination. According to Harris, the

relative economic, political, and social advantages dispensed to whites under systematic white supremacy in the United States were reinforced through patterns of oppression of Blacks and Native Americans. Materially, these advantages became institutionalized privileges, and ideologically, they became part of the settled expectations of whites. (1993, p. 1777)

Even today, Harris maintained, the courts regularly fail to “expose the problem of substantive inequality in material produced by white domination and race segregation” (p. 1753). Although Harris’s discussion of the historical and continuing pattern of White racial domination and economic exploitation did not directly implicate elite colleges and universities, her framework would regard them as playing a key role in advancing “the institutional protection of benefits for whites that have been based on white supremacy and maintained at the expense of Blacks,” given their high status, historical roots, and exclusionary practices (1993, p. 1767). Instead of viewing those institutions as engines for promoting upward social mobility, Harris’s framework would cast them as primarily serving to dispense and protect material advantages for Whites. Institutions with the capacity to do this, Harris argued, are “bound up by those essential features that afford them great power (p. 1761),” which include the exclusive rights to exclude and determine rules in ways that reproduce White privilege. Harris claimed that

the possessors of whiteness were granted the legal right to exclude others from the privileges inhering in whiteness; whiteness became an exclusive club whose hip was closely and grudgingly guarded—determining who was or was not white enough to enjoy the privileges accompanying whiteness. (1993, p. 1736)

In short, Harris’s framework suggests that elite colleges and universities operate within a system that is historically rooted in reproducing White privilege, and that one way they reinforce this system is by retaining the right to exclude. Although these institutions may no longer be racially exclusive, they would still be understood by her framework as excluding in ways that favor Whiteness, while also providing those who enroll with access to privileges inhering in Whiteness. This provocative characterization of elite colleges and universities as guardians of the privileges accompanying Whiteness aligns well with Jerome Karabel’s findings in The Chosen (2005). His study is perhaps the most rigorous sociohistorical examination of issions ever undertaken of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. While the study is limited to the “Big Three” because they graduate a disproportionally high number of the “American elite” (p. 3), the findings are especially relevant given the recent lawsuit and complaints filed against Ivy League institutions. Since Karabel did not apply a critical race analysis, Harris’s framework illuminates his findings in profound and stark ways. While it is well known that the Big Three have a repugnant history of discrimination, Karabel’s of their exclusionary practices is especially discerning because it connects those practices to each institution’s interest in guarding the privileges accompanying Whiteness. For example, he pointed to modifications in the issions criteria made in the 1920s among the Big Three, which shifted away from itting students entirely on the basis of scholastic performance. This shift was implemented to address the “Jewish Problem” and intended to restore the Big Three’s protection of White privilege. W. F. Williams, a Harvard alumnus, expressed frustration in a letter he sent on December 17, 1925, to then-President of Harvard, Lawrence Lowell, which Karabel quoted at length and is worth repeating here, as well:

There were Jews to the right of me, Jews to the left of me, in fact they were so obviously everywhere that [it] left (me) with a feeling of utter disgust of the present and grave doubts about the future of my Alma Mater…. I cannot but feel that your New England blood must run cold when you contemplate their everincreasing numbers at Harvard but what I cannot fathom is why you and the other Overseers don’t have the backbone to put you (sic) foot down on this menace to the University. It is self evident, therefore, that by raising the standard of marks he (Jews) can’t be eliminated from Harvard, whereas by the same process of raising the standard “White” boys ARE eliminated…. Are the Overseers so lacking in genius that they can’t devise a way to bring Harvard back to the position it always held as a “white man’s” college? (2005, p. 105)

Rather than be appalled by such a letter, Lowell told Williams that he was “glad to see from your letter, as I have from many other signs, that the alumni are beginning to appreciate that I was not wholly wrong three years ago in trying to limit the proportion of Jews” (Karabel, 2005, p. 109). By the fall of 1926, a new issions regime was set in place at Harvard, one that, according to Karabel, would emphasize “character”—“a quality thought to be in short supply among Jews but present in abundance among high-status Protestants” (p. 2)—which was believed to be “in accordance with the probable value of a college education … to the university, and the community” (p. 108). Similar issions practices that considered nonacademic factors coded in Whiteness were also adopted at Princeton and Yale, and they still guide the current approach for itting students at all three institutions. Karabel’s historical suggests that the nation’s three most elite institutions of higher education have, at least in the past, grudgingly guarded Whiteness by altering rules to determine who was or was not “White enough” to enjoy the privileges accompanying Whiteness. However, the Big Three have since been transformed from what Karabel called “the enclaves of the Protestant upper class into institutions with a striking degree of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity” (2005, p. 536). For example, Asian Americans are now overrepresented in the student body at those elite institutions relative to their proportion in the U.S. population. Even Karabel acknowledged that in “virtually all the major institutions of American life, WASP men were now a small and beleaguered minority” (p. 536). Still, Karabel warned that those

shifts do not necessarily go against the tendency for elite universities to place their own deeply rooted interests above the interests of students and the broader society. Karabel showed that although the Big Three slowly transformed their issions practices from emphasizing hereditary privilege to valuing merit, “the qualities that came to define ‘merit’ tend to be attributes most abundantly possessed by dominant social groups” (p. 549). Not only was the standard for merit broadened to consider individual talent and accomplishments beyond scholastic achievements, including athletic talent in such sports as rowing, field hockey, sailing, golf, squash, fencing, and others that systematically favor the privileged, but connections to powerful external constituencies, including alumni, were also considered meritorious. Karabel reported, “While the percentage of legacies in the entering class has gone down over the past decade, the relative issions advantage for legacy applicants has actually increased” (p. 550). Given the history of systematic exclusion in the Big Three that shaped the composition of the alumni, this is a clear advantage for a group that is predominantly wealthy and White. Thus, although the color on the surface may have changed, the interest in guarding the privileges accompanying Whiteness has remained intact. Still, Karabel claimed that the Big Three are “well aware that it is possible to overinvest in traditional elites, especially when they show signs of decline” (2005, p. 545). Unless the Big Three can appear to make real the American Dream of upward mobility through education, Karabel maintained, their legitimacy would come into question:

The legitimacy of the American social order depended in good part on the public’s confidence that the pathways to success provided by the nation’s leading universities were open to individuals from all walks of life. (p. 543)

Thus, diversifying their student bodies enabled elite universities not only to remain legitimate, but also to benefit from enrolling “rising social groups” such as Asian Americans who could add to their prominence, especially in emerging fields of science and technology (p. 545). Although the Big Three provided the “appearance” of equal opportunity by

making scholarships available and widely publicizing efforts to recruit a racial and ethnically diverse student body, Karabel argued that in truth, enrollment is “a realistic possibility only for those young men and women whose families endow them with the type of cultural capital implicitly required for ission,” which “is heavily concentrated among the scions of the privileged” (2005, p. 549). Thus, he claimed that beneath this dramatic and highly visible change in the physiognomy of the student body was a surprising degree of stability in one crucial regard—the privileged class origins of students at the Big Three. That the exclusionary practices of elite colleges and universities continue to favor the privileged, subsequently allowing them to reproduce their privileged position in society, is consistent with Harris’s framework (1993). She, too, argued that the nation’s laws historically have cemented advantages for Whites, and that those privileges were reproduced through institutional power and exclusionary practices that limited access to key institutions for other groups. According to Harris, in order to retain the power to dispense privileges accompanying Whiteness, institutions must grudgingly guard their exclusive rights both to exclude and to establish rules to determine who is or is not White enough to enjoy those privileges. Indeed, the Big Three have actively guarded those rights, especially when it comes to protecting the autonomy to set their own issions standards. Karabel pointed to the defense of race-conscious issions as an example of how the Big Three engaged in guarding their rights to set the standards for exclusion. According to him, the defense of raceconscious issions “went well beyond the issues of blacks and other minorities; it raised the specter of an encroachment on the institutional discretion that Harvard believed indispensable to the protection of vital institutional interests” (2005, p. 489). Harvard was involved in every single challenge to race-conscious issions to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, and at the heart of their defense of such practices, according to Karabel, was that to flourish, colleges and universities should be accorded freedom from external influence and intrusion (p. 492). The U.S. Supreme Court agreed and allowed universities to retain their historic discretion and independence, upholding Harvard’s ission policy as a “model of how to consider race within the bounds of the law and the Constitution” (p. 498). That such institutions actively and consistently rejected any attempts to remove their rights to exclude is, as Harris argued, a key principle that largely defines the identity of institutions that dispense the privileges accompanying Whiteness (1993, p. 1761). Applying Harris’s framework to Karabel’s of the hidden history of

issions and exclusion at the Big Three casts elite institutions in a different light. According to Karabel, the Big Three have always tilted in favor of the privileged, and there is little reason to believe that this preference will change anytime soon. While they might slightly alter their issions practices to remain socially relevant, they have a vested interest in maintaining the social order and their position in it. If privilege is cemented in law to reproduce the position of Whites at the top of the social order and continues to be coded in Whiteness, as Harris argued, then those elite universities have exclusive rights to determine who is or is not White enough to enjoy the privileges accompanying Whiteness. That the racial representation of the student body, and to a much lesser extent, the faculty, of those institutions has changed, suggests to Harris only that not “all whites will win, but simply that they will not lose” (1993, p. 1759). “Of course, there’s still diversity,’’ one Ivy alumnus was quoted as saying in a New York Times article (Yazigi, 1999) concerning eating clubs at Princeton —“about 20 percent. They are there to make the other 80 percent show they are democratic and feel more superior.’’

Pursuing Whiteness

For people of color who gain hip to such elite institutions, Harris acknowledged that there is a certain economic logic to accumulating the material privileges inhering in Whiteness: “Becoming white meant gaining access to a whole set of public and private privileges that materially and permanently guaranteed basic subsistence needs and, therefore, survival” (1993, p. 1713). If so, perhaps the pursuit of issions for people of color into elite institutions can be understood generally as interest in obtaining the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being White. In other words, obtaining credentials from those institutions can subsequently provide one a “” to enjoy the privileges accompanying Whiteness, which enables one to exercise more control over critical aspects of one’s life rather than remain the object of White domination. Framed in this way, it would not be unreasonable to regard the zeal for attending elite educational institutions among a disproportionally high number of Asian Americans as a keen interest in accumulating the privileges accompanying Whiteness.

On the surface, the drive to obtain such privileges seems completely rational and sensible. After all, gaining hip into those institutions still pays high material dividends. According to Khan, modern elite education provides students with “carefully cultivated lives” that “solidify their position as masters of our economy and government,” and “credentials, relationships, and culture, all of which ensured their future success” (2011, p. 13). Elite institutions accomplish this not so much by deeply engaging students with ideas and text, Khan argued, but by “develop[ing] privilege: a sense of self and a mode of interaction that advantage them,” which ensures the future protection of their position (p. 14). In short, those who obtain hip into elite institutions come to enjoy essential privileges accompanying Whiteness. While there are certainly individual material benefits to be gained by “becoming white,” as Harris saw it, there are also several related concerns that Asian Americans ought to consider seriously as a collective interest; I will point to just two. First, educational success has not always translated into expected career success for Asian Americans. Wesley Yang (2011) discussed this paradox in his featured article in the New York Times Magazine. He pointed to the bamboo ceiling, “an invisible barrier that maintains a pyramidal racial structure throughout corporate America, with lots of Asians at junior levels, quite a few in middle management, and virtually none in the higher reaches of leadership.” Yang argued that “it is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian-American life that so many Asian graduates of elite universities find that meritocracy as they have understood it comes to an abrupt end after graduation.” That even those who have gained hip into elite institutions still face racial discrimination suggests that the context of contemporary discrimination is in constant flux. According to Carbado, Fisk, and Gulati, “Although access is important, the story of discrimination does not end at the moment of access. Inclusion in does not mean the absence of discrimination from” (2008, p. 85). They maintained that exclusion does not exhaust how discrimination operates, but in fact, that access often facilitates certain conditions of discrimination. These forms of discrimination by inclusion include a range of evolving subtle institutional practices and interpersonal dynamics, which in turn transform “the role of race in society and the nature and sources of racial inequality” (2008, p. 98). Thus, one’s vulnerability to discrimination cannot be eradicated merely by earning credentials from elite institutions. Just because one obtains a “” to

access one setting does not necessarily mean that the will provide unrestricted access free of discrimination. A Chinese American scientist with multiple degrees from Harvard, for example, is still less likely than her White male colleague with a comparable set of degrees from elite institutions to be promoted into higher reaches of leadership. Similarly, the same Asian scientist is much more vulnerable to being persecuted for international espionage than her White colleague who works in the same high-tech company but attended an “insufficiently elite” college. Second, Carbado and Gulati considered in another study whether African American employees at the bottom of a corporation would yield “trickle down” benefits from African Americans at the top. After closely examining this proposition, they remained “cynical that having more minorities at the top of the hierarchy will necessarily improve the conditions for those on the bottom” (2013, p. 166). They reasoned that those who possess the skill set to race to the top of the hierarchy are also incentivized to “pull the ladder up behind them when they get there” (p. 165). Likewise, there is little reason to believe that those Asian Americans who over-attribute hard work and “individual merit” to gaining ission to an elite college or university will necessarily “lift as they climb.” Unless, perhaps, they have seriously considered the underlying sources that both shape and derail the pursuit of the American Dream. Although limited in scope, the discussion above at least raises serious doubts that gaining hip into elite institutions that provide access to White privilege necessarily translates into transformative racial progress for a majority of Asian Americans. While individuals certainly benefit by accumulating privileges accompanying Whiteness, there is reason to suspect that the unbridled pursuit of this American Dream can actually curb other forms of discrimination against Asian Americans or significantly lift them more generally, especially those with limited access to opportunities. Thus, it is not altogether clear how efforts to increase only slightly the chance of ission³ for a very select group of Asian Americans into a few elite colleges and universities that have a very limited number of available spots would meaningfully weaken the durable bond between Whiteness and privilege.

Conclusion

That Asian Americans are discriminated against in issions by elite institutions of higher education extends a common historical pattern that has been well documented by Karabel’s exhaustive research into the history of issions at the Big Three. I applied Harris’s critical race framework to illuminate the sources of this shameful pattern, which subsequently undermines the characterization of those institutions as engines of upward mobility and instead portrays them as guardians of dispensing the privileges accompanying Whiteness. Although elite institutions regularly alter their issions policies to remain socially relevant, they continue to exclude in ways that favor attributes that are coded in Whiteness. Accordingly, Harris’s framework suggests that while those Asian Americans who “” into such institutions obtain advantages associated with institutionalized privileges, their race to the top will not necessarily lift all Asian Americans or enable them to escape other forms of discrimination. Subsequently, there is little reason to believe that placing more Asian Americans into elite institutions that have become part of the “settled expectations of whites” will lead to dismantling a deeply rooted system that continues to structure opportunities in favor of Whiteness. If the fundamental problem regarding this issions controversy is the tyranny of Whiteness, then for Harris the overarching racial project is to “dismantle the institutional protection of benefits for whites that have been based on white supremacy and maintained at the expense of Blacks” (1993, p. 1767). Affirmative action, according to her, contributes to this goal by exposing “the illusion that the original or current distribution of power, property, and resources is the result of ‘right’ and ‘merit.’ … It unmasks the limited character of rights granted by those who dominate. In a word, it is destabilizing” (p. 1778). Indeed, the core purpose of civil rights organizations that have historically advocated on behalf of Asian Americans has not been to retreat from race, but to call more attention to race and racism in order to dismantle White privilege. ing for White supremacy and privilege makes more explicit the underlying assumptions guiding issions discrimination and forces us to reconsider the conditions that contextualize that controversy. By contrast, those groups seeking to eliminate race-conscious issions fail to critique meaningfully the underlying conditions that contribute to discrimination and reproduce racial inequality. Instead, they advance a discourse that portrays Asian Americans as victims of affirmative action, with the intent of eliminating

race consciousness. There are two major problems with such a discourse. First, a discourse that raises the specter of race for the purpose of eliminating race consciousness is inherently contradictory. Second, color-blind solutions have the effect of making race invisible and would invariably undermine the capacity to unmask and disrupt the privileges accompanying Whiteness. Subsequently, any discourse that selectively attempts to press a racial group, in this case Asian Americans, into the service of advancing color-blind solutions should raise serious questions about the long-term purposes and goals of the organizations promoting those discourses.

Moving Forward

If the effort to address the discrimination against Asian Americans in college issions is supposed to be a racial project, one that should galvanize Asian Americans around a shared interest, then Asian Americans should demand more from existing discourses that position them in debates concerning affirmative action. As it stands, the discourse to eliminate race-conscious issions practices only superficially describes the context of racial discrimination and fails to make explicit the fundamental source of racism. Without a clear understanding of the underlying assumptions about racial inequality, Asian Americans can be pressed into the service of an agenda that stands to hurt more than help them in the long run. According to Park and Liu, Asian Americans are regularly boxed into political discourses that constrain their actions, as in the case regarding race-conscious issions, in which opponents of those practices frame them as “having to relinquish their own self-interest in favor of ‘less qualified’ URMs [underrepresented racial minorities]” (2014, p. 57). Park and Liu argue that the deployment of such misleading discourses not only artificially constrains action, but also conceals how Asian American interests diverge from the anti-affirmative action movement, distorting Asian Americans’ commitment to access and equity in higher education. An alternative analysis that offers a serious critique of Whiteness, both its role in discrimination and how it structures opportunity, suggests that placing even more Asian Americans in elite institutions at the expense of abolishing a policy that unmasks White domination is inconsistent with dismantling a system that

privileges Whiteness. There is also little reason to believe that the few who get a “” to enjoy privileges accompanying Whiteness would necessarily “lift as they climb” to the top of the hierarchy. Blind faith and over-investment in pursuing those well-worn paths to achieving individual success, including obtaining credentials from elite institutions, are more likely to steer Asian Americans toward accepting, rather than challenging, White privilege and domination as being the natural order of things which cannot be disturbed. A continued reliance on pursuing those well-worn paths will exacerbate rather than settle recurring educational problems for Asian Americans. If Asian Americans really seek to eliminate racial discrimination and to achieve full participation in U.S. society, Wesley Yang (2011) maintained that doing so will probably have less to do with any form of behavior assimilation than with the emergence of risk-takers whose success obviates the need for Asians to meet someone else’s behavioral standard. According to him, Asian Americans will need more people to exercise proud defiance and “to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.” Likewise, Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show, paid tribute to Muhammad Ali who ed away on June 4, 2016, and quoted him as having said in 1970, “I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me” (aired on June 6 on CBS). Colbert praised Ali for having “help[ed] create the America we live in today.” Perhaps it takes the kind of audacious defiance demonstrated by Ali’s statement and suggested by Wesley Yang to make a transformative and lasting imprint on American society. If so, civil rights groups can better empower Asian Americans in those ways by challenging over-investment in pursuing the privileges accompanying Whiteness, including the dogged pursuit of “official paper emblems.” To do this, those groups need to craft sturdier discourses that press Asian Americans toward the service of an alternative agenda, one that engages them in more actively delegitimizing racial assumptions and the role of Whiteness in structuring opportunities. Without such intentional and organized efforts, Asian Americans will remain vulnerable to ing the dismantling of key civil rights policies such as race-conscious issions, which are invariably peddled as obstacles that curb their capacity to amass privilege. However, if that sought-after privilege—ission to Harvard, for example—is coded in Whiteness as Harris argued, then the dismantling of those civil rights policies

would in the long run reinforce rather than eliminate racial subjugation. Moreover, that ission to highly selective institutions has remained a recurring problem over the past 30 years suggests that obtaining even greater access to those institutions does not curb what Siegel (2012) called “the furies of fear and envy,” since this type of racial panic targeting Asian Americans is triggered by the fear that they are uprooting a well-settled racial order. Clearly, Asian Americans are at a crucial juncture when it comes to racial politics. The issions controversy returned with even higher stakes to include the elimination of practices that were designed to delegitimatize structural advantages afforded to Whites and address the illusion that there is a level playing field. Given the increasingly high stakes, Asian Americans should resist the temptation to blindly positions that promise to improve their chances of amassing more privilege, but should instead ask tougher questions of those who are trying to press them into the service of a particular racial project. The discourses that they endorse are indeed pivotal and may well determine whether Asian Americans remain the poster children for the mythical American Dream or participate more boldly in dismantling institutional structures that reproduce the privileges accompanying Whiteness.

Notes

1I intentionally use the label Asian Americans as opposed to other racial or ethnic labels because I believe that this one is still meaningful. It emerged in the late 1960s to signal a pan-Asian solidarity that rejected old labels and made assertive claims to American belonging. The goal to achieve a new humanity and new humanism through empowered identities in the 1960s is still incomplete, however, and this struggle remains relevant today. 2It should be noted here that individuals represented under the umbrella Asian American category are highly varied and include more than 49 ethnic groups speaking more than 300 different languages. Subsequently, lumping together these diverse groups in one overarching category masks important differences between subgroups (i.e., Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Filipino, Native Hawaiian, etc.), reinforcing the educational success narrative of Asians as the

“model minority.” Researchers have for decades been challenging those model minority portrayals of Asian Americans by providing a broader context through which to understand educational achievement and selective issions. Many studies have pointed out that certain Asian American subgroups are at greater risk of facing challenges related to education (see, for example, Chang & Kiang, 2010; Kiang & Chang, 2010; Museus, Maramba, & Teranishi, 2013; Teranishi, 2010). Those findings point to a set of pressing educational issues that are not adequately communicated through the media. 3Let us just look at Harvard issions from a numerical standpoint, putting aside a more complex educational or social analysis for now. According to Jon Marcus (2011), 383 Asian Americans represented 17.8% of the students itted to Harvard in fall 2011. Imagine that activists waged an expensive legal battle and successfully doubled the representation of Asian Americans to a remarkable 40% for the next year’s class. Let us also assume in this scenario that Harvard receives 34,000 applications per year and that Asian Americans make up 20% of that pool (34,000 × 0.2 = 6,800). If the overall ittance rate remained at 6%, there would still only be 2,040 total students itted (34,000 × .06). If 40% of the itted students are Asian Americans under this scenario, 816 (2,040 × 0.4) would be itted. This still leaves 5,984 Asian American applicants (6,800 – 816) without a spot at Harvard. Try telling the rejected Asian American families that the Harvard issions process is now fairer than before. By hypothetically doubling the proportion of Asian Americans in the itted class from 20% (2,040 × 0.2 = 408) to a ridiculous 40% (816), we have effectively only lowered the proportion of rejected Asian American applicants from 94% ([6,800 – 408]/ 6,800) to 88% (5,984/6,800)—a 6 percentage point change in the likelihood of being rejected. Unless Harvard doubles or triples the number of students itted, the actual number of Asian American applicants who would gain ission even under farfetched proportional increases is relatively small.

References

Asian American Coalition for Education. (2016). Complaint of the Asian American Coalition for Education v. Yale University, Brown University, and

Dartmouth College. For unlawful discrimination against Asian-American applicants in the college issions process. Submitted to Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, May 23, 2016. Retrieved from http://asianamericanforeducation.org/wpcontent/s/2016/05/Complaint_Yale_Brown_Dartmouth_Full.pdf Carapezza, K. (2015, May 20). Is Harvard showing bias against AsianAmericans? National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/20/408240998/is-harvard-showing-biasagainst-asian-americans Carbado, D., Fisk, C., & Gulati, M. (2008). After inclusion. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 4, 83–102. Carbado, D., & Gulati, M. (2013). Acting White: Rethinking race in “postracial” America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Chang, M. J., & Kiang, P. (Eds.). (2010). Higher education [Special issue]. AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy Practice and Community, 7(2). Chua, A. (2011). Battle hymn of the tiger mother. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Colbert, S. (2016). Episode No. 153. In S. Colbert, J. Stewart, C. Licht, T. Purcell, & B. Julien (Executive Producers), The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. New York, NY: Spartina Productions & CBS Television Studios. Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707– 1791. Karabel, J. (2005). The Chosen: The hidden history of ission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Khan, S. R. (2011). Privilege: The making of an adolescent elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kiang, P., & Chang, M. J. (Eds.). (2010). K–12 education [Special issue]. AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy Practice and Community, 7(1).

Lorin, J. (2015, July 7). Education Department dismisses Harvard AsianAmerican discrimination complaint. Bloomberg News. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/harvard-bias-complaintdismissed-by-education-department

Marcus, J. (2011, April 17). Competitive disadvantage. Boston Globe. Retrieved from http://archive.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04/17/high_achieving_asian_am s_campaign=8315 Museus, S. D., Maramba, D. C., & Teranishi, R. T. (Eds.). (2013). The misrepresented minority: New insights on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and their implications for higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Park, J. J., & Liu, A. (2014). Interest convergence or divergence? A critical race analysis of Asian Americans, meritocracy, and critical mass in the affirmative action debate. Journal of Higher Education, 85(1), 36–64. Siegel, L. (2012, October 27). Rise of the tiger nation. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204076204578076613986930932 Students for Fair issions. (2014). Complaint of Students for Fair issions, Inc. vs. President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard Corporation); and the Honorable and Reverend the Board of Overseers. U.S. District of Massachusetts Boston Division. Filed on November 17, 2014. Retrieved from https://studentsforfairissions.org/wpcontent/s/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf Students for Fair issions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 308 F.R.D. 39 (D. Mass. 2015). Takagi, D. Y. (1992). The retreat from race: Asian-American issions and racial politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Teranishi, R. (2010). Asians in the Ivory Tower: Dilemmas of racial inequality in American higher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights. (2015, September 9). [Letter to Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University. Retrieved

from https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/investigations/02086002a.pdf Yang, J. (2014, November 24). Harvard lawsuit is not what it seems. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/24/opinion/yang-harvard-lawsuit/ Yang, W. (2011, May). Paper tigers. New York Magazine. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/ Yazigi, M. (1999, May 16). At Ivy Club, a trip back to elitism. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/16/style/at-ivy-club-a-tripback-to-elitism.html?pagewanted=all

Chapter 6

Breaking Down the Ghetto Girl Stereotypes to Dismantle Systems of Oppression: (De)ciphering the Humanity of Black Language and Black People

E LAINE R ICHARDSON The Ohio State University

The work presented here grows out of research in an afterschool literacy club I will refer to as Black Girls Unite, which ran from 2010 to 2015, for middle school Black girls, where the course of study was the participants’ experiences as well as those of Black women and girls in society, contextualized by literature, popular culture, and media texts on the lives of Black women and girls. Fiftytwo girls participated at least intermittently in the club. This chapter is based on a study in a Midwestern large city school district in a predominantly poor working-class Black community. The school that sponsored our club served approximately 520 students, of whom 93.7% were on free or reduced-price lunch. The school was 100% Title I due to high poverty. The demographic makeup of the school community was 92.5% African American, 3.5% Hispanic, 2.5% Caucasian, 1.5% Other. For the 2012–2013 school year, this school

reported that 55.5% of its Black seventh graders read at the proficient level or above. Participants in the study ranged in age from 11 to 14 years and were in Grades 6–8. During Year 1, I recruited participants on Back to School Night, where I handed out fliers and gave information to girls and their parents. In subsequent years, some of the girls from the previous year attended, as well as new girls whom the school counselor recommended. The core of regular participants was about 12, but numbers varied from 8 to 16 girls for our weekly 2-hour sessions. I participated in the club and acted as lead mentor. Numbers of mentors varied from year to year, with community (2 Black women), 3 undergraduate Black women, and graduate students of varied racial, gender, and economic backgrounds participating in Years 1 and 2. However, one Black female graduate student became the most dedicated, and the two of us were the only adults in the club during its last years. The data collected consisted of field notes, journal entries, poems, essays, drawings created by the participants, audiotapes of interviews with the girls, and videotapes and transcriptions of our sessions. This work was inspired in part for purposes of researching factors, policies, and pedagogies that contribute to critical literacy and understanding more clearly the unique needs and experiences of Black girls. One of the club’s orientations was based in a Hiphop feminist literacies approach.

Hip-hop feminists … theorize Black violability as a construct that attempts to encapsulate both the lived and historical experiences of Black people with stateinitiated and state-sanctioned violence…. This violence can manifest in several forms including but not limited to police violence, sexual violence, discursive violence, and underreported or unrecognized violence against Black people [emphasis added]…. Black violability … is arguably one of the most important frontiers for hip-hop feminist theory and praxis. Hip-hop feminism as well as its critical race feminist progenitors theorizes and chronicles the intricacies of Black violability…. (Lindsey, 2015, p. 66)

Hiphop feminist work encourages feminist modes of critical analysis, political education, community institution building, and empowerment of women and girls (Peoples, 2008); promotes sexual agency and its the pleasures of

patriarchy, advancing a poststructuralist view of Black feminism, a complex and sometimes contradictory feminism for the gray areas of life (Morgan, 1999); emphasizes the strategic quest of artists, activists, and scholars to transform the perpetuation of oppressive popular media representations of young women and girls of color by using “the language and oppositional consciousness of Hiphop to craft culturally relevant, gender-specific, creative, intellectual, political movement” (Durham, 2010, p. 117); actively opposes sexism, misogyny, and homophobia and promotes situated analyses of power, inequality, exploitation, and oppression in the service of promoting dialogue on issues of relationships between Black women and men, health, social justice, and overall well-being (Pough, 2007); celebrates Black womanhood and girlhood, centers women and girls in their own experiences, and highlights the ways race-gender-class-specific ideas about Black and urban women and girls render them as disposable (Brown, 2009, 2013; Stokes, 2007; Winn, 2011). Cooper (2007) argues that attention should be paid to the “range of female identity performances that have been named, codified, characterized and/or caricatured by hip-hop music and the ways that these identity performances affect the lives of non-industry female of the Hip hop generation, particularly in regard to public policy” (p. 320). Thus, work in Black Girls Unite highlights Hiphop discourse and its entanglement with dominant discourses and Black girls’ lives. Analyses of Hiphop feminist literacies attend to identity performances that mark difference rhetorically, wherein various Black communities appropriate dominant negative stereotypes/categories of Black female bodies as an attempt to mark those that remain outside mainstream Black culture (p. 322). New rhetoric-of-difference analyses converge with Hiphop feminist work by attending to intersectional details of interactions and what they can tell us about identity formation (Kerschbaum, 2014, p. 64), highlighting the “important role identity categories play in interaction at the same time [attending to] difference as it is performed during the moment-to-moment vicissitudes of communication” (p. 67). We look for the “rhetorical cues that signal the presence of difference between two or more participants” (p. 57). Using these perspectives—Hiphop feminist literacies and rhetoric of difference —will reveal a critical discursive, new-literacies-studies analysis of the (re)production of the “Ghetto Girl” by club participants. In new literacies studies, analysts pay attention to how people make meaning. We are concerned with how people appropriate images, patterns, and words from the social activities in which they have participated. We focus on how meaning making and

reading are connected to identity negotiation and broader dominating discourses in society, which control beliefs about the way the world works (Gee, 2000, 2003). For example, for Black women and girls, their so-called inherent “atriskness” is socially constructed through a web of social practices related to economic, political, patriarchal, racist, and sexist arrangements reproduced through text, talk, and social interaction (Richardson, 2009). Dominating discourses are read onto Black women’s and Black girls’ bodies in ways that dehumanize and decontextualize their lives. Thus, African American new literacies work centralizes Black people’s experiences of racism, (hetero)sexism, classism, cultural conflict, social (in)equality (including the struggle for language), and identity as central to both formal and community-based literacy education. Creating spaces for Black girls’ narratives is pivotal in helping them develop resistance and transformative strategies, based on the illumination of prejudiced practices of dominance and discrimination, and structural dimensions of racism in White-dominant societies, and how these play out in their lived experiences. The conversation presented below was stimulated by a video of a disturbing altercation between a 25-year-old young Black woman and a bus driver in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2012, and the discussion around the sharing of the incident with the girls in the afterschool club. The video of the young Black woman (Shi’Dea Lane) being beaten by the bus driver was not only made a popular spectacle by Worldstar video; it also initiated discussion on Facebook and television shows such as Wendy Williams, The View, and The Nightly News, among other outlets, of the dysfunctionality of poor girls of color and youth culture in general.¹

“She Ghetto”

I couldn’t wait until our next meeting to talk to the girls about the incident, especially because it happened right in our home state of Ohio. Plus, I figured most of the girls would have already seen it and been discussing it with family and friends. That day, Black women from my African American Language graduate class came to mentor the girls. The conversation started picking up steam with questions launched by one of the mentors, Miss D (pseudonyms are

used to protect the privacy of the participants; I am “Dr. E”):

Miss D: My biggest thing I would like to ask the young ladies in this class is what lesson, do you, were you able to take away from this, from seeing that from both perspectives, what did it teach you, in regards to how you handle yourselves when you’re in a situation, in a public situation or an intimate situation? Yes, Georgia? [Calls on Georgia, who has had her hand up while Miss. D was asking the question, but Dr. E calls on Lady Jane, from the other side of the room, because no one from that corner has had the floor or a chance to speak] Dr. E: Let her talk because she hasn’t said anything and then back to Georgia, somebody who hasn’t talked. Lady Jane: To act like a young lady. Ms. Topsy (mentor): Ooh girrrul! Ms. Ari (mentor): What do that mean? Miss D (mentor): What does that mean? Yeah, elaborate on that. Lady Jane: Not ta, like, uh … [Strikes a pensive pose, rests one hand on face] Amber: Ghetto? [Offered by someone near Lady Jane] Lady Jane: No … not ta, like, show people that you’re crazy, like disciplined. Shayla: She just probably, like, ghetto. Dr. E: But what does that mean when we say that somebody ghetto?

And that’s what brought it all out. (See Appendix for transcript of full conversation.) Figure 1 depicts some of the stereotypical concepts that emerged in this conversation which reflect the dominant oppressive discourses Black girls must

negotiate. A girl who is “ghetto” does not “act like a young lady,” is “crazy,” “not disciplined,” “hood,” a “psychopath,” “… raised a certain way.” “Ghetto is when you show out, you cuss.” “Sexually active” is added to the mix of what it means to be ghetto, but this is rejected by Georgia and put in the category of “ratchet.” Shayla somewhat agrees with Georgia and emphatically equates “sexually active” to “ho,” a different category from ghetto but similar to ratchet, while Assata holds her position that sexually active is ghetto. Georgia s her position that ghetto is “when you cuss a lot,” adding, “You kill and you smoke weed….” Shayla adds (as an extension of her earlier premise—“raised a certain way”), “It’s just how people is. It’s just how some people is.” Assata adds to her description of ghetto, “when you call a hood….”

Figure 1. Racialized, classed, and gendered stereotypes read onto Black women and girls. Cloud image created by Stacey Robinson. Copyright by Rusiana Newsom/Shutterstock, standard license. Reproduced with permission.

“They Want Protection”

Michelle chimes in with the “quiet storm” critical observation: “There’s a difference if you act ghetto or if you are ghetto…. If you act ghetto that means you just do things, do what people who say they’re ghetto like cussin and all that, but if you are ghetto, I think that means you’re in a ghetto environment and you experience it more.” To make sure I understand her meaning, I say, “I think what I’m hearing is you can be from the ghetto but you don’t have to perform the ghetto, but you don’t have to act like you’re from the ghetto” (I sign air quotes around “act like you’re from the ghetto”).

Shayla: [Nodding head in agreement] Miss D: [Nodding head in agreement] Dr. E: We even say it, we say it. You know, you know when people say, “I almost showed my color.” Haven’t you heard that? When people say, “I almost had to let em know.” [Poses with a simultaneously serious and humorous expression]. Sometimes you have to ask God to help you. [Voice rises to a soprano] Ms. Ari and Ms. Topsy: [Giggling]

The sisters are laughing here because they know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the mundane everyday ways that people “disrespeck” your intelligence, your rights, or just straight-up violate you. On a good day, you reach way down into

your spirit and you let it go. But every now and then, you reach that boiling point where somebody might catch the wrath. That’s when you “go Black,” “show yo color.” But going ghetto Black is cussing, showing out, or as stated in the girls’ words, undisciplined and not acting like a lady.

Georgia: My mama was like, you grew up in the hood, but you on’t gotta ack hood. Dr. E: That’s right. [Points at Assata to give her the floor] Assata: [Her hand has been up for a while] Uhm, I’m not exactly from the hood, but I am. And I feel that Black people, certain people, certain Black African American women act like that because, yeah like she said, in the environment, but to me, I feel that I ack like this because I came to Schoolcraft from Harder, uhm, no offense, Caucasian school, to a, uh, ghetto ratchet dirty school. Dr. E: When you say harder do you mean harder [performs a hard pose], do you mean they was hard like this? [Marks the word with a deep Black sound] Isis: No, she means Harder Elementary.

What Michelle brought into focus is the important role that an oppressive environment plays in degrading the people who endure it, and the way that this condition gets read onto people, as if the degradation belonged to them rather than to the system of inequality that surrounds them. This is most apparent in the stereotypic economic, racist, gendered, and sexualized discourses drawn upon by the girls to describe Shi’Dea: She was degraded—“ghetto”/“hood,” “raised a certain way,” “how some people is,” “want protection.” She was read as criminal/outlaw—“crazy,” “psychopath,” “undisciplined” (“show out, cuss, kill, smoke weed”), and racially gendered and sexualized (not equal to [a White cultured] woman—“not acting like a lady,” “sexually active” “ratchet,” “ho” (immoral). It is not until Michelle observes that Shi’Dea has experienced the ghetto that she is positioned as a victim of ghettoization. Assata understands and articulates that her behavior has become negative because of how attending the school made her feel. Kerschbaum (2014) asserts,

“People use categorical to mark others as well as to assert their own identity claims” (p. 72). So Assata equates herself and her school student body with “ghetto,” “ratchet,” and “dirty.” As stated by Michelle earlier, living in a ghetto environment makes us experience it more. We are vulnerable to ghettoinduced forces—hunger, anger, family disturbance, various oppressions. Though it goes unspoken, we know through juxtaposition that Harder Elementary, the Caucasian school that Assata came from, was better resourced than Schoolcraft and that certain ghetto acts were not performed there. As a Black girl, she faced racism, but she didn’t face colorism from other Black people (Assata is very light skinned). Elsewhere Assata explained to us that she loved the Caucasian school because she got to play with White girls and play like a White girl. So the racism she faced was a bit different. She performed Whiteness to be accepted and to as a deserving student in a school that gave her a sense of prestige. Thus, Assata was revealing that being a Black girl requires a repertoire of identity and rhetorical performances, which can vary from context to context. This is akin to how Shi’Dea felt, not only that day on the bus but also in the repeatedly microagressive environment that the United States is for marginalized and ghettoized people. Morris’s (2016) work helps us to more thoroughly understand this issue:

Students participate in constructing the school climate from the moment they walk through the door. How they see themselves reflected (or not) in the material and how they experience (or don’t) a welcoming reception into their learning environment, both the classroom and the school in general, all influence whether a young woman responds to others in a way that she believes is respectful. Because children co-create their learning environments—they either choose to abide by stated rules or work in ways to circumvent them, discreetly or overtly— they are active players in their own socialization, and in the socialization of teachers. (p. 60)

Assata’s ission of ghetto enactment is a reflection of the learning environment, which has been ghettoized. As explained by Milner and Lomotey (2014), this is a result of out-of-school factors, as the broader environment has an impact on what happens inside schools: housing, poverty, transportation,

parental educational level, family structure, and home living conditions play a role in students’ experiences in school. A very beautiful thing happened in this moment. Assata’s friend Shayla responded to her and told her honestly that she didn’t have to do it and that was not who she truly was and that she (Shayla) disliked it. It was a moment of what Staples (2012) calls “literate witnessing”: comionate, empathetic acts of sense-making and assessment of experience. These acts occur in relation to shared experiences, testimonials, or perspectives and are incited by participation in purposeful communal reading, writing, speaking, and listening that attests to truth, strong emotions, hardship, or negating behavior as a part of affirmation, healing, and self-recovery. This conversation is getting under our skins. We are breaking through the masks. The girls’ reading of ghetto has gone beyond rehearsing social stereotypes. Shayla helps us in her counter to Assata when she points out that ghetto doesn’t necessarily mean sexually active. Michelle led us to deeper levels by noting that ghetto is someone who has experienced it more (meaning the vulnerability of the ghetto). We closed out the session by bringing Shi’Dea back: She went off. She went Black. She went ghetto. But she ain’t a bundle of stereotypes. At the end of the meeting, the mentors and I decided that our next meeting would focus on teaching the girls about stereotypes about Black women and girls, and how they are used to control us, misrepresent us, and create policies that oppress us. We focused on the Sapphire stereotype. Ms. Ari did the research and engaged the girls with a PowerPoint, including definitions, video clips from Amos ’n’ Andy, and the original Sapphire character; the Sheneneh character from Martin; and Nicki Minaj’s character in the Saturday Night Live skit “Bride of Blackenstein,” among others. We emphasized that the characteristics of the Sapphire character were exaggerations and not anyone’s true self. The girls created mini-projects: drawings, dances, and writings to demonstrate what they were learning.

Figure 2. Sapphire image and explanation by Amber.

In Figure 2, Amber (sixth grade) starts off with “Sapphires are ignorant.” With a little coaching from a mentor, she crosses it out (since Sapphires are not real). She continues, “The stereotypes used to control black women in a social status for keeping black women poor and for them [to] doubt themselves and others to doubt them….” In Figure 3, Kat (sixth grade) writes that “not all black women … is ghetto.” This suggests that this is a concept with which she is still grappling. Her next sentence, however, reveals that Black is not the personification of rude behavior.

Figure 3. Kat working through culturally dominant ideas about Black women.

In the next short writing, Peace, Stephanie and Helen explain how the dance they created relates to what they learned about the Sapphire stereotype (Figure 4). They write: “Hi our names are [blurred for privacy of participants] and we are all in the 6 grade. This dance we are about to perform for you is about the media having rude comments and ideas. The media say we are Sapphire but many of us aren’t. A sapphire is a stariotype that describe a person. [“Black woman” is written in the margin by a mentor.] The dance is being different. We feel that we pick this dance because we are different. I’m different because I unique from many people.” (Emphasis added.) The point of the italicized text is to draw the readers’ attention to these sixth-grade girls’ budding criticality. The italics underscore the girls’ reference to themselves as being different from other Black girls. By claiming they are different, they are both complying with and resisting the idea that Black girls are Sapphires—a stereotype created to justify violence against Black women and girls. Sustained collective discussion and exploration of these dominating discourses and the injustices that render Black girls as inferior would bolster the girls’ critical understanding and assist them in challenging the stereotype itself and the system of racialized gender oppression.

Figure 4. “I’m Different”: Peace, Stephanie, and Helen dancing, thinking, and writing against Sapphire.

The girls chose the rapper 2 Chainz’s song “I’m Different” to dance to. I, like the girls, loved the mesmerizing beat. But after asking the girls to pull up the lyrics for me, we agreed that they were too problematic and misogynistic. Though Hiphop feminism champions sexual agency of Black women, it promotes their empowerment and pleasure, not their degradation. Some of 2 Chainz’s lyrics replicated Black girl degradation by not referring to a Black girl holistically as a person, but only by her genitalia and his ability to “beat it up.” However, since they had already worked out their routine to 2 Chainz’s beat, they found an instrumental version. In this way, we reached a compromise. In her book Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South, Bettina Love (2012) explains that the girls in her study danced to misogynistic rap music though they also critiqued such music. This illuminates the struggle for critical consciousness. Love points us to the profound observations of Tricia Rose (2008): “ of the hip hop generation are now facing the greatest media machinery and most veiled forms of racial, economic, sexual and gender rhetoric in modern history; they need the sharpest critical tools to survive and thrive” (p. 9, cited in Love, 2012, p. 107). As noted in the above examples, it is difficult to think, against the stereotype, that no Black women or girls are Sapphires. This is a clear example of the power of the media and dominant institutions to influence society’s ideas about poor Black women and girls. That is why this work is so important and necessary for critical thinking, where the focus is on dismantling structures that perpetuate profit from the dehumanization of Black women and girls. Our girls and women deserve opportunities to think about these issues. Our experiences and our lives should not be ghettoized and written off. A focus on these issues can be used to push us toward action to change injustices and make a difference in our own lives and communities. I want to push us to see Shi’Dea’s meltdown as a stimulus for righteous collective action. Gwendolyn Pough’s (2004) discussion is a good note on which to end, or should I say,

continue the fight for Black women and girls’ self-determination:

[It is] “what happens when a nice colored girl, having exhausted all possibility of compromise, communication, and peaceful conflict resolution, turns into everyone’s worst nightmare, a visible grown up Black woman mad as hell and with nothing to lose, and opens her mouth.” It is the embodiment of righteous anger and rage, a response to being fed up…. Nelson sees it as a revolutionary act that is an expression of rage against attacks on Black womanhood from just about all aspects of society. To qualify …, the act has to be a public display…. Nelson believes that the best [ones] are those that are strategic and collective, when Black women speak out loudly together in righteous anger and outrage against disrespect that impacts all of our lives. “At its best it is a tool for uniting, organizing, channeling rage into collective power, and that collective power into the ability to effect change.” It is the potential for collective [action] that becomes appealing when [we think] about the possibilities … to combat the [sexism, misogyny, and oppression in and outside of hip-hop culture], then we would no doubt be able to use this power to effect meaningful change. (Pough, 2004, pp. 81–82; the material in quotation marks is from Nelson, 1977, p. 201, quoted by Pough; bracketed wording is mine)

And even though we are on the front lines, we need the of all righteous people of good will. We Want to Do More Than Survive (Love, 2019).

Acknowledgments

This work is dedicated to the families that entrusted their daughters to me in our afterschool club. I thank the families for allowing me to grow into the critical community literacy worker and advocate I am becoming. I carry you all in my heart. This work also benefited from grants provided by The Conference on College Composition and Communication Research Initiative; The Ohio State University Battelle Engineering, Technology and Human Affairs Grant; and the

Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women Research Grant, The Ohio State University. Any shortcomings are entirely my own.

Note

1As noted by Clay (2012), “Recent studies conclude that violence is a normative experience for urban youth of color, regardless of gender or race, and that gang behavior is almost a necessary ritual in inner-city neighborhoods. While central to our understandings of the experience of youth of color, often these examinations reinforce stereotypes of the URBAN youth experience, which are rooted in violence. Ultimately, these understandings render youth powerless, categorized as social ‘problems’ and as both victims and perpetuators of a noncritical understanding of violence” (p. 55). WorldStar (WSHH, WorldStarHipHop.com), as described in New York Magazine by Mark Jacobson (2012), “started in 2005 as just one more semiswag hip-hop blog eventually featuring homemade videos of rappers and ‘sticky page’ pix of buxom ladies. Over the years, however, the site has separated itself from the competition by depicting what founder Lee “Q” O’Denat, a selfconfessed ‘Haitian ghetto nerd’ from Hollis, Queens, calls ‘the whole gamut; Ato-Z; soup-to-nuts; the good, the bad, and the ugly of the urban experience’ (Jacobson, 2012). From WorldStar’s POV, this includes a daily array of street fights and pushing matches in project hallways and camera scans of shoplifting incidents. The mix has proved exceedingly popular. With 1.1 million people visiting the site’s archaically funky layout per day, WSHH, as of last week, was ranked the 278th most visited web address in the United States, according to Alexa, a web-traffic tracking service. This was ahead of Slate, CBS, and Merriam-Webster, and right behind Sprint and Travelocity. With new vids constantly on display, a large portion of WSHH viewers, many hailing from the 18-to-34 male-demographic sweet spot, say they check the site at least once a day.”

References

Brown, R. (2009). Black girlhood celebration: Toward a hip-hop feminist pedagogy. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Brown, R. (2013). Hear our truths: The creative potential of black girlhood. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Clay, A. (2012). The hip-hop generation fights back: Youth, activism, and post– civil rights politics. New York, NY: New York University Press. Cooper, B. (2007). Excavating the love below: The state as patron of the baby mama drama and other ghetto hustles. In G. Pough, E. Richardson, A. Durham, & R. Raimist (Eds.), Home girls make some noise: A hip hop feminist anthology (pp. 320–344). Mira Loma, CA: Parker. Durham, A. (2010). Hip hop feminist media studies [Special issue, Ed. K. Stanford & R. Stephens]. International Journal of Africana Studies, 16(1), 117– 140. Gee, J. P. (2000). Teenagers in new times: A new literacy studies perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43(5), 412–420. Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Jacobson, M. (2012). Worldstar, Baby! New York Magazine, 45(5), pp. 26–29. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/news/features/worldstar-2012-2/ Kerschbaum, S. (2014). Toward a new rhetoric of difference. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Lindsey, T. B. (2015). Let me blow your mind: Hip hop feminist futures in theory and praxis. Urban Education, 50(1), 52–77. Love, B. (2012). Hip hop’s li’l sistas speak: Negotiating hip hop identities and politics in the new South. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Love, B. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Milner, H. R., & Lomotey, K. (2014). Introduction. In H. R. Milner & K. Lomotey (Eds.), Handbook of urban education (pp. xv–xxiii). New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Morgan, J. (1999). When chickenheads come home to roost: My life as a hip hop feminist. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Morris, M. (2016). Pushout: The criminalization of Black girls in schools. New York, NY: New Press. Nelson, J. (1977). Straight, no chaser: How I became a grown-up Black woman. New York, NY: G. P. Punam’s Sons. Peoples, W. (2008). “Under construction”: Identifying foundations of hip-hop feminism and exploring bridges between Black second-wave and hip-hop feminism. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 8(1), 19–52. Pough, G. (2004). Check it while I wreck it: Black womanhood, hip-hop culture, and the public sphere. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Pough, G. (2007). What it do, Shorty? Women, hip-hop, and a feminist agenda. Black Women, Gender, and Families, 1(2), pp. 78–99. Richardson, E. (2009). My ill literacy narrative: Growing up Black, po and a girl, in the hood. Gender and Education, 21(6), pp. 753–757. Staples, J. (2012). “There are two truths”: African American women’s critical, creative ruminations on love through new literacies. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 20(3), 451–483. Stokes, C. E. (2007). Representin’ in cyberspace: Sexual scripts, self-definition, and hip hop culture in Black American adolescent girls’ home pages. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 9(2), 169–184. Winn, M. (2011). Girl time: Literacy, justice and the school-to-prison pipeline. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Appendix

Following is a complete transcript of the conversation excerpted here and there through the chapter. A single letter is used to represent a speaker if it’s not clear from the videotape who was speaking. A question mark by a speaker’s name indicates it’s likely known who the speaker was but there is some doubt.

Miss D: My biggest thing I would like to ask the young ladies in this class is what lesson, do you, were you able to take away from this, from seeing that from both perspectives, what did it teach you, in regards to how you handle yourselves when you’re in a situation, in a public situation or an intimate situation? Yes, Georgia? [Calls on Georgia, who has had her hand up while Miss. D was asking the question, but Dr. E calls on Lady Jane, from the other side of the room, because no one from that corner has had the floor or a chance to speak] Dr. E: Let her talk because she hasn’t said anything and then back to Georgia, somebody who hasn’t talked. Lady Jane: To act like a young lady. Ms. Topsy (mentor): Ooh girrrul! Ms. Ari (mentor): What do that mean? Miss D (mentor): What does that mean? Yeah, elaborate on that. Lady Jane: Not ta, like, uh … [Strikes a pensive pose, rests one hand on face] Amber: Ghetto? [Offered by someone near Lady Jane] Lady Jane: No … not ta, like, show people that you’re crazy, like disciplined. Shayla: She just probably, like, ghetto. Dr. E: But what does that mean when we say that somebody ghetto? Shayla: Hood.

Assata: Will y’all quit cuttin her off, Shayla tryna say something. She asked her a question, now be quiet. Dr. E: That’s what I like to ask people when they say somebody ghetto. B: What was her question? Ms. Topsy (?): [Not fully audible] . . . about the video … C: A psychopath? Shayla: They was raised a certain way. How she was raised. That’s her response back ta … Ms. Ari: I think she’s askin you because you said she’s ghetto, so to you, what does it mean when somebody is ghetto? Miss D (?): [Showing concern for Shayla’s response, nods head] So you’re sayin ghetto is how you were raised. Dr. E: So you done witcho response, why you say she ghetto? Georgia: I got two more things. Ghetto to me is when you show out, you cuss and you do … Assata: You’re sexually active. Georgia: No, that’s ratchet. Shayla: No. Georgia: No, in my … Dr. E: Wait, I wanna hear the rest a dat. Go head. I missed out on somma dat. Say that again? Ghetto is when you sexually active? Shayla: No! That’s H-O-E. [Spells out Black pronunciation of “whore”] That’s the H-O-E. Georgia: No!

Dr. E: Well say it again, I wanna hear what she said. What did she say? Assata: I said sexually active. That’s my opinion. Dr. E: So a part of being ghetto is sexually active? Ghetto is when you sexually active? Shayla: NO! Assata: Yes. Assata: That’s my opinion. Miss D: This is just her opinion. Georgia: I say it’s when you cuss a lot, you kill and you smoke weed. That’s ghetto to me. Shayla: It’s just how people is. It’s probably just how some people is. […] Assata: The definition of ghetto to me, it’s like when you call a hood, like when you say PS 80, PS Q, or whatever you call, and when they call Elaine. I think that’s ghetto because, if you always callin that out, you act like they always gone have yo back when they not. They want protection to me because Elaine like this dude Halim, he always call “Elaine, Elaine” … Dr. E: That’s the name of a hood, Elaine? [Numerous responses, indistinguishable] Georgia: All Elaine is is a apartment complex that is dead. Assata: Yeah, it’s some Africans in it…. [ … ] Michelle: There’s a difference if you act ghetto or if you are ghetto. Dr. E: What’s the difference?

Isis: Some people say ghetto is blah blah blah, but there’s a difference between if you act ghetto or you are ghetto. Dr. E: What’s the difference? Michelle: If you act ghetto that means you just do things, do what people who say they’re ghetto like cussin and all that, but if you are ghetto I think that means like you’re in a ghetto environment and you experience it more. Dr. E: I think what I’m hearing is you can be from the ghetto but you don’t have to perform the ghetto, but you don’t have to act like you’re from the ghetto [makes air quotes] and people tag that onto Black, don’t people tie that onto Black? Shayla: [Nodding head in agreement] Miss D: [Nodding head in agreement] Dr. E: We even say it, we say it. You know, you know when people say, “I almost showed my color.” Haven’t you heard that? When people say, I almost had to let em know.” [Poses with a simultaneously serious and humorous expression] Sometimes you have to ask God to help you. [Voice rises to a soprano] Ms. Ari and Ms. Topsy: [Giggling] Georgia: My mama was like, you grew up in the hood, but you on’t gotta ack hood. Dr. E: That’s right. [Points at Assata to give her the floor] Assata: [Her hand has been up for a while] Uhm, I’m not exactly from the hood, but I am. And I feel that Black people, certain people, certain Black African American women act like that because, yeah, like she said, in the environment, but to me, I feel that I ack like this because I came to Schoolcraft from Harder, uhm, no offense, Caucasian school to a, uh, ghetto ratchet dirty school. Dr. E: When you say harder do you mean harder [performs a hard pose], do you mean they was hard like this? [Marks the word with a mock deep Black phonology]

Isis: No she means Harder Elementary. Dr. E: Oh … I thought you meant hard. …

Chapter 7

Decolonizing Knowledge Through High School Ethnic Studies

Z EUS L EONARDO University of California, Berkeley

J OCYL S ACRAMENTO California State University, East Bay

Using a colonial lens to explain education, this chapter emphasizes the

anticolonial, sometimes called decolonial, analysis within critical race theory. Although compatible with race analysis, decolonial perspectives on education maintain a distinct set of analytics that we highlight in order to speak to the racialized production of knowledge in schooling. Not more than three years after the publication of the essay that launched a thousand works (see Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), Ladson-Billings (1998) argued for the utility of the colonial lens in understanding material conditions for Black students from Soweto to the South Bronx. Her point was that the history of colonialism links otherwise disparate experiences across the globe. First, we take Ladson-Billings’s cue and pursue the offerings of colonial analysis and add new traditions, such as decolonial thought, as well as focus on insights gleaned from specific authors, such as Edward Said, whose work on Orientalism (1979) proves decisive. Said documents the process whereby European control over the knowledge produced about the Orient (primarily the Middle East) drives how Orientals¹ are to be understood, consumed, positioned, and subordinated by the Occident. We see parallels in mainstream U.S. curriculum, to which ethnic studies responds as an alternative. Our analysis shares affinities with Harris’s (1993) argument that Whiteness is a form of “property,” such that being White comes with the status of “knower,” which is tantamount to “smartness” as the property of Whiteness (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011). Second, we pay particular attention to knowledge as a central site of the colonial project’s continuation through the institution of schooling. This project implicates what counts as knowledge, who functions as a subject or object of knowledge (i.e., the knower and known), and the purpose of knowledge for the racially oppressed. Finally, case studies of ethnic studies curricula in high schools is instructive insofar as the struggle against Eurocentric, colonial knowledge continues to be waged in U.S. public schools. Ethnic studies builds the foundations for studying a certain Orientalism in mainstream curriculum, which exposes the disempowering tendencies in the educational experience of students of color. There are many anticolonial, decolonial, and anti-imperialist frameworks from which to choose to explain the inner workings of colonialism. We choose Edward Said and the Coloniality of Power reading group to emphasize the geopolitics of knowledge in colonial relations (see Grosfoguel, 2012). Said another way, we use a method that locates colonialism and Eurocentrism, and

provincializes Europe and Europeans (Chakrabarty, 2007) in order to historicize forms of knowledge that otherwise appear to be universal. In doing so, we affirm the historical conditioning of all forms of knowing. As we avoid granting surplus power to colonialism, we nevertheless recognize its ability to overdetermine the lives of the colonized as the colonizer claims to know the colonized better than they know themselves. This means that knowledge relations come to the forefront as we argue that knowing the other is part of exercising social control over them by defining their history, representing them, and speaking for them. In other instances, we recognize that “history is of no matter, especially when force is available” (Bové, 2005, p. 403). Writing someone else’s history then becomes tantamount to force. Its opposite, the act of writing one’s own history from a marginalized perspective—a central element of the ethnic studies agenda—is a counterforce. In Mignolo’s (2009) perspective, knowledge is also a potential site for epistemic disobedience, or using knowledge to cut against the grain of accepted and universalized forms of knowing. In the final analysis, the act of knowing is no longer an innocent moment but one that must be posed as a problem in order to decolonize education. In other words, knowing becomes a politically generative way of acting on the world as an agent in that world. The pairing of colonialism with education is a difficult topic to develop insofar as colonialism is assumed to have ended, whereas education continues. With the fall of colonial istrations in places like Algeria, India, and most recently South Africa, to some scholars it would seem appropriate to pronounce that colonialism has ended, both as a way of life and as a way of thinking. We argue that colonialism continues and schooling serves its imperatives. We acknowledge that a certain form of colonialism is now in the rear-view mirror, globally speaking; by and large, istrative colonialism has ended in the former colonies as a way to govern them. However, the “coloniality of power” (Lugones, 2008; Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2000) refers to the continuation of the geopolitics of colonial relations, which remains a stubborn ideology and institutional arrangement. That is, colonialism morphs into its current form as a cultural relation of power between the West and nonWestern traditions, Europeans and non-Europeans, or Whites and non-Whites. As a contestation that happens within knowledge production, the struggle between colonizer and colonized continues in a form that pivots on how places, nations, and people are made or consumed as knowable. Our aim is to broaden the conceptual parameters of what counts as colonialism, including schooling. Thus, colonialism’s knowledge project inherently comprises an educative

function. The “post” in postcolonialism is less a signifier of colonialism’s temporal status (i.e., an “after”) and more a way of exposing its literary, epistemological, or cultural dimensions. In this uptake, education becomes a crucial network of institutional forms as we investigate colonialism. And although we heed Jameson’s (1993) warning that temporality is difficult to avoid in the era of post-theorizing, we prefer to think of “post” as a spatial term, insofar as it introduces a new space for such theorizing, a novel way to mark old anxieties, and a recognition that theory travels as it explains historical experiences of place and displacement. As will become clearer in the next section, asserting colonialism’s educative function necessitates a theory of knowledge. It is plain enough to see that general, human limitations exist as we try to understand a people or place not our own. The present investigation aligns with Said (2001), who writes, “It’s not enough to say that obviously a ‘foreign’ and non-Western part of the world [and its people] can’t be well known; it’s much more interesting and valuable to know how and why it is as badly known as it is” (p. 25). With Said and the Coloniality of Power group, we examine the political interests of knowledge production and the colonizer’s will to distort, whereby, as Said (1979) asserts in Orientalism, European s of the Near East are not simply misrepresentations since they never intended to represent it correctly in the first place. For the Orientalist, art and literature are ways to invent the Orient as an object of knowledge, its people inserted in statements and claims about the “nature” of an idealized place (always chaotic or disorganized) and time (always eternal and fundamentally unchanging). Their embodiment comes in the form of the Oriental, a colonial subject, who must be spoken for, represented for, and ultimately governed. As Said (2001) remarks, “The noteworthy thing about Orientalism was that interpreting the Orient very soon turned into speaking for the Orient (silencing it)” (p. 32). And Said believed the parallels between Orientals and U.S. Blacks, women, and other marginalized groups were obvious enough (p. 34) even if he did not foreground the latter histories. We import Said’s assertions into the domain of ethnic studies debates. In critical race theories (CRT) of education, the status of colonialism as well as its culpability for structural racism is far from conceptually clear. This does not suggest that CRT is neither attentive nor hospitable to analyses of colonialism. But as an insurgent theory of race and education, CRT is a symptom of its American sensibility wrapped in an understanding of the history of racism first and colonialism second. That colonialism explains at least some, if not a good

amount, of educational inequality remains racism’s well known but frequently absent cousin at family gatherings. In this chapter, we argue that in its theoretical varieties, colonial analysis takes its seat at the CRT table. We do not claim to inaugurate this strand in CRT, but emphasize it as a development worth highlighting and advancing. It does not compete with a racial analysis, but deepens it with a study of the continuing coloniality of education (Brayboy, 2005; Leonardo & Singh, 2017; Patel, 2016; Tuck & Yang, 2012). This project is not without challenges. To speak of colonialism’s relevance today is to risk sounding irrelevant or outdated. After all, didn’t the colonial regimes across the globe fall by the end of the 1960s? It is much more acceptable, even as some reject it, to talk about the effects of racism on educational outcomes. Talk of the Black-White gap retains a broad audience (see Gillborn, 2008), even props up the educational discipline’s raison d’être. Anxiety over the racial gap is a daily concern in U.S. schools, as educators are frantic to solve it once and for all. By contrast, talking about colonialism is considered as archaic as the evidence used to explain it, such as stereotypical images of Native Americans through stubborn uses of mascots (Rosenstein, 1997) or cultural tourism in Hawaii (Trask, 1999). President Donald Trump’s transgressions qualify to some people as “racist,” but calling his statements “colonialist” would likely appear as strange as his hair comb-over. In the United States, investment in making sense of history through the framework of race, recalling its beginnings through colonialism and the continuities therein, risks ridicule. But as we argue below, this risk is worth taking if ridding education of colonialism is a warranted goal of CRT. There are obvious histories of colonialism’s ties with education that this chapter recognizes but will not privilege or have the space to explicate. Indian boarding schools, reeducation and repatriation of Filipinos, and attempts to decimate local languages in Hawaii are some examples of overt forms of colonial education. Instead, we focus on other contestations that students of color in the United States face, which are arguably less obvious as instantiations of colonialism to mainstream sensibilities. Our emphasis falls on the ethnic studies debates in K– 12 schools, particularly at the high school level. In our appraisal, the ethnic studies curriculum in Arizona, California, and other states represents a political struggle around the purpose of knowledge in public schools. Knowledge production is central to the colonizer’s will to dominate and the colonized’s counter-will to resist this domination (Said, 2001). To be clear, Said did not propose Occidentalism as a sufficient form of counter-hegemony to resist

Orientalism’s politics and scope, as if inverting the oppressor-oppressed relationship were liberatory (cf. Freire, 1993). We go a long way with Said and the coloniality reading group in believing that it is necessary to transform relationships of power through a knowledge project. That established, challenging the existing canon through ethnic studies inclusion is a modern example that falls within the domain of colonial studies in education. We recognize that ethnic studies debates have their origins in the 1960s curricular struggles in U.S. universities whereby the Eurocentric canon first faced serious institutional challenges. In this instance, the Third World Liberation Front in universities such as the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University fought to decolonize knowledge, teaching, and learning as vestiges of colonial istration within higher education (Delgado, 2016; Umemoto, 1989). Although ethnic studies on college campuses nationwide faces serious material and legitimation challenges today, it has been central for students who seek an alternative perspective on education. On specific campuses, it has been institutionalized as part of students’ general education, as in the case of UC Berkeley’s American Cultures requirement. In the second decade of the third millennium, ethnic studies enters K–12 education in cities like San Francisco, Calif., and Tucson, Ariz. This trend’s lessons are worth documenting and theorizing, for they inform educators that tensions around setting the knowledge agenda expose the colonial history of the United States (see Cabrera, Milem, Jaquette, & Marx, 2014). The vitriol surrounding Mexican American studies (MAS) in Arizona reveals precisely the high stakes involved in shifting the orientation toward knowledge, even when the change shows clear improvements for MAS student achievement. In the next section, we present a framework for the study of knowledge as central to colonial relations.

Postcolonialism, Epistemology, and Education

The turn to postcolonialism in education within colonial studies proper is the assertion of several neglected aspects in studying the colonial enterprise. We want to be clear that it does not represent a turn away from the continuing reality of colonialism but is an internal critique of the idea that colonialism as we know it today is the same old tired story of empire. That is, postcolonialism is the turn

toward understanding colonialism as an intellectual project, which changes as the contestation between the colonizer and colonized matures. It is likely that postcolonialism is another attempt to call attention to colonialism by another name. Postcolonialism is not something other than studying colonialism but a different lens or filter on it, this time emphasizing its cultural dimensions, including knowledge. The shift toward knowledge acknowledges the role that hegemony plays in the legitimation process of colonialism as a process of consent and forging of common sense (Said, 1979). In other words, with Gramsci’s Notebooks (1971) as a source of inspiration, Said’s work points to the importance of knowledge as a ive (not to be confused as the opposite of active) apparatus of colonialism. This does not suggest that knowledge is somehow noncoercive and Said’s (1979) study of Orientalism is precisely the indictment of an academic enterprise and industry flanked by power. By implicating research and theory on one side, and area studies and literature on the other, Said paints a more complete picture of imperialism’s reach beyond the end of the barrel of a gun. In this case, the pen is the sword that enables the colonizer to cut the colonized a thousand times. It is ive in the sense that Gramsci uses the term, to describe the process, in this case, of colonial consent, thereby necessitating a “ive revolution” through cultural resistance from the colonized. Despite empire’s power, it is not indomitable, and documenting histories like Orientalism is a way to archive the machinations of imperialism and in so doing demystify and possibly destroy it. We argue that a similar process of cultural resistance is necessary in order to unseat colonialism in education. In the colonial interaction, knowledge about the Orient is a hermeneutic exercise of power to read into the Orient what European, and later American, philologists want to confirm about the standing of Western civilization in light of the barbarism of the East. In this quest, knowledge is not judged mainly by its proximity to truth but by its truth effects, or the general politics of truth, as Foucault (1980) once called it. Or as Said (2001) clarifies,

Orientalism isn’t a myth, it’s a myth-system with a mytho-logic, rhetoric, and institutions of its own. It is a machine for producing statements about the Orient and it can be studied historically and institutionally as a form of anthropological imperialism. (p. 36)

It would have been enough had Orientalist writings and representations only affected the centuries of their production, but as noted, the colonizers’ power to stay often comes with staying power for their knowledge system, influencing social life through the creation of a myth system long after its beginnings. As a bureaucratic machine, Orientalist knowledge—that is, what is said—outlasts its speakers and becomes autonomous of them while retaining their traces as an authorial, in this case authoritative, voice. This voice has the ability to define “humankinds” (Hacking, 1986), in ever finer variegations of human types. It is guided by a populational reasoning that distinguishes the modern era of imperialism from previous epochs, the former’s drive for profit equaled only by its drive for knowledge. Decades of what has been called the “culture wars” in the United States have produced pathologized portrayals of communities of color. In the sociology of education, culture of poverty and deprivation arguments are problematic in the way they have given culture its autonomy from social structures and blamed communities of color for their own educational lot in life (Leonardo, 2015). This form of knowledge was legitimated as objective, authorized by the positivism of social science or the more recent form of Orientalism compared to the humanities. We are only beginning to understand the extent of the damage and havoc that the Moynihan Report, and the generation of scholars it convinced regarding the cultural deficit it claimed about Black families, has wrought on the educational lives of urban children, many of whom are of color. Hence, we understand knowledge as a political force as it becomes a tool for educating the world about social groups who are embodiments of national anxieties that need to be controlled or stamped out.

Knowing the Other as a Form of Social Control

The process for defining populations through knowledge happens at both the informal and formal levels. On the first level, knowledge is used to persuade people to perceive others as either problems or solutions. In the history of race, Blacks have traditionally been asked, “How does it feel to be a problem?” (Du

Bois, 1903/1989), whereas Asian Americans are summoned by, “How does it feel to be a solution?” (Prashad, 2000). In education, the “problem” Black child is disciplined by the narrative of the model Asian minority. In fact, both groups are disciplined by a regime of knowledge that confirms a mythical norm that is the White child. Whereas the first is deemed uneducable, the second is ultimately machine-like and unfeeling; the first is conceived as bouncing off the classroom walls, whereas the second is a wall. Neither one is to be trusted. Luckily for White children, normativity exists and hails them, but it does not come without consequences, as they are compelled to keep up the myth system, which is both real (because it is ed by institutions) and invented (because it comes with misrecognitions). Interpellated as differentiated subjects of education, children assume their place in discursive statements that function largely under the radar. They are part of what seems like a normal, racially neutral day in schools and other d institutions of education. Yet the same day would seem very unnatural without the very same racial statements (see Pollock, 2005). Such ready-made racial identities become the very stuff, and therefore the problem, of daily life in schools. They are part of the normal abnormality called racialization, and we would add, colonialism. On the second level, racialized and colonial knowledge is organized into formal units, often taking a bureaucratic appearance. These units cohere, more or less, in ideological systems of thought. The formalism behind organized knowledge allows ideological state apparatuses to create recognized bodies of information that all students should know, such as the curriculum (Althusser, 1971; Leonardo, 2010). Meanwhile, the actual bodies associated with knowledge as a geopolitical phenomenon, remain obscured. For Said, this is precisely how Orientalism functioned, because it facilitated a discourse community that was self-referential or referred internally to itself by sheer repetition through writing, reifying its own invention of an Other who possessed little ontological resistance against it (Fanon, 2008). In the end, Orientalism built an architecture of knowledge that was formidable, backed with the force of truth even as it reckoned minimally with the real lived experiences of Orientals. As a mythsystem of knowledge, Orientalism simultaneously invents the superiority of the West and its complement, the inferiority of the East. Said is careful to avoid suggesting that there exists no difference between the two societies, such that widespread illiteracy is a problem in the latter. But that the Occident should find itself speaking for the Orient exacerbates such differences in favor of the former. For instance, based on European s, one receives the impression that Europe trades in knowledge whereas the Near East trades in belief, religion, or

worse, superstitions. Thus, knowledge claims entail a higher standard for evidence over belief systems that do not rely on proof but faith (Scheffler, 2003). If Orientals by and large do not read, then they must be read as texts. It is easy to see how a distorted view of the East is promulgated by otherwise scientific, scholarly s. If we bring Said’s methodology to the study of official knowledge in schools (Apple, 2000), a similar politics happens when ideologically White scholarship paints people of color into a corner. As dominant knowledge becomes ensconced in a bureaucracy, establishes an air of objectivity or achieves scientific status, and is perpetuated by its disciples, it graduates to a veritable industry. No longer a fledgling discourse, it matures into a network of statements whose beginning is increasingly difficult to discern. As its audience grows, so does its authors’ investment in their own interpretations, leading predictably to petrification from wood into stone. Questioning their s’ veracity comes with difficulties, and any aspersions are quickly dismissed as irrational or ideological despite the fact that a fundamental ignorance sits at the center of the enterprise, in fact props it up. Charles Mills (2007) does not underestimate the fight-to-the-death dynamics involved in countering a knowledge that recognizes its political vocation:

Imagine an ignorance that resists. Imagine an ignorance that fights back. Imagine an ignorance militant, aggressive, not to be intimidated, an ignorance that is active, dynamic, that refuses to go quietly— not at all confined to the illiterate and uneducated but propagated at the highest levels of the land, indeed presenting itself unblushingly as knowledge. (p. 13; italics in original)

Alongside Mills, we argue that the racial and colonial project is always already a knowledge project and that epistemology is already a racial proposition. The war of position, determined by conditions of knowledge as well as by the power/resistance matrix that surrounds it from within and without, represents the cultural cognate of colonialism’s material basis. It confirms Foucault’s (1980) insistence on the indivisibility of the power/knowledge ratio that implicates knowledge’s complicity with power rather than the separation of knowledge

from power in more modernist s. The aphorism “speaking truth to power” casts knowledge as the opposite of power, making its inverse, “speaking power to truth,” more apposite. In this sense, knowledge is not the antidote to power, nor is power the denial of knowledge. In the power/knowledge couplet, knowledge performs power and power is the ether through which knowledge travels. In the struggle to teach K–12 students what they need to know in order to gain entrance to higher education or practical vocations, or simply to experience schooling as uplifting, the coloniality of knowledge makes the process less straightforward. As the debates on ethnic studies reach a fevered pitch around the nation, the cries from the Right about ethnic chauvinism in states like Arizona and California detract and distract our attention from the political moorings of the curriculum that, Kliebard (1987) reminds us, haunt the discipline. To this history of the curriculum, we add the story of colonialism, whose recent page is the fate of ethnic studies in K–12. This is where we turn next.

Decolonial Epistemologies in High School Ethnic Studies

In the United States, urban classrooms are products of internal colonialism (Barrera, Muñoz, & Ornelas, 1972; Blauner, 2001; Muñoz, 2007; Tejeda, Espinoza, & Gutiérrez, 2003), where American educational ideals inform Eurocentric colonial narratives that create, reproduce, and maintain social inequity (Apple, 2004; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Brayboy, Castagno, & Maughan, 2007). Despite projects that attempt to counter colonial knowledges, for example institutionalizing Black History Month, celebrating Cesar Chavez or Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., or formalizing a district-wide African American History mandate (Sanders, 2010), the teaching and learning of the perspectives of marginalized communities remain contributive or additive rather than transformative (Banks, 1991). Such curricular approaches are limited in that they often maintain dominant perspectives about the experiences of people of color, which reproduce the geopolitics of knowledge. The transformation and social action approaches to integrating ethnic content into curricula shift the perspective from a dominant colonial epistemology to multiple viewpoints that

recognize and highlight epistemic diversity in society and within the classroom (Banks, 1991; Grosfoguel, 2012). The transformation approach to integrating ethnic content changes the structure of curricula entirely and the perspective of the course is taught from various frames of reference, highlighting the vantage points of people of color (Banks, 1991, pp. 24–26). Banks adds that the social action approach incorporates the new structure that is inclusive of subaltern perspectives and engages students in the process of making decisions about the curriculum and taking action to help solve social issues (pp. 25–26). The social action approach encourages students to think from, with, and alongside ethnic/racial groups within their communities, where are subjects of their own stories rather than objects within a colonial narrative. As a decolonial knowledge project, the high school ethnic studies curriculum offers a space for teachers and students to engage in critiquing the Western, Orientalist, Eurocentric-Heteropatriarchal epistemologies (see Lugones, 2007) ingrained within U.S. schools. By using a social action approach, ethnic studies recovers epistemologies that have been deemed inferior and/or not valuable and revises what counts as knowledge in school curricula. Ethnic studies aims to counter the distorted teaching of American history and the normed “American” experience in U.S. schools through a lens that highlights the epistemic diversity of the nation (Banks, 2012; Yang, 2000). The decolonial, ethnic studies perspective critiques subtractive schooling strategies that require students to shed their cultural identities in order to fulfill Eurocentric, colonial agendas of assimilation (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; San Pedro, 2015; Serna, 2013; Valenzuela, 1999). Colonial epistemologies within U.S. schools foster competition, individualism, internalized oppression, and often reproduce processes of divide and conquer. For instance, Antonio, a U.S.-born MexicanAmerican student in Cati de los Ríos’s (2013) Chicana/o-Latina/o studies class at Pomona High School, interrogated his own internalized racial oppression. Antonio entered the classroom denying Mexican culture and “clowned” paisas, or newly arrived Mexican immigrants, because he grew up with the belief that being U.S.-born was better and superior. In his written reflections, Antonio realized that this belief “was me hating myself and my cultura” (as cited in de los Ríos, 2013, p. 67). In a nine-month critical teacher inquiry, de los Ríos (2013) described how students drew upon the sitios y lengua (decolonizing discourse) “to critically remap their own educational identities and trajectories” (p. 69). In the high school ethnic studies classroom, a constant questioning of the relations of power in constructing knowledge is necessary to accept and honor the counter-epistemologies of communities of color. For Antonio, ethnic studies

was a site to equip him with epistemological tools to contest and dismantle the dominant perspectives on his community, particularly “undocumented Raza, U.S.-born Raza, and other minorities” (p. 68) but also to reimagine new ways of being and knowing. Developing decolonial epistemologies with ethnic studies curricula and through students’ internal and communal interactions can reveal new counterstories to complicate our analysis of the relationship between race and colonialism. Ethnic studies epistemologies draw from non-Western, Indigenous, third-world, and subaltern schools of thought that are generated “from,” “with,” and “alongside” ethnic and racial groups (Grosfoguel, 2012). This approach transforms the colonized, who were previously objects within knowledge production, into subjects of a (de)colonial history, whose counterstories serve as a text to reflect the experiences of marginalized students’ familial and communal epistemologies. Bringing forth decolonial epistemologies in the classroom continues CRT’s commitment to highlighting the experiential knowledge of communities of color and asks us to consider global and transnational perspectives as legitimate knowledge. Collaboration is central to expanding decolonial epistemologies in the high school ethnic studies classroom (Acosta, 2007; Cytrynbaum, 2010; de los Ríos & Ochoa, 2012; Tintiangco-Cubales, Daus-Magbual, & Daus-Magbual, 2010). For instance, educators with the MAS program in Tucson partnered with Chicano elders in Arizona to build an epistemological perspective, the Xikano Paradigm, which draws upon preColumbian philosophies (Acosta, 2007). The four elements of the Xikano Paradigm were designed to students in developing their academic identities so that they might reach self-actualization. The first element, Tezkatlipoka or “the smoking mirror,” focuses on self-reflection, where students delve into a deeper understanding of who they are and their relation to the world. The second element, Quetzalkoatl or “feathered serpent,” is a process where students and teachers learn their ancestral histories or precious and beautiful knowledge told from Chicano perspectives. At this stage, students begin to see the experiences and struggles of their communities as valuable. The third element, Huitzilopochtli, which literally means “hummingbird to the left,” is symbolic of students’ courage, strength, and will to act. The last element of the Xikano Paradigm is Xipe Totek or “shedding skin,” which represents the transformation and renewal of self and community (Acosta, 2007). Acosta and other MAS teachers fused the Xikano Paradigm with critical race theory and Freire’s notion of praxis to equip students with tools to engage in their various research projects and processes of knowledge production.

In addition to recovering the lost epistemologies of marginalized peoples and colonized communities, a decolonial epistemology of ethnic studies views students as co-constructors and co-producers of knowledge (Jocson, 2008). While traditional classrooms deem students as empty receptacles with the goal of obtaining knowledge (Freire, 1993), ethnic studies guides students in recognizing the funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzales, 1992) they carry with them into the classroom and learning to regard their voice and family’s narratives as legitimate sources of knowledge and truth. This culturally responsive approach to the ethnic studies classroom meets students where they are and values, honors, and builds upon their lived experiences (Gay, 2002; Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2015). Students establish an understanding that they have the ability to place their realities within a sociohistorical context and the capacity to tell/share/write their stories, ideas, dreams, and wisdom in meaningful ways. As producers of knowledge and culture, students (re)write history and lived reality through the use of oral histories of family/community , short stories, poetry, plays, community performances, and everyday self-expression. For ethnic studies teachers and students, creating decolonial discourse does not occur in isolation. Often, communities establish coalitions to advocate for the course, and the teaching is done in collaboration. For instance, in 1997, an Asian American studies course emerged at a large public Northeastern high school as a result of an organized campaign led by Asian American students demanding Asian faculty and courses that reflected their experiences (Cytrynbaum, 2010). A newly credentialed teacher, Paul, was hired to teach the course and was one of two Asian faculty at the school. Understanding the role that students played in advocating for the course, he entered the classroom reminding his students that they “had the power to change things, that they could come together to address issues that concerned them” (p. 11). Paul partnered with local elementary and secondary schools in a project where students taught what they learned in their Asian American Studies course to younger generations. They also collaborated with a local Asian American youth theater company to help the artists prepare for their end-of-the-year performance project, which utilized various media (e.g., poetry, rap, spoken word) to showcase students’ counternarratives. This project was a space where “youth explored and bridged differences, challenged stereotypes, developed voices, and articulated complex identities … they generated bridges of empathy and insight through humanizing stories of self that revealed unique experiences of immigration and stinging epithets” (p. 16). Here, students’ racialized and gendered experiences and bodily

perspectives became a text for the class and their audience. Collaboration in ethnic studies curriculum and teacher development was also an essential component of the implementation of critical Filipina/o American studies in San Francisco. In 2001, the Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) developed a teaching pipeline to recruit more Filipina/o American teachers to decolonize curriculum and pedagogy. This course is offered to students at the elementary, middle school, high school, and college levels and is taught utilizing barangay pedagogy (Tintiangco-Cubales, Daus-Magbual, & Daus-Magbual, 2010). Derived from the term balangay, barangays are pre-colonial, egalitarian, and kinship-based sailboat communities, which PEP uses to inform its teaching and learning. PEP’s barangay pedagogy was designed to signal the communal nature of indigenous society in the Philippines and to simultaneously counter the individualist, colonial residue from Spanish and American rule (Lawsin, 1998). This approach highlights the fact that people within the same “barangay are in the struggle together…. [They] believe that one’s barangay is central to one’s identity and livelihood” (Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2010, p. 85). The decolonial, communal philosophy of barangay is practiced by teacher apprentices, students, and community partners involved with PEP. More specifically, teacher apprentices work in barangays of two or three to write curriculum and teach. In addition, students in the critical Filipina/o American studies classes are placed within barangays at the beginning of the school year and participate in intergenerational barangays with students at PEP’s various school sites. PEP teachers and students engage in a communal approach to developing curriculum and producing counter-narratives, culminating in a community show where students perform the collective knowledges they produced throughout the school year. While student expression through performance demonstrates one approach to producing knowledge, an examination of student silence can reveal often neglected perspectives. In a three-year ethnography of a Native American literature class in Arizona, Timothy San Pedro (2015) found that student silence and internal dialogues can be just as generative as the dialogical processes that occur in the classroom. After speaking with students who remained silent during a class discussion on the school mascot (Indian Warrior), San Pedro found that their silence did not signal disengagement. On the contrary, the students listened and utilized their peers’ opposing viewpoints as texts to formulate their own understanding about the Indian mascot debate. In this classroom, students’ verbalized opinions are validated and can be used in written reflections. The

written reflections also serve as a site for reticent students to voice their thoughts, knowledges, and emergent understandings. The lessons from high school ethnic studies classrooms feature the promise of decolonizing knowledge and schools, altering how students come to understand themselves as subjects and producers of knowledge in a colonial context. Our goal here is not to romanticize the possibilities of ethnic studies classrooms through celebratory forms of multiculturalism. Instead, we highlight the potential these courses offer as a catalyst for decolonial interventions in U.S. schools, thereby expanding educators’ understanding of colonialism and race. The teaching and learning of ethnic studies with decolonial epistemologies revisit the lasting effects of colonialism in American institutions, implicating schooling as part of the colonial project. We are not arguing that every high school ethnic studies class is a site of decolonizing knowledges. Rather, when coupled with a decolonial lens and approach to teaching, ethnic studies exposes the coloniality of power, knowledge, and the educative process. We recognize the violence and disruption associated with decolonization, particularly as the colonized unlearn what they have learned (Danius, Jonsson, & Spivak, 1993; Fanon, 1963; Leonardo & Porter, 2010), and we acknowledge that engaging in decolonial education comes with various tensions and obstacles to implementation. Explicit opposition to ethnic studies has garnered national attention in states like Arizona, although more nuanced challenges to teaching such courses have evaded the limelight. While MAS students’ vocal opponents have been elected officials and the Tucson school board, ethnic studies programs in other regions of the nation struggle with various obstacles: contrasting conceptions of the purposes of the ethnic studies course among stakeholders, cutbacks on resources or hiring, lack of institutional at local campuses, high turnover among teacher and istrative advocates, inconsistency in teacher commitment, teacher noncompliance in completing required ethnic studies coursework, and low academic expectations of students (Ginwright, 2004; Pollard & Ajirotutu, 2001; Sanders, 2010; Scharfenberg, 2002). In addition, high school ethnic studies curricula that fail to acknowledge and address students’ material realities (e.g., limited employment, housing, child care, and health care) make it difficult for students to courses meant to be relevant (Ginwright, 2004). The challenge is to ensure that connections are made between curricula and students’ everyday lives.

When creating new ways of knowing and/or reclaiming indigenous, subjugated, or oppositional knowledges, there remains tension with existing Western knowledges as well as unnoticed conflict among competing decolonial epistemologies. Here, we recognize the multiplicity of indigenous knowledges. This does not suggest that ethnic studies courses compete with one another, because the essence of decolonization combats colonial approaches to social relations, such as competition. Alternatively, we ask: How are ethnic studies courses in various regions within the nation in conversation with one another? What is their relation or responsibility, if any, to other high school ethnic studies classrooms? The research shows that in some high school ethnic studies courses, learning does not end with knowledge acquisition in the classroom but continues with student engagement in continual processes of action and reflection, particularly within the students’ local communities. In the next section, the struggles in one district help illuminate the urgent need for action across the nation.

Knowledge/Action

When we transition from Western ways of knowing to decolonized knowledge systems, knowledge is no longer something to own or occupy but is relational, applicable to our lived experiences, and crucial to our survival. Brayboy and Maughan (2009) assert that “knowledge must be lived and is a verb…. Knowledge from an Indigenous perspective is active. For those who have knowledge, they must be vigorous in their acquisition and use of it” (p. 11). Students involved in nurturing decolonial epistemologies within ethnic studies classrooms go beyond conceptual ways of knowing and thinking; they also engage the body and spirit in practices that produce knowledge. Here, students become researchers as they investigate the pressing issues within their own lives and create plans to address their community’s concerns. The epistemic shift in ethnic studies is not mainly a cognitive enterprise but is also about taking actions toward community and self-determination, ultimately transforming one’s way of being and participating in the world. Knowledge, then, becomes actionable or “actional” in Fanon’s sense (see Leonardo, 2017). What is to be done with these new perspectives?

In ethnic studies classes, students take active roles in developing decolonial epistemologies, which “involves seeing injustice with second sight and then acknowledging one has the capability and knowledge to bring about change. It is recognition of [the students’] efficacy with challenging oppression” (Cammarota, 2016, p. 241). Ethnic studies students and teachers challenge oppression in various ways. For instance, students and teachers in Arizona participated in ceremonial runs to challenge the statewide ban on ethnic studies and engage in “prayer, healing, unity, recovering indigenous customs and acquiring sacred knowledge through the process of interacting with the land, Tonantzin, Mother Earth” (Serna, 2013, p. 53). The ceremonial runs in Arizona were led by Calpolli Teoxicalli, a group who identify as Tucson’s TlamanalcaIndigenous peoples (Rodriguez, 2012). These actions altered runners’ relationship to the land, neighborhoods, and their spiritual selves. Robles, a Raza studies alumnus in Arizona, shared his experience:

One of the symbolic meanings running represents is the offering of your body and energy to the Earth. With each step you are honoring the relationship you share with the Earth, as you demonstrate a very significant bond with the land, which modern science knows as gravity…. I realized that us running was more of a prayer and an offering than a protest. It was almost like an exchange and a demonstration to the Earth and all the life-giving energies, that we will put our bodies and our very survival on the line for something bigger … it has become something which I see essential in my own spiritual well being … it reconnects me to those lost traditions and understandings our people used to know and on. It’s another healthy way to decolonizing our minds, bodies and spirits. (quoted in Rodriguez, 2012, p. 82)

During these runs, participants centered “Maiz knowledge” and actively refused colonial, Eurocentric, Greco-Roman knowledges to promote communal and spiritual health within their neighborhoods (Rodriguez, 2012; Serna, 2013). Decolonial epistemologies are embodied within teacher and student actions engaged in transforming knowledge to social change. As we have discussed, high school ethnic studies classrooms engage students in decolonizing knowledge beyond the classroom and often foster students’

commitment to their communities. The transformative nature of ethnic studies is also evidenced by engaging students in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). Within various ethnic studies courses, students engage in collective processes of investigating issues pertinent to their lived realities, with the objective of making positive social change to their personal, schooling, familial, and community experiences (Akom, 2011; Cammarota & Romero, 2011; Romero et al., 2008). In fact, when Tucson students’ ethnic studies classes were under attack in 2010, YPAR projects provided students with the methodological and critical analysis tools to speak back to power (Cammarota, 2016). Some students and allies employed their counter-will and founded a grassroots organizing group to keep ethnic studies alive for current and future student generations. Students took action at various school board meetings and press conferences to advocate for ethnic studies. While the school board did not comply with the group’s demands, students “gained an increased awareness of injustice … [and] became more confident that they could make some kind of difference” (p. 247). The student actions in Tucson also had national implications. For instance, when teaching her Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies course in California, de los Ríos (2013) discussed contemporary issues such as the ban on ethnic studies in Arizona as part of the curriculum. The students in de los Ríos’s class “saw their stories of critical consciousness intimately tied to the young people fighting for their liberation and freedom in Tucson” (p. 70). In this particular course, students began to “recenter themselves as strong and intelligent,” taking on various student leadership positions on campus. The sitios y lenguas served as a catalyst “to create bridges with their peers and their communities,” which then deepened their commitment to their gente (p. 70). The ethnic studies epistemologies transformed the ways students related to knowledge and their communities. The ethnic studies ban in Tucson gained national recognition and inspired the production of knowledge to demonstrate ethnic studies’ social values and effectiveness in improving student academic achievement (Cabrera et al., 2014; Dee & Penner, 2017; Sleeter, 2011). Despite its success in addressing academic disparities, ethnic studies continues to face political opposition where “certain knowledges and perspectives are welcomed and deemed safe within schools, while other ‘ethnic’ knowledges are not welcomed and deemed dangerous” (San Pedro, 2015, p. 515) or criminal (Serna, 2013). In states like California, ethnic studies ers have taken advantage of the political climate to advocate for more inclusion within the curriculum and the expansion/institutionalization of ethnic studies at the K–12 level.

Colonialism is alive in U.S. education, but may not be well. In fact, as we hoped to show, it represents a sickness that compromises the noble-turned-intoaudacious ambitions of public education. As a knowledge relation, colonialism in education rears its head in the central aspect of education as a knowledge industry. Its knowledge brokers in the form of teachers and its knowers-intraining in the form of students are implicated in an awkward trade that makes the otherwise innocent event of knowing very much loaded. Thus, we act on the world every time we claim to know it, because knowing is an active process in constructing that same world. But in this chapter we argue that a decolonial perspective on schooling is about creating a different world where ways of knowing co-exist in what Said (2000) calls contrapuntal analysis, or the reality of living with difference. The ethnic studies challenge is one such opportunity. For in calling for curricular reform, ethnic studies in K–12 is basic education for all students, a course of study that affirms not only the right of students of color to attend public school as equals to Whites, but their legitimate right to know about their history and right to self-determination. Decolonizing knowledge in schools is no less than decolonizing society at large.

Note

1Although not unrelated to the label used to invent the Far East and its people, Oriental is most directly related to the history of the Middle East, or Near East, and only secondarily related to the historical experience of Asian Americans in Said’s explication. This is true despite the fact that Orientalism covers the Far East in the second half of Said’s text.

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Chapter 8

How I Came to Work in the Field of Racial Microaggressions: A Critical Race Theory Journey From Marginality to Microaggressions

D ANIEL G. S OLORZANO University of California, Los Angeles

In a previous publication I mentioned that I have spent most of my academic life searching for, collecting, and analyzing books, journal articles, newspapers and magazines, and other written and visual materials on the everyday racialized experiences of Communities of Color ¹ (see Solorzano, 2013). Indeed, I have spent many hours, days, months, and years in libraries and archives of all sizes practicing my craft of knowledge exploration, recovery, and re-creation. I have searched in bookstores, video stores, second-hand stores, antique stores, estate sales, yard sales, and photo archives looking for materials to help me better understand the cultural wealth that exists in Communities of Color (Yosso, 2005; Yosso & Solorzano, 2005). This chapter is a story on how I used the tools of critical race theory (CRT) to identify and analyze the concepts of marginality and racial microaggressions. I begin by telling my story of how I came to CRT

and how that led me on a journey to discover and utilize the concepts of marginality and racial microaggressions in my research, writing, and teaching. I end the chapter by reflecting on the journey and where I see the challenges and opportunities facing the field of racial microaggressions.

My Journey to CRT

I was first introduced to critical race theory in July of 1993 at the library of East Los Angeles College—a community college in Southern California.² I came across an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education³ by Peter Monaghan (1993) titled “‘Critical Race Theory’ Questions Role of Legal Doctrine in Racial Inequality.” Although I didn’t know it at the time, this was my first “Critical Race Moment.”⁴ The article introduced me to an emerging field that was challenging the orthodoxy of race, racism, and the law. It also mentioned and led me to CRT’s founding legal scholars, such as Derrick Bell, Kimberly Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, Linda Greene, Lani Guinier, Charles Lawrence, Mari Matsuda, Margaret Montoya, and Patricia Williams.⁵ Critical race theory in the law seemed to be a framework that began to answer some of the questions that had been troubling me—especially questions on how we center race and racism in our academic research and teaching. Yet two reactions also went through my mind as I read the article. My First Reaction—This framework is a new and powerful way of looking at race and racism in the law and by extension the social sciences, humanities, and education. My Second Reaction— I’ve seen this before. In the days that followed I realized the language of CRT in the law resonated with my previous training in race and ethnic studies and Freirean critical pedagogy. At that point, I returned to some of the early foundational writings in these fields and tried to connect them to CRT.⁷ In order to secure time for this academic journey, I asked for and received a sabbatical to immerse myself in the CRT foundational writings, to incorporate it with my background and training in race and ethnic studies and Freirean pedagogy, and to apply it to social science and educational research. This is how my journey began in CRT.

My Journey to Marginality

My experience with the concept of marginality predates my introduction to CRT. In 1987, I received a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in sociology to study the career paths of Chicana and Chicano Ph.D. scholars. This multimethod study surveyed an initial sample of 66 Chicana and Chicano Ford predoctoral, dissertation, and postdoctoral fellows on issues related to their experiences with race and racism in academia. At the same time, I was creating another data set and was conducting life history interviews with 24 Chicana and Chicano Ph.D. scholars in mathematics, science, and engineering (MSE). I began by using the tool of marginality to frame their journey to, within, and beyond the academy (see Collins, 1986). I was looking at how these scholars experienced racial/ethnic, gender, and class marginality. I was clear in differentiating the related concepts of the margin and marginality. I defined the margin as a complex and contentious space or place where People of Color experience race, gender, and class subordination. In those complex and contentious spaces or places, People of Color are forced out of the center and into the margins of society (hooks, 1990).⁸ I then defined marginality as that complex and contentious status of subordination experienced by People of Color. The construct of marginality was a useful analytical tool for me in understanding the problem of the underrepresentation and subordination of People of Color— especially within the academy. I also recognized that W. E. B. Du Bois theorized about racial marginality in the late 19th century. As early as 1897, Du Bois introduced the concepts of second-sight, double-consciousness, and twoness. He wrote:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder [emphasis added]. (p. 194)

Although Du Bois never referred to these concepts as marginality, his insight was clearly the precursor to the concept of marginality that Robert Park (1928) introduced to the field of sociology in 1928—31 years later. As far as I can tell, Park never credited his thinking to insights from Du Bois. Using CRT as a basic framework, I analyzed the interview data, looking for experiences with and responses to racism, sexism, and classism. Specifically, after all the interviews were conducted and analyzed, some thematic patterns around marginality emerged (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Specifically, I began to (a) identify all the examples of and reactions to racial, gender, and class marginality; (b) determine whether patterns could be found in the types, contexts, and responses to race, gender, and class marginality; and (c) find examples of text or “autobiographical moments” that illustrated the different forms of and reactions to marginality (Culp, 1996). In this analytical process, I found examples and began to compare these race and gendered experiences across the scholars in my study.

My Journey to Racial Microaggressions

As I was analyzing the interviews and writing an initial manuscript on marginality titled “A Critical Race Analysis of Marginality: Examining the Career Paths of Chicana and Chicano Doctoral Scientists,”¹ I came across an article in the Yale Law Journal by Peggy Davis (1989) titled “Law as Microaggression.” This was the first time I had seen the word microaggression in either title or narrative. To examine the concept of microaggression, Davis takes readers on a brief elevator ride.

The scene is a courthouse in Bronx, New York. A white assistant city attorney takes the court elevator up to the ninth floor. At the fifth floor, the doors open. A black woman asks: “Going down?” “Up,” says [the city attorney]. And then, as the doors close: “You see? They can’t even tell up from down. I’m sorry, but it’s

true.” (pp. 1560–1561)

Davis (1989) observes that there are many explanations for the Black woman’s question, “Going down?,” from the possibility that she was just being congenial to a broken elevator display. However, the White city attorney jumped to an assumption that the Black woman was unintelligent. His comment was based on a stereotype, and as Davis interprets it, was a micro-form of racism—that is, not just a personal slight, but an instance of racialized harm. Davis goes on to define microaggressions as “stunning, automatic acts of disregard that stem from unconscious attitudes of white superiority and constitute a verification of black inferiority” (p. 1576). Davis cites the origins of this concept in the work of Chester Pierce. At footnote 5 in the article, Davis’s first Pierce citation is a twopage unpublished manuscript from 1986 titled “Homoracial Behavior in the U.S.A.” (Pierce & Profit, 1991). The Davis article had a total of five Chester Pierce citations¹¹ and led me to Chester Pierce and his colleagues’ definition of microaggressions as

subtle, stunning, often automatic, and non-verbal exchanges which are ‘put downs’ of blacks by offenders. The offensive mechanisms used against blacks often are innocuous. The cumulative weight of their never-ending burden is the major ingredient in black-white interactions. (Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Wills, 1978, p. 66)

The Davis (1989) article, the Pierce citations, and this definition started me on a journey to find, understand, and utilize the concept of racial microaggressions in my research and teaching. I went on to read (and reread) all the works of Chester Pierce. Indeed, I wanted to know how and why he came to work on microaggressions.

Bringing Racial Microaggressions to My Work on Marginality

In 1994–1995, I went back to my study of Ford fellows and reanalyzed the data using the analytical tool of racial microaggressions. I also reanalyzed the life history interviews from the sample of 24 Chicana and Chicano Ph.D.s in MSE. I continued to use CRT as a framework to examine how racial and gender microaggressions affected the career paths of these Chicana and Chicano scholars. I had three objectives for this study: (a) to extend and apply critical race theory to research in education; (b) to recognize, document, and analyze racial and gender microaggressions of Chicana and Chicano scholars; and (c) to hear the voices of discrimination’s survivors by examining the effect of race and gender microaggressions on the lives of these Chicana and Chicano scholars. As I analyzed the data, three patterns of racial and gender microaggressions emerged: (a) scholars felt out of place in the academy because of their race and/or gender; (b) scholars felt their teachers/professors had lower expectations for them; and (c) the scholars reported subtle and not-so-subtle experiences with race and gender discrimination. As I used the concept of racial microaggressions to reanalyze the Ford and MSE scholar data, I began to see its power and complexity. For instance, in the interview quotes below, I began to recode for racial and gender microaggressions. One Chicana scientist recounted:

Sometimes you don’t know it’s gender discrimination when you’re in the midst of it because it’s so subtle [emphasis added], but when you mature and you look back, you realize that, yeah, there were distinctions by which young males were really encouraged to participate in math courses, in math clubs, and the intense extracurricular activities, whereas the young women were encouraged to be more auxiliary.

Another Chicana scientist shared:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told “you’re not like the rest of them,” “you’re different,” or more specifically, “you’re different from other Mexicans.”

Ever since my college days, I have been told this time and time again [emphasis added].

A Chicano biologist mentioned a feeling that some of the other scholars expressed about the experiences of many minority professors in the field:

It wasn’t the time period when I got my Ph.D. that caused problems for me. It is the subtle racism in my department that no matter how much I produce, I am and will forever be a “target of opportunity,” or an “affirmative action professor,” and that means that I will never be seen by my colleagues as their equal [emphasis added].

Throughout these interviews, a majority of the participants expressed a sense that each individual racist and sexist act could be overcome. For instance, the day-to-day slights, the remarks, the attitudes, the behaviors of others were negative experiences they learned to live with. However, the cumulative effect of these individual acts over time was what affected these scholars. In the MSE scholar study, a Chicano biologist reinforces the illustration:

There are overt and blatant forms of racism, but there are also the constant and subtle negative experiences that can wear down one’s spirit. The racism just below the surface. It is the accumulation of these racist events that wear you down…. What bothers me is the constant retort from non-Hispanics that I was “being too sensitive about racial issues” [emphasis added].

After working my way through this analytical process of moving from marginality to racial microaggression, I have now come to define racial microaggressions as one form of systemic everyday racism that serves to keep those at the racial margins in their place. Racial microaggressions are:

•verbal and nonverbal assaults directed toward People of Color, often carried out in subtle, automatic, or unconscious forms; •layered assaults that are based on the race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname of a Person of Color; •cumulative assaults that take a physiological, psychological, and academic toll on People of Color.

In 1998, I published an article based on the Ford scholars in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, titled “Critical Race Theory, Racial and Gender Microaggressions, and the Experiences of Chicana and Chicano Scholars” (Solorzano, 1998b). As far as I can tell, other than the works of Pierce and his colleagues, this article was the first to empirically examine racial microaggressions.

My Continuing Journey: The University of Michigan Law School Case (2000–2003)

In the fall of 1999, Professor Walter Allen of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), ed me and asked if I would be part of a team of researchers who would conduct campus climate studies for the Grutter v. Bollinger affirmative action case (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 2003). Grutter was a federal case that was making its way through the lower courts and was challenging the use of race in issions at the University of Michigan Law School. Allen mentioned that the Sixth Circuit Federal Appeals Court had agreed to let “student interveners” enter the trial. As a result, the federal district judge stopped the proceedings and set a July 31, 2000, date for submission of all reports, briefs, and other ing materials on behalf of the student interveners.

In January 2000, Allen convened his team to design a campus climate study of the University of Michigan Law School and its four main feeders— the University of Michigan (undergraduate), Michigan State University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley.¹² Our multimethod design incorporated surveys, focus groups, interviews, document analysis, and other public records. We went into the field to gather data at each of the universities in March of 2000. We submitted the final report to the court on July 31, 2000. The federal trial in the Eastern District of Michigan resumed in January 2001. The final report to the court was published in the UC Berkeley La Raza Law Journal and titled “Affirmative Action, Educational Equity and Campus Racial Climate: A Case Study of the University of Michigan Law School” (Allen & Solorzano, 2001). Our first research article that focused on the experiences of African American students was published in the Journal of Negro Education and titled “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students” (Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000).¹³ Later we published an article from this data on Latina and Latino students in the Harvard Educational Review titled “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates” (Yosso, Ceja, Smith, & Solorzano, 2009). As part of our commitment to the various communities that ed the student intervenors in the Grutter case, Allen’s team would travel to Michigan and present our findings. At one of these meetings in 2001 at the University of Michigan, we finished our presentation on campus climate in general and racial microaggressions in particular, to a group made up of University of Michigan students, faculty, and Detroit high school students. As the audience lined up for questions and answers, a young African American high school student came to the microphone. She stood there crying. When she finally spoke, she said, “You’ve given me a name for my pain.” This comment remains with me because this young woman expressed the raw and real feelings that many People of Color have since expressed from many different age groups, communities, and walks of life. This young woman showed us that these two words, racial microaggressions, are a powerful way to acknowledge the everyday pain and suffering that People of Color experience.

My Continuing Journey With Racial Microaggressions

Since those first articles on racial microaggressions, I have continued to work with colleagues on research and conceptual manuscripts on that subject. For instance, our work included publications on a second federal court case on affirmative action in California (Solorzano & Allen, 2000; Solorzano, Allen, & Carroll, 2002), on racial battle fatigue (Smith, Yosso, & Solorzano, 2006, 2007), on teachers (Kohli & Solorzano, 2012; Ledesma & Solorzano, 2013), on visual microaggressions (Perez Huber & Solorzano, 2015a), on microaggressions as research tools (Perez Huber & Solorzano, 2015b), on microaggressions and social work pedagogy (Perez Huber & Solorzano, 2018), and encyclopedia entries and policy briefs (Perez Huber & Solorzano, 2015c; Solorzano & Perez Huber, 2012).

The UCLA Moreno Report and My Continuing Journey With Racial Microaggressions

On Friday, October 18, 2013, Gene Block, the UCLA chancellor, emailed the UCLA community an external report titled Independent Investigative Report on Acts of Bias and Discrimination Involving Faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. This report has become known as the Moreno Report, named after the chair of the committee, retired California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno (Moreno, Jackson-Triche, Nash, Rice, & Suzuki, 2013). Chancellor Block mentioned that the Moreno Report contained some sobering and disturbing s of bias and discrimination that some of the faculty had experienced at UCLA. They referenced some of our work on microaggressions:

Several faculty referenced the notion of “microaggressions,” which researchers have defined as “subtle verbal and nonverbal insults directed toward non-Whites, often done automatically and unconsciously. They are layered insults based on one’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname.” It is not clear to us whether any workable definition of discriminatory conduct is capable of capturing every such

microaggression experienced by a minority faculty member…. Heightened awareness of the issue of racially insensitive conduct may help to reduce microaggressions or other subtle behaviors that degrade the work environment for faculty of color [emphasis added]. (Moreno et al., 2013, pp. 20–21)

In response to the Moreno Report, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) established a committee, which issued a report in late December 2013, Report to the President, Academic Council, and Chancellors (Senate-istration Work Group on the Moreno Report, 2013). The report stated that “Systemwide P&T [Promotion and Tenure] has been concerned about low level discriminatory actions that occur over a long period of time—things such as undervaluation, microaggression, and marginalization—that never as a single instance reach the threshold for filing a formal grievance [emphasis mine]” (p. 10). One of the UCOP responses was to initiate a UC system-wide seminar for university leaders at each of the 10 campuses. The seminar was titled Fostering Inclusive Excellence: Strategies and Tools for Department Chairs and Deans. The stated goals of the four-hour seminar were to (a) help participants gain a better understanding of implicit bias and micro-aggressions and their impact on departmental/school climate; (b) increase participants’ effectiveness at recognizing and interrupting/addressing microaggressions when they occur; and (c) discuss tools and strategies for developing an inclusive departmental/school climate. I was asked to give the seminar lecture: “Using the Critical Race Tools of Racial and Gender Microaggressions to Examine Everyday Racism in Academic Spaces.”¹⁴ These seminars were to take place on each of the 10 UC campuses for departmental chairs, deans, and other campus senior leadership throughout the 2014–2015 academic year. In the six years since the Moreno Report came out in October 2013, I have given more than 100 public lectures, presentations, and workshops on racial microaggressions at my university, at other public and private universities, and in professional and community settings. I have spoken to high school students; undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from various departments and schools; teachers and teacher candidates; principals and principal candidates; counselors; university leaders; and civic leaders.

What Have I Learned in My Journey With Racial Microaggressions?

In the 24 years that I’ve been working in the field of racial microaggressions, I have researched, published, and spoken on the importance of this concept and what we need to do to move the field forward. I would like to share five points to about racial microaggressions:

1. that the “micro” in microaggressions does not mean “less than.” The micro in microaggressions means “in the everyday.” 2. the cumulative impact of verbal and nonverbal microaggressive assaults on People of Color in the everyday. 3. that racial microaggressions matter because they are symptoms of larger structural problems—racism and White supremacy. 4. that we need to acknowledge and disrupt the discourses of racial microaggressions in the everyday. 5. People of Color need to validate and affirm the dignity and humanity of ourselves and of one another as a response to racial microaggressions.

Research in higher education has identified the academic, physiological, and psychological consequences of microaggressions over time. However, research has also shown that People of Color respond to racial microaggressions in powerful ways that counter negative perceptions and stereotypes based on race, gender, class, language, sexuality, immigration status, phenotype, accent, and surname. The analytical tool of racial microaggressions gives People of Color who experience this form of everyday racism a “name for their pain.” It also enables researchers and educators to expose, challenge, and transform educational spaces to be more inclusive of diversity, in a spirit that values the

presence, knowledge, and humanity of Students, Staff, and Faculty of Color.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Professor Chester Pierce for leading me on this journey to recognize, reflect upon, and take action against racial microaggressions in the ongoing battle for racial justice.

Notes

1“Communities of Color” is intentionally capitalized to reject the current norm. This practice is part of a political movement toward language use that reflects values of social and racial justice. It also applies to “People of Color,” “Students of Color,” and other naming specific ethno-racial categories. 2From 1975 to 1985 I taught in the Chicano Studies Department at East Los Angeles College. 3The Chronicle of Higher Education is a weekly newspaper that addresses the latest news, information, and job listings in the field of higher education. 4I give credit for this term to my colleague Professor Lawrence Parker at the University of Utah. 5For three seminal readers in critical race theory and the law, see Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, and Thomas, 1995; Delgado, 1995; and Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, and Crenshaw, 1993. 6I am now exploring how CRT can be used in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

7For my story of that journey in race and ethnic studies and Freirean pedagogy, see Solorzano, 1989; Solorzano, 2013; Solorzano and Yosso, 2001. 8In later work on critical race spatial analysis with my colleague Veronica Velez, we acknowledge that place and space have related but distinct meanings (Velez & Solorzano, 2017; Solorzano & Velez, 2017). According to Friedland (1992), “place is the fusion of space and experience, a space filled with meaning, a source of identity” (p. 14). We have come to differentiate and utilize these based on Friedland’s definition. 9Aldon Morris’s (2015) The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology speaks of Parks’s failure to reference Du Bois on this and other sociological constructs (see pp. 145–147). 10 This paper was my first professional CRT presentation. I presented it at the annual meeting of the Association for Studies in Higher Education, Orlando, FL, November 2, 1995. The title of my talk was “Critical Race Theory, Marginality, and the Experiences of Minority Students in Higher Education.” I never published this paper, but like a good backyard car with usable spare parts, it was a source of ideas that I used in other papers on racial marginality (Solorzano & Villalpando, 1998), mentoring (Solorzano, 1998a), racial microaggressions (Solorzano, 1998b), and spatial analysis (Solorzano & Velez, 2016; Solorzano & Velez, 2017; Velez & Solorzano, 2017). 11 Beginning with the 1969 article where Pierce introduced the concept of microaggressions, we now have 13 articles where Pierce shares his developing ideas about the concept (see Pierce, 1969, 1970, 1974, 1975a, 1975b, 1980, 1988, 1989, 1995; Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Wills, 1978; Pierce, Earls, & Kleinman, 1999; Pierce & Profit, 1991; and Profit, Mino, & Pierce, 2000). In addition, we have Griffith’s 1998 biography on Pierce. 12 The initial team that conducted the data gathering consisted of Walter Allen, Grace Carroll, Daniel Solorzano, Miguel Ceja, and Elizabeth Guillory. In addition, the following people assisted in the preparation of the report to the court: Tara Yosso, Gniesha Dinwiddie, and Gloria Gonzalez, all doctoral or former doctoral students at UCLA. 13 In one of the most comprehensive histories of racial microaggressions, Wong, Derthick, David, Saw, and Okazaki (2014) state that the article by Solorzano,

Ceja, and Yosso (2000) on African American students preceded the articles by Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, and Nadal (2007) and Sue and Constantine (2007) by seven years. Indeed, the Solorzano (1998b) article on Chicana and Chicano scholars was published two years earlier. 14 My colleague Professor Lindsay Perez Huber (California State University, Long Beach), gave 5 of the 10 UCOP lectures on racial microaggressions.

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Chapter 9

Talking Old Soldiers: Research, Education, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Praxis in the “End Times”

D AVID O. S TOVALL University of Illinois at Chicago

The following chapter offers a challenge to educational researchers who dare to engage concepts of racism/White supremacy in their work. Through an investigation of intersectionality and critical race praxis, this contribution utilizes Zizek’s concept of an “end times,” positioning education and racism/White supremacy as systems that remain in intimate dialogue with each other in a perpetually shifting set of conditions. To excavate these points, the chapter is divided into an introduction and three sections, moving from the ways in which racism has operated structurally and historically in U.S. K–12 education systems to the intensified ways in which the nexus of race, class, and education are understood. In the spirit of critical race theory scholars who have remained steadfast in their commitment to social/racial justice through praxis (e.g., Lynn & Dixson, 2013; Yamamoto, 1999), the chapter makes recommendations for

future research in a time when the salience of racism/White supremacy will remain both nuanced and overt. Explained in detail below, all are centered in the process of engaging the larger project of justice in education. Zizek’s assertion of the “end times” offers a challenge to those who are interested in the human condition to pay specific attention to the current historical/political/economic moment in education. In of an “end times,” I agree that the shift predicted by education scholars in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is coming to fruition (Watkins, 2001; Lipman, 2011; Saltman, 2012). The proverbial “end” is not an end of the material world, but an “end” to things as we currently know them. For public education, as a contested space fraught with contradictions, this “end” is one that rationalizes most of K–20 education as ineffective and obsolete. Given the current neoliberal surge to privatize public K–20 education, I offer a set of suggestions for the practice of researching the visceral and subtle effects of racism/White supremacy while developing responsible community praxis. In order to provide structure for the chapter, Section 1 maps late 20th-and early 21st-century intersections of race, class, and education. Using Chicago as the example, I attempt to provide an instance of the current neoliberal push to end public education and the drastic effects it has on communities of color. I also provide a sociohistorical of racism/White supremacy as a technology of the neoliberal state utilized to limit access and opportunity for low-income communities of color in urban centers. Section 2 is a call for scholars, organizers, and concerned community to resist colonial “divide and conquer” tactics through an intersectional frame. Section 3 returns to the seminal scholarship of Yamamoto (1999) and Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) to continue the call for scholars to do justice work on the ground. Coupled with recent meditations by Leonardo (2013), recent configurations of racism/White supremacy challenge us to revisit a radical imaginary to develop strategies to combat racism in education. Central to Section 3 is the return to praxis and the original call of critical race praxis (CRP) in legal scholarship and critical race theory (CRT) in education to actively work with others to develop strategies centered in working collectively to create a justice condition for communities experiencing marginalization, disenfranchisement, and isolation.

Understanding the “End Times” in Education

Given the academic popularity of Living in the End Times, Zizek’s treatise offers a lens by which to interpret the current moment in K–20 education. Where many interpret his work as leaning toward dystopian, I take a different approach when thinking about education as a public good. Given the push to end K–20 public education as we know it, coupled with the end of the Obama presidency, I don’t feel that Zizek is telling us to lay our cards down and let the current wave of neoliberalism wash over us. Instead, we should read his warning as an alert that the “end times” predate the Obama presidency and are ushering in a new age, as educators are now faced with a Trump regime. Instead of seeing the two presidential istrations as drastically different, it is important to note they share a similar education agenda, featuring the proliferation of charter schools as options for “choice” and the continued privatization of services that were publically guaranteed.

The crucial question is how we are to read the collapse of these hopes. The standard answer, as we have seen, appeals to capitalist realism, or the lack of it: the people simply did not possess a realistic image of capitalism; they were full of immature utopian expectations. The morning after the enthusiasm of the drunken days of victory, the people had to sober up and face the painful process of learning the rules of the new reality, coming to with the price one has to pay for political and economic freedom. (Zizek, 2011, p. viii)

In addition to the false hope Zizek warns against, my interpretation of his challenge in relation to education research is one that pushes us to continue to interrogate the intersectional layers of the current racist, classist, ageist, gendered, homo/transphobic moment, paying specific attention to its intensification. The “end times” is the end of the ways of doing and knowing that are reflective of a public commons. Despite the myriad of contradictions that exist for communities of color in urban centers, public infrastructures and spaces of shared understandings (e.g., schools, community centers, health care services, public parks) are now neoliberal free-market entities. As neoliberalism seeks to secure its stronghold on ways of doing and knowing, the commodification of public goods is purported to be part of the “new” wave of

globalized finance. Education has been deemed a “growth industry” by venture capitalists seeking to capitalize on a “new” market. Since the mid 1990s, this “new” thing has guaranteed more uncertainty and tragedy than promise for lowincome/working class communities of color. Neoliberalism, by way of “freeing” once publicly supplied goods and services while deemphasizing collective struggle, has given us an idea of what is after the “end times,” but the future of this progression is what remains the most concerning. When considering research on race in education, Zizek’s points not only ring true but pose a very specific set of realities we need to consider in the 21st century. First, the profession of teaching is slowly being reduced to moderatewage surplus labor. With the current push to end teacher unions (and organized labor overall), teachers’ wages are positioned as placing too much pressure on pensions. ing teachers’ long-term employment has been framed as ing “dead weight” with few to no results. Second, the “end” of public education includes public partnerships that continue to lessen local, state, and federal fiscal responsibility for K–20 education (Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Lipman, 2011) by way of decommitting to pensions while facilitating high teacher turnover. Because it is often the least experienced teachers who staff public schools with the highest need, the current trend ensures that those who historically have had the least (read low-income communities of color in urban areas) are guaranteed even less. Despite the minimal intervention of the “common core,” even more disturbing is the idea that the primary measure of achievement or school improvement remains centered in performance on highstakes standardized tests. In many traditionally underserved and historically marginalized communities of color, curricular content is directly aligned with standardized tests, further inhibiting the capacity of young people to think and create (Au, 2007, p. 263). For these reasons and countless others, our educational research on race must revisit the idea of liberatory praxis through a process that understands the collective struggle of disenfranchised, disinvested, and destabilized communities as central to our analysis and interruption of the current trend. The following sections, while not comprehensive in their positions, nonetheless provide suggestions for ways by which to engage race research and praxis under uncertain conditions.

Section 1

Chi in Real Time: Chicago and Systemic Racism as a Historical, Conceptualized Technology of the White Supremacist State

Whereas the example of Chicago stands as both a national and international site for the rise of neoliberalism in education, it is also the site where I attempt to engage research from a critical perspective. As in other U.S. cities, such as Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Newark, and Oakland, neoliberalism in Chicago appears in the form of gentrification, corporate education, and a new wave of austerity budgets, all of which have ravaged lowincome/working-class communities of color. As the aforementioned policy decisions are the markers of “end times,” they also create a space to realize the dynamics of race under the shroud of “choice.” As low-income/working-class communities of color are deemed disposable by the state, popular rhetoric blames families for making “bad choices” and for the inability to utilize opportunities provided by the state or private entities. Missing from the analysis are the realities of the engineered conditions that the state and private entities utilize, resulting in what Guttierez and Lipman (and, as they discuss, the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization) refer to as the 3 Ds of corporate school reform: disinvestment, disenfranchisement, and destabilization (Guttierez & Lipman, 2012). Because Chicago has been the de facto epicenter for the 3 Ds, neoliberal policies have resulted in the systemic marginalization of low-income, working-class communities of color throughout the city (Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Lipman, 2003, 2004, 2011; Saltman, 2012, 2014). Critical race theory in education, as a construct engaged in the identification and recognition of racism/White supremacy, allows me to examine Chicago as fertile ground for understanding racism’s structure, form, and function. For education researchers who center their work in the study of race and its numerous intersections, the multiple layers and entry points to understanding Chicago school policy provide an example of what the “end times” can mean in large urban centers. From mayoral control to the federal policy of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), to its localized manifestation through Renaissance 2010, coupled with the advent of school closings, education in the city of Chicago exists in a complex intersection of community demand, education policy, neoliberal urban development, and

partisan politics. Whereas these types of entanglements are familiar to Chicago, the intersection deserves attention if we are to understand what an “end time” looks like in an urban center. Centered in the 1995 educational policy shift resulting in mayoral control of the Chicago Public Schools (S), the mayor currently has sole authority in appointing the school board, which is responsible for final approval of schoolrelated issues (e.g., financial matters, curricular shifts, contract procurement, creation of new schools). In addition to the ability to appoint of the school board, the mayor has the ability to overturn any decision made by the board. Facilitated under the 22-year mayoral tenure of Richard J. Daley, the city has laid a blueprint for numerous cities in the United States desiring to centralize control of their school systems. In that time frame, the number of educators on the Chicago school board has decreased significantly. Currently the board consists largely of people from the business, legal, and philanthropic sectors. Under the mayoral regime of Rahm Emanuel, a reciprocal relationship between the board and the mayor’s office continues, as board are usually individuals or employees of entities that have contributed significantly to the mayor’s reelection campaign. Furthering the grip of neoliberal urbanism, the city decided to close 49 schools in the spring of 2013, constituting the largest single set of school closures in the history of the United States. Even though the final number of shuttered schools was reduced to 49 (originally from 124 to 54 to 49), many of their communities experienced mass depletion of resources and infrastructure while funds were reallocated to revitalization projects aimed at making Chicago a “global city.” As schools were closed, express bus lanes, multimillion dollar art projects, and tourism campaigns were allocated to the central business district. Simultaneously, garbage services and road maintenance were reduced in the areas where schools were being closed. The maintenance of parking meters was privatized, while the city was still able to secure a revenue stream through the collection of fees for parking tickets, making the city even less accessible for low-income families. From this type of disinvestment, the city has deemed its outskirts to be an undesirable periphery that is solely designated for those who will be relegated with minimal access to the aforementioned areas. Coupled with school closings, the state of Illinois has been in financial free-fall. On June 30, 2016, the state of Illinois ended a 366-day budget ime, resulting in defunding of public schools, closure of mental health centers, and shuttering

of drug treatment centers and state-sponsored childcare agencies without the capacity to pay utility bills. Even though a budget was signed, it was only a sixmonth budget, almost ensuring another ime. At the same time, the municipal bond ratings of the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago fell below F, as pension debt for state and city employees continued to go unpaid. In Chicago, further complicating matters was the fact that the city had lost almost 200,000 African American residents since 2000. Coupled with displacement and loss of living-wage jobs, the dwindling of the city’s Black population was occurring as neighborhoods with proximity to the central business district and lakefront areas received new amenities and infrastructure. When a push comes from Black communities to respond to the educational needs of young people and families in the city, it is usually met with a harsh response from the state. For the aforementioned reasons, we should understand the process as one of state-sanctioned violence rooted in a rationale of disposability of certain residents of the city (read low-income Black and Latino/a families). The willful denial of goods and services essential to human life is consistent with human rights abuses noted by Article 21, Section 2 (the right to public services) and Article 26, Sections 1 and 2 (the right to education) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948). Education and health care, which are essential to life and human dignity, are consistently denied to residents on the South and West Sides of Chicago. Simultaneously, these situations are not experienced solely within the confines of where I reside. Similar instances are found in New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, New York City, and Oakland, California. Although the iterance in each locale is unique unto itself, there are major themes that connect the cities to each other through a neoliberal regime of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2005). If we, the community of researchers committed to the study of race and education, are to understand the regulation of access to education as state-sanctioned violence, then we are propelled to develop clarity on our responsibility to the communities experiencing said injustices. However, given the historical colonial relationship of university researchers to community spaces, such clarity should include a commitment to communities in which we work that goes beyond the research study. Modeling this for our colleagues allows for a tangible, visible interruption of traditional relationships between university researchers and community spaces (e.g., Camagnian, 2011; Gershon & Wolozek, 2016; Kohli, 2009; Majors, 2015; Patel, 2015; Pizzaro, 2004; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Wun, 2014).

Section 2

Utilizing an Intersectional Framework—Race, Research, and Critical Questions

I am taking a particular cue from Hughes and Berry (2012), who challenge researchers to engage the evolving and shifting significance of race in educational research. To grapple with research on race in education, there is a moment when you have to develop an articulation of the intersections of your work with other disciplines, along with an analysis of the current situation. Once you have made the conscious decision to engage in research on race and education, you have forfeited any claim to neutrality. As our intersectional work is deeply entrenched in history (allowing us to assess how we get to the event in question), analysis of the current condition allows researchers in race and education to specifically name the intersections where our work occurs. For myself, this is the intersection of race, place, and education. Over the years, through CRT I have been blessed to collaborate with people whose race and education research rests at the intersection of spatial analysis, Black feminism, Chicana feminism, youth homelessness, anti-Blackness theory, history, youth participatory action research (YPAR), curriculum theory, decolonization, critical pedagogy, and urban studies. Germane to all of these intersections is a commitment from scholars in their respective disciplines to develop synergy between the moment in question and the various paradigms. If a goal of intersectional praxis is to have our practice on the ground inform theory and our theoretical practice inform the work we engage in with communities, then there also must be an instance where we question and deeply interrogate the utility of our work (Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013, p. 785). Discussed in the following paragraphs, an example of the current political moment allows for an intersectional framing for researchers to both revisit and retool approaches to research on race and education. Since the summer of 2013, there have been numerous instances that have placed bold and necessary challenges to any ideas of post-racialism. Although I am beginning my inquiry at the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting

death of Trayvon Martin, it should be noted that the unwarranted death of unarmed Black people is not a new occurrence in the United States. Neither are the unwarranted mass deportations, detentions, and disenfranchisements of Latinx residents in the same spaces. However, the combination of the 24-hour news cycle, along with the filming and instant posting (through social media) of many of these deaths have brought national attention to what many have known for centuries: Under a judicial, political, economic, and educational system steeped in White supremacy, Black and Brown bodies are deemed criminal before they are considered human. As mass protests and community mobilizations ensue across the country, an awakening has taken place for those who may have ascribed to a post-racial belief that race relations have improved. In the academy, these events should serve as either a wake-up call for those of us who still feel their research is neutral or as a critical moment to mobilize those who may feel as if they are currently operating in isolation. This invites a set of questions for us to consider, regarding the ways in which our research needs to be responsive to the current moment while also taking into context the historical precedent. For myself, the following questions come to light:

•Who and what do we care about? How is our research reflective of our concerns? •In what ways does our research collective efforts on the ground to challenge and seek to dismantle racism/White supremacy? •How does our work contribute to the short- and long-term strategies of organizations and communities that have taken intentional stances against their isolation, marginalization, and disenfranchisement? •What agreements are made with organizations and communities that intentionally prioritize their needs above the “requirements” of the university?

Because the current protests are not happenstance, we should understand them as reflective of the sentiment of frustration of communities experiencing centuries of injustice (Taylor, 2016). If we are to the efforts of those who are

organizing to change the current condition, then there must be a set of arrangements that prioritize community concerns. For these reasons, the project for educational justice is not a neutral one. Instead, it is one that requires careful, critical analysis centered in the needs of the people we care about. While this is considered by some to be “activist scholarship,” we should also think about responsibility and ability in our work with communities and students experiencing disinvestment, marginalization, and isolation. As someone who has been named in the genre, my concern is that if we are not careful, this can quickly become a false trope. Simply because a group of people have categorized scholars in a particular genre or discipline does not ensure that those scholars will move in ways that prioritize the needs of the people and communities that have allowed them to work in their space. For these reasons, our scholarship should begin with acknowledging the devastating effect that universities have inflicted on communities of color, while making the conscious decision to engage in an active interruption of the deficit narrative that permeates popular understandings of the communities we are working in solidarity with. This type of research suspends traditional notions of “expertise” while challenging us to build new and responsible strategies to address the current conditions. As part of the current condition, the advent of partisan politics has created a moment where disenfranchised, working-class/recently unemployed White males have been emboldened by a campaign that has spewed overtly racist, misogynistic, ableist, and homophobic rhetoric. Compounding the neo-fascist rhetoric of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is his ability to mobilize a multitude of White males by encouraging them to feel as if their rights were being infringed upon. In this instance, it’s not as important whether Trump actually believes what he’s saying. More important is the fact he has mobilized a significant portion of eligible voters who are willing to elect him as the president of the United States. From a CRT perspective, this represents a return to the days of mainstream, overt racial animus, challenging more recent notions of a “postracial” society. We must be clear that Trump’s spewing of hateful speech is nothing new. It surprises some, but many of us are not fooled. What it does accomplish is a shift toward a more explicit form of racism/White supremacy that prevailed some sixty years prior. For years, this type of behavior was thought of as confined to a select number of fringe hate groups. Now that the rhetoric of White supremacy has gone mainstream through Trump’s campaign and presidency, an intersectional approach is useful in understanding the ways we have come to this moment. If we are to think about our work as researchers

on race and education, an interdisciplinary approach connects racism/White supremacy in the U.S. presidential election not only to education, but also to the real life concerns of housing, health care, and employment. Theoretically, the intersections of race and education can incorporate (but are not limited to) CRT (specifically, analysis of deficit assumptions placed on Black and Brown bodies in K–20 schools), anti-Blackness (e.g., justification of Black gratuitous discipline in K–20 schools, deaths from law enforcement), and Black queer feminist analysis (ignoring increases in suspensions and expulsions of Black girls in K–12 schools, lack of recognition of deaths of Black and transgender women by law enforcement). As engaged researchers, because our lives are intersectional, our research should reflect said intersections. Although this may seem antithetical to how we are often trained in specific disciplines, we should begin to think about how an interrogation of the intersections deepens our work by developing a set of inquiries that connects our work to the set of conditions in questions. Michael Dumas, in his riveting essay on school and Black suffering, offers a set of challenges that activist scholars should consider in their work:

Research on social suffering takes up these questions, situating them within an analysis of the political, economic and cultural-ideological forces that so powerfully impact human experience. Moving between the local and global, the material and discursive, historical memory and mundane everyday experience, this interdisciplinary body of inquiry aims to capture how suffering is felt in the flesh, how groups who have endured such pain make sense of their suffering as a shared phenomenon, and how suffering is represented (or not) in public discourse and popular culture. (Dumas, 2014, p. 2)

Often referred to as a “radical imaginary,” our work should name the current conditions, while reflecting a willingness to work collaboratively to address the concerns that are directly connected to people’s lives (Tormey, 2005). If we take Dumas seriously and understand school foundationally as a site of suffering, an intersectional frame allows us the leeway to engage in practices that are not bound to a discipline, but instead are centered in addressing the concerns of the people we are in solidarity with. Such radical imaginaries provide the greatest

potential to name the current political moment as a retrenchment of racial attitudes during a steep period of actual and perceived economic decline. By continuing this line of inquiry, current and future researchers have the potential to push on the boundaries of popular sentiment to challenge deficit beliefs. Simultaneously, research in this vein is able to provide analysis of the current moment while ing organizing on the ground.

Section 3

Critical Race Praxis and the Responsibility of Derailing, Reframing, and Building in Educational Research

For research on race and education moving forward, concerned parties should understand how this type of positioning is reminiscent of the colonial state, where racial/ethnic groups are pitted against each other, creating further distractions in the larger project of justice in education. Through said diversionary tactics, affected groups are perpetually unable to recognize the ability to connect struggles for the purpose of advancing a justice-centered agenda in education. Taking the idea of Yamamoto’s critical race praxis (CRP) as central to challenging traditional research paradigms, intersectional work remains relevant and central to scholarship seeking to interrogate the myriad of synergies between race and education. Instead of spending the majority of our time with abstractions of theoretical positioning, CRP calls for us to spend more time on the ground working with communities who are facing an intense form of oppression despite subtle overtones. Because racism is still with us, researchers should consider working with communities as revisiting activist methodologies and analysis aimed at reframing the current narrative on education. Indicative to this line of research is the responsibility of constructing new realities with affected communities. The idea is for researchers to understand the potential of positioning CRP in education as community-based, justice-centered work. Instead of social justice being left as an ideological construct in the abstract, the following section speaks to the attempt to push our research in a different

direction. Returning to the tenets of the seminal 1995 CRT contribution by Ladson-Billings and Tate, we are continuing the colonial project if we do not see our work as part of the lineage of international struggles against racism and oppression (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Understanding the project of doing so is fraught with contradictions and struggle; it remains one of the rays of hope in extremely serious times. Since reading Yamamoto in the late ’90s, I have been grappling with ways to bring his tenets of critical race praxis to fruition in my own work. Despite numerous failures and setbacks, Yamamoto’s tenets have been deeply influential in my process of attempting to develop a radical imaginary in my work with young people, communities, and organizations. If I can understand the current moment for what it is, while working with others to change the condition, it has the greatest potential to have meaning for myself and the people I care about. By utilizing a Freirean approach to praxis (action and reflection in the world in order to change it), the following tenets provide some guidance in thinking about aspects of engaged scholarship:

•Conceptual: Examining the racialization of a controversy and the interconnecting influences of heterosexism, patriarchy, and class while locating that examination in a critique of the political economy. (Yamamoto, 1999, p. 130) •Performative: Answering the question as to what practical steps are responsive to the specific claim and who should act on that claim. (p. 131) •Material: Inquiring into changes, both those that are sociostructural and those involving the remaking of the democratic structure of public institutions, in the material conditions of racial oppression. Examples would include access to fair housing, health care, quality education, and employment. (p. 132) •Reflexive: Commitment to the continual rebuilding of theory in light of the practical experiences of racial groups engaged in particular anti-racist struggles. (p. 132)

Where Yamamoto’s initial suggestions for race praxis are directed toward

attorneys and law professors, I incorporate his suggestions to entail the work of educational researchers who are concerned with the larger project of justice in education. As method, Yamamoto suggests that race praxis is characterized by reflective action (p. 132). Such reflection is based on the application of theoretical concepts to the work done in solidarity with communities, and the recasting of said concepts in relation to our on-the-ground experiences. Over the years, my struggle with the tenets has been with the performative and the material. Whereas the conceptual and the reflexive are steps that are the most consistent with my training as an educational researcher, the performative and material require a more intense, authentic, critical, and long-term engagement with communities and/or organizations. As the performative asks us to work with others who should respond to a particular issue to create practical steps to address that issue, the realities of university/community relations often come into play. When communities feel preyed upon, our position as persons employed at the university comes into question, as it should. When it is questioned, we have to be willing to step aside and make sure the community’s concern stays at the center. As with the YPAR work of Kalamu ya Salaam and his students in the Students at the Center project, to disembark from traditional notions of expertise means to trust the expertise of those who are rarely considered experts on their lives (Buras & ya Salaam, 2010). For myself, this means being willing to recognize what I don’t know, while simultaneously being willing to learn from the people I’m working in solidarity with. At the same time, because the material challenges us to inquire into changes that need to take place in the real world, both the material and the performative tenets challenge us to make tangible decisions through collective work. Even more important is the fact that these decisions are directly connected to people’s lives. Under this premise, the Hollywood narrative of the “lone wolf” academic coming to “save” people and communities of color is rightfully destroyed. Continuing the challenge of the performative and the material, to do the work that communities are daring us to do calls for an instantaneous interruption to the traditional tropes of academic research. Because this is a type of engaged research, it also means that we must engage with the contradictions and mishaps along the way. Through an embrace of our subjectivities we are able to acknowledge and validate the myriad of experiences and perspectives. As ours is not the only viewpoint, it should be understood as part of the myriad of understandings often excluded in mainstream s on race and education.

Because these omissions are often vast, it is critical for the scholar/activist to intentionally engage in the political exercise of claiming space while itting to mistakes made along the way. When working with people and organizations in real time, there are often plenty of contradictions to go around. Statements are misinterpreted, personality clashes ensue, irresponsibility in intimate relationships is brought to the attention of the collective, or of an organization demonstrate questionable gender politics. All of these can deeply complicate researcher responsibility to community-driven efforts. However, it should never be our place to run from these contradictions. Communityable research in these spaces could mean a host of things. Sometimes you may be the voice of reason. In other instances you could be deeply engaged in one of the contradictions. In either instance, CRP’s call for the reflexive is important, in that CRP is committed to building new theory from our experiences. Not for the sake of academic voyeurism, but in order to reflect and build upon such lessons for future work intended to contribute to the larger project of justice in education. By ending the practice of speaking “for” people, CRP provides those who engage in research on race and education a pathway for thinking about what it means to work in solidarity with community. For the critical researcher, solidarity is not a clear, sanguine path, but often a collection of contradictions. In the process of entering the contradictions, Harney and Moten discuss a “fugitive space” in potential contributions of academics to the larger justice project in education. Fugitive spaces exist when people come to the realization that the intention of the university was never to act as a force for justice and liberation. At the same time, the contradiction of our position as researchers provides an avenue for fugitive space, in that it creates the opportunity for us to utilize the resources of the academy to justice-centered efforts on the ground. I take solace in this age:

After all, the subversive intellectual came under false pretenses, with bad documents, out of love. Her labor is as necessary as it is unwelcome. The university needs what she bears but cannot bear what she brings. And on top of all that, she disappears. She disappears into the underground, the downlow lowdown maroon community of the university; into the undercommons of enlightenment, where the work gets done, where the work gets subverted, where the revolution is still black, still strong. (Harney & Moten, 2013, p. 26)

Building said communities is a serious undertaking, but not one that is out of the scope of the historical lineage of engaged scholars who understand the necessary responsibilities in remaining able to community spaces. The intersections of commitment to research in this mode mean that it is often selfless work that goes unrecognized by the annals of White, mainstream channels, but is deeply understood and appreciated by those who are working to end their marginalization, isolation, and subjugation. Of course, I am not suggesting that race praxis or CRP is a panacea. Instead, we should consider it as an entry point in the myriad of entry points for work that keeps the human element in research on race in education. The idea here is not to privilege one form of research over another, but to prioritize the ways we understand our work as being connected to the lives of people who are working to change their condition. Resisting “end times” requires a refusal of the attempts to end our existence, while bringing forth a commitment to claim our humanity as valid and necessary. In the end, the question remains: Will our approach to educational research or thwart our attempts to do so?

References

Au, W. (2007). High-stakes testing and curricular control: A qualitative metasynthesis. Educational Researcher, 36(5), 258–267. Buras, K. L., & ya Salaam, K. (2010). Pedagogy, policy and the privatized city: Dispossession and defiance from New Orleans. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Camangian, P. (2011). Subverting the master(’s) syllabus. Monthly Review, 63(3), 3–12. Carter-Andrews, D., & Tuitt, F. (Eds.). (2013). Contesting the myth of a “post racial” era: The continued significance of race in U.S. education. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Cho, S., Crenshaw, K., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field on intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society, 38(4), 785–810. Dumas, M. (2014). Losing an arm: Schooling as a site of Black suffering. Race Ethnicity and Education, 17(1), 1–29. Fabricant, M., & Fine, M. (2012). Charter schools and the corporate makeover of public education: What’s at stake. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gershon, W., & Wolozek, B. J. (2016). Getting schooled: A curriculum of lying, choking, and dying. Special edition of American Educational Research Association, Division B (Curriculum Studies) newsletter, Washington, DC. Gutierrez, R. R., & Lipman, P. (2012). Dyett High School and the 3 Ds of Chicago school reform. Chicago, IL: Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education. Harney, S., & Moten, F. (2013). The undercommons: Fugitive planning & Black study. New York: Minor Compositions. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hughes, S., & Berry, T. (Eds.). (2012). The evolving significance of race: Living, learning, teaching. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Kohli, R. (2009). Critical race reflections: Valuing the experiences of teachers of color in teacher education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 12(2), 235–251. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47–68. Leonardo, Z., & Grubb, W. N. (2013). Education and racism: A primer on issues and dilemmas. New York, NY: Routledge. Lipman, P. (2003). Chicago school policy: Regulating black and latino youth in the global city. Race Ethnicity and Education, 6(4), 331–355. Lipman, P. (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization, and urban

school reform. New York, NY: Routledge. Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race and the right to the city. New York, NY: Routledge. Lynn, M., & Dixson, A. (2013). Handbook of critical race theory in education. New York, NY: Routledge. Majors, Y. (2015). Shoptalk: Lessons in teaching from an African-American hair salon. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Patel, L. (2015). Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. New York, NY: Routledge. Pizzaro, M. (2004). Searching for curanderas: A quest to revive Chicana/o studies. Journal of Latinos in Education, 3(3), 145–164. Saltman, K. (2012). The failure of corporate school reform. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Saltman, K. (2014). The politics of education: A critical introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Taylor, K. (2016). From #blacklivesmatter to Black liberation. Chicago, IL: Haymarket. Tormey, S. (2005). From utopian worlds to utopian spaces: Reflections on the contemporary radical imaginary and the social forum process. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 5(2), 394–408. Tuck, E., & Yang, W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. United Nations. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights. New York, NY: Author. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-humanrights/ Watkins, W. (2001). The White architects of Black education: Ideology and power in America, 1865–1954. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Wun, C. (2014). Uned foundations: Black girls, anti-Black racism and punishment in schools. Critical Sociology, 1(1), 1–14. Yamamoto, E. (1999). Interracial justice: Conflict and resolution in post civilrights America. New York: New York University Press. Zizek, S. (2011). Living in the end times. New York, NY: Verso.

Chapter 10

Hired On, Not Hired In: Early Career Scholars’ Experiences With Race in Education

C ECILIA E. S UAREZ University of Florida

I VORY M. B ERRY George Mason University

“C ongratulations! You ed!” Doctoral students live for the moment they will

hear those words after their dissertation defense, and we were no different. It is an exuberant feeling to finally place “Ph.D.” after our names following years of engaging in class discussions, conducting empirical research, reading widely in our fields of study, writing publishable papers, preparing for qualifying exams, and presenting at professional conferences. It is overwhelming, yet remarkable, to be considered and regarded as young scholars of color in the fields in which we have studied. We both studied race and racial inequities within educational contexts. More specifically, we developed an interest in critical race theory (CRT), which provided the scholarship, methods, and nomenclature to help make sense of our lived experiences and the pervasiveness of institutional racism and oppression within U.S. society. Our training in CRT matured our critical lens and approach to analysis and offered us tools to disrupt Whiteness and White supremacy and elevate the voices of marginalized persons. We carried CRT with us as we participated in campus interviews for faculty and student and academic affairs istration employment. As a result, we were explicit about who we are, our perspectives, and how we center race in our scholarship and in our daily lives. As one of our mentors told us, “Present your most radical self during your job talk, so ‘they’ (read: White folks) aren’t surprised when you ‘show up’ (read: keep it real).” We did just that. We were both fortunate to interview at postsecondary institutions with potential colleagues who, at least at the interview table, perceived our lived experiences and academic training as an asset, particularly emphasizing our ability to bring in different perspectives and be critical and mindful of inequities in society, and more specifically, within higher education settings. We were offered and accepted positions at institutions we perceived as a “good fit” to cultivate our scholarship and enhance student success. However, we soon realized upon arrival in our new roles, that we were hired, more so, because of who we are and what we represent: A Latina woman and an African American man with doctorate degrees. Our hard-earned Ph.D. (doctor of philosophy) was really just Perfect for Helping with Diversity. In essence, we were hired on as an addition or a guest to the normal thought and practice of the departments and universities, rather than hired in to actually be contributing of the community with all rights and power included. Just as students do not enter spaces as “blank slates” we too came with years of

lessons learned, personal experiences, family practices, and scholarship. When we enter work spaces, while most people either know we “do diversity,” as evident in our resumes, vitas, and research, or have the expectation for us to “do diversity” given our non-White identities, few understand that we see and have experienced the reality that race does, in fact, pervade every aspect of society. In this chapter, we, two early career scholars of color, share experiences of being critical race scholars working in faculty and student and academic affairs istration at universities that have articulated diversity statements and an apparent appetite for inclusion. We highlight how our lived experiences and academic training around race, previously perceived as an attractive asset to the institution during the hiring phase, is challenged once we dig into our critical toolbox to call out and promote the dismantling of inequities, particularly racial inequities, within the very structures and settings in which we are employed. We end this chapter by offering some “clap backs”—practical strategies young scholars of color can use to reclaim their Ph.D.; help to facilitate the expansion of diversity narratives on college campuses; create a space to center and address race and racial inequities within classrooms, office spaces, and executive meetings; and promote self-care and preservation as early career faculty and s.

The “T” About Race Teachings: A Faculty Perspective

In theory, the discussion of diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion sounds like a necessary component that most higher education institutions boast about embracing. However, the praxis of actually critically engaging the identities, injustices, and inequalities embedded within these topics is less than popular and often unwelcome within the academy. While one may be hired for particular expertise around intersectionality of identities, the experiences of students of color in higher education, and the application of critical race theory, the actual practice of embedding race, social justice, and critical pedagogy within one’s practice is seen as unfit, non-inclusive, and overly discussed (based on a perceived thorough level of understanding), among faculty and students.

The R-Word

Over the summer prior to starting a new faculty position, I received an email from a new colleague asking for some resources for a diversity unit they would be presenting in class, since I was the “expert” and a Latina.¹ They provided a list of identities they were looking to cover: gender, socioeconomic status, global understanding, political views, and diversity in general. Reading over the email, it was quite evident that great caution was taken to tiptoe around the utilization of the word race. How could one not discuss race in a unit (which was only going to be given over one class period) focused on diversity? I have noticed over my time as a student turned professional that the “R-word” is feared, pushed away, hated, and avoided at all costs in the academy. Unless one enters the stream of scholarship that works to problematize and deconstruct race, racism, and its effects within society, the “R-word” is avoided like the plague. Saying the word “race” requires individuals to acknowledge that race and racism exist and gives space for race to be discussed. A mentor of mine often utilized the following metaphor to assist in helping individuals understand why not talking about race and racism does not make sense:

If someone goes to the doctor and finds out they have a serious illness, like cancer, is it common for the doctor to say, “Let’s just not talk about it and it should go away”? No. Rather, the doctor often runs various tests, tries to understand how the cancer is affecting the person, and creates a specific treatment plan for that individual. Racism is like cancer. It can spread quickly, brings great turmoil to people’s lives, and if not treated, it will consume everything it touches. So why does it make sense to not talk about race and racism?

Mentioning the word race, not even racism, makes people uncomfortable, and the individual who mentions it is often seen as hostile, angry, and inconsiderate. In all of my courses, we practice a “call and response” session where students, as a collective, say words like race, racism, White, Black, and Latino out loud.

Discomfort with such words is prevalent among students, particularly students identifying with the White race majority; however, it does not occur only at the student level. In fact, the majority of the “discussion swerving” happens at the educator level, only to trickle down and make students adopt discomfort with the illusive “R-word” because there is little to no academic space open to discussing race and racism. Not only did I find this appalling, it was unacceptable, and I wanted to make sure that department faculty understood the need to insert conversations around race and social justice in their classrooms. I provided some resources via email to my new colleagues, per the above scenario, and had an open conversation about the challenges faced when one is perceived as the only faculty member who should and does talk about race, racism, and social justice in classes. A few months after this conversation, my colleagues stopped me in the hallway to share that they were making efforts to connect their class content to current real-life social justice issues in society and thanked me for challenging them to do so. During the first few months of my new faculty position, inquiries about why I used certain materials in my courses were debated. Some faculty found fault in my use of literature ranging across sociology, leadership, critical race theory, history, and a comprehensive list of other intersectional work written by scholars of color. The question arose as to why I chose to use material that focused on race and identity when teaching about intercultural leadership, and it was suggested that, if I wanted to teach about race, I use the text White Like Me, by Tim Wise. While some colleagues and courses may actively utilize this text to help White students see themselves in the literature, this mindset and practice produces a disservice for students, as the majority of leadership-based literature is written by White men and continues to keep students comfortable and unchallenged. Certain faculty felt that students were uncomfortable learning about privilege and race throughout the semester and did not understand the connection to leadership development. As the semester continued, I remained focused on introducing culturally relevant and diverse scholars to students, continued inserting content that assisted students in unpacking identity and privilege, and urged anyone with questions about my course content to carve out space to meet with me to have an open dialogue about teaching pedagogy. Shortly after the above occurrence, a very engaged, vocal, and inquisitive student waited around after class to chat with me. At this point in the semester, many students in the class were very challenged by concepts of White privilege, inequity, racism, and privilege. Walking with me through the hallways, the

student asked, “About how long have you been working here? Just for a few months right?” Not sure where the student was initially going with this conversation, but already sensing a shift in tone, I answered the student and I braced for impact. “Yeah, because you’re new, you probably don’t know that we don’t like to talk about stuff like race here. We’ve been talking about race for two weeks and it’s tiring to hear about how bad White people are.” As a professor who focuses on issues surrounding CRT, multiculturalism, and equality, I had been here before— “here” being the space of being told that students, faculty, or staff do not like hearing about their privilege as White individuals, and therefore, I as the professor, am doing something wrong and need to change my pedagogical practices. Continuing the conversation, I walked the student through a deeper thought process about why he might be feeling animosity toward the conversation around his privilege. The level of comfort he had for informing me that “‘round these parts” we do not talk about race, as a senior in the academic program I taught for, was a clear indication that this was the first time he had been challenged to think about his privilege and that nowhere within the program were critical perspectives on race and racism being taught. While the diversity or inclusion may be discussed, they are without critical perspective that moves students to think critically and analyze personal thoughts, actions, and systems that perpetuate inequality. Furthermore, dodging the use of the word race resembles whitewashing techniques that allow students, faculty, and staff the ability to remove all traces of people of color from the proverbial table and conversation. So where is my place at this table? Even if offered a seat at the faculty table, it is not a guarantee that the table is set for me. Malcolm X states, “I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate” (X, 1965, p. 26). My craft, my practice, and my expertise were not welcomed or respected by other diners at this proverbial table. My plate did not seem to make it on the prix fixe menu of curriculum. My non-White face was welcomed at larger university meetings, conferences, and on websites, but my voice and my experiences as a woman of color were deemed unfit, as previously mentioned via the questioning of my teaching methods, course topics, and overall purpose in the department. This was an indication that I was hired on. Hired on is a concept we refer to in this chapter as the “hired-on effect.” I was an addition to the standard Whiteness because I represent “difference,” yet I could not be myself or bring my entire self to the table; I was expected to

assimilate to the department’s white-washed message.

Racial Diversity and the “Illusion of Inclusion”: An Perspective

Not all Ph.D. students aspire to pursue faculty appointments, although at times it may seem like an unspoken expectation. My ion was in student and academic affairs istration, but I was concerned that the daily, stressful istrative life would prohibit me from engaging in research projects and maintaining a scholarly identity and presence. I was determined to be both a scholar and a practitioner, utilizing sound research and theory to inform my practice. I was intentional in expressing my scholar-practitioner identity in my cover letters as I applied for higher education positions. Luckily, my scholar-practitioner positioning went over well at my first job talk for a position as an of student and academic affairs at a public four-year nonselective Midwest university. The search committee, comprised of faculty and senior s, asked me to prepare a 15-minute presentation on a student success and retention initiative that I had previously coordinated. The committee was very engaged during my talk, so much so that it took me about an hour to make it through my prepared presentation, as they stopped me after each PowerPoint slide with thoughtful questions and discussion. After concluding the presentation, I was asked a series of questions for the next two hours about my dissertation, in which I made the case for the treatment and inclusion of high school students as educational stakeholders to address racial disparities in honors and advanced placement. The committee was particularly fascinated with my findings, in which I highlighted how students expressed concerns and outrage at the school district’s response to address the racial disparities in upper-level classes: The district merely shifted some Black students into those classes for the appearance of diversity and equality in order to be in compliance with an equity consent decree that was in place in the district, rather than address the root issues that had precipitated the imbalance. This finding sparked a lengthy conversation about race, racial inequities, and systemic inequality and how we, as faculty and staff, are at times complicit, intentionally or not, in the reproduction of Whiteness within educational structures and the need to deconstruct and reconstruct such systems and structures. My initial reaction was, “Whoa! They

get it! I have to work here!” Needless to say, when I was offered the position, I enthusiastically accepted it. I was specifically charged with enhancing, developing, and implementing student success initiatives to improve the first-to-second year retention rate² (56%) for the College of Science and Mathematics (CSM). I also had a personal goal, informed by my training in CRT, to explore and demonstrate how university practices, structures, and systems can serve as barriers to student success, especially for marginalized populations. I knew taking on this charge was going to be a daunting task, given that CSM was losing 50% or more of its students after the first year alone. As a young Black male mathematician with more than eight years of experience in student and academic affairs and several years of advanced academic training, I was qualified and eager to conquer this challenge. The position was newly created, and I was given little in the way of parameters, guidance, , and on-the-job training. Thus, I had to set my own agenda and carve my own paths. I devoted a significant amount of time collaborating with my colleagues in the Office of Institutional Research gathering data to better understand the student population and differences across identity groups, namely ission type and race. It was important to look at ission type because although the university practices open issions, college issions test scores (e.g., ACT or SAT, and high school GPA) determine whether a student is itted directly into their major college (e.g., CSM) or routed into University College³ (UC) as an intending major in their preferred discipline. To my surprise, I learned that students who were itted into UC as intending majors were actually included in the major college data. As a result, I disaggregated the data by ission type to get a better understanding of the population of direct its and intending CSM students. In fall 2014, 378 first-time, full-time degree-seeking students comprised the new cohort of CSM majors, of which 122 (32%) were directly itted into their major and 256 (68%) were itted as intending majors and assigned to UC. Disaggregated by race, 93% (N = 53) of Black students were itted to UC. Numerically, only 4 Black students were directly itted into the major college. Seventy-one percent of the fall 2014 cohort returned to the university for a second year, but only 56% were retained as science and mathematics majors. Disaggregated by ission type, 90% of direct its returned to the university and 79% remained in CSM. Comparatively, 63% of intending CSM majors returned to the university, but nearly half (45%) left their CSM major by

the second year. Strikingly, 64% of Black intending majors left CSM by the second year, which is quite similar to national data (Chen, 2013). Three of the four Black direct its returned to CSM the following year and the other left the university. The revelations of how the data were organized and reported at the university further complicated the challenge I was given to improve retention. The students who were least likely to be retained in CSM were not officially in the major college and thus were outside of my jurisdiction. ittedly, I selfishly argued to the CSM senior leadership to change how data were reported. Initially, I favored a data reporting and tracking system that distinguished students by ission type. I thought it was unfair that I was being held able for improving the success of our “majors” even though our “majors” were overwhelmingly in UC. I was unsuccessful in arguing for the change in data reporting because of the negative impact it would have on the CSM budget. Major colleges receive funds based largely on total enrollment, which includes intending majors assigned to UC. Although I understood the budgetary concerns, I realized I was in a position doomed for failure. As such, instead of arguing for a clear separation of intending and direct its, I began to argue aggressively that the major college should directly it all of our interested students. I argued by way of connecting openly expressed perceptions of UC by CSM faculty and staff to student success literature and highlighted racial disparities in ission status, particularly exposing how Black students were being systematically pushed out of science and mathematics as a result of being channeled through UC. CSM faculty and staff often expressed concerns that the UC staff, specifically academic advisors, did not adequately prepare students for their intended majors. High turnover of staff, misadvising and misinformation, and a lack of policies to enforce and/or encourage participation in services, especially for those who needed it the most but did not know it, cast doubt that UC was adequately equipped to prepare students for success in their major programs and suggested that the UC was structurally flawed. In addition, CSM faculty and staff communicated the belief that students’ chances for success were greatest when they were able to build connections with the faculty, staff, and students in their major and could take advantage of specialized resources that were offered through the major college. Nonetheless, I was met with fierce resistance from senior CSM s,

faculty, and staff who insisted the major college did not have the resources or the desire to the intending students because they did not want to invest time and money (read: take away time and money from the “good” students) into students who they believed would not be retained. Ironically, the major college received resources for the UC students because they were included in our total enrollment data for budgetary purposes. This was particularly frustrating to me because there was resistance to both (a) excluding intending majors from the major college because CSM wanted the resources for these students; and (b) intaking the students into the major college upon ission because the perception was that the students were not capable of being retained. It was clear that the intending CSM majors were being exploited, especially the Black students. CSM bragged about its racial diversity, “celebrating” a 10% Black student enrollment, yet failing to acknowledge how those Black students were not actually in the major college or receiving CSM . These uned Black students appeared in all of the CSM outreach and recruitment materials, yet did not have access to the very faculty, staff, and other resources and services depicted in the publicity materials in which the Black students’ faces and stories were featured. These same uned Black students were countlessly the subjects of federal and state grant proposals written by CSM faculty and staff that sought to fix their deficiencies with mentorship, tutoring, and remediation services. In short, these uned Black students were the victims of fairytale inclusion, or as Dr. Julia Hare once proclaimed at the 2007 State of the Black Union, “the illusion of inclusion.” Unfortunately, as the only Black in CSM performing student affairs functions, I, too, was exploited. I was paraded out at every chance to be the face of and promote the diversity and “inclusion” narrative on behalf of the college. I felt most conflicted and frustrated with the reality of my position and responsibilities during summer orientation in 2015, in which I co-led nearly 20 sessions. It was during the orientation sessions where “the great divide” and fairytale inclusion were hypervisible. It is one thing to create a pivot chart that highlights the characteristics of students itted directly into the college versus those itted to UC, but it was made real for me when after leading a t college overview session with all of the CSM “majors,” I had to ask the UC students to stand and exit the room to go to another space for their advising session. After the UC students’ exit, I was then to deliver my scripted speech, congratulating “the top of the class,” and give them special CSM swag. In addition, I was expected to brag on the importance and benefits of being able to

come directly into the college and simultaneously outline the disadvantages and shortcomings of those who would not receive those benefits because they were being routed to UC. The “great divide” in physically separating out the students weighed heavily on me. In part, I felt I was forced to be complicit in reinforcing and cementing every feeling and ascription that came with the label “intending” (read: not good enough), and based on reputation and trend, I knew that I would never see those students in CSM. I watched them, overwhelmingly Black students, leave the room, session after session, and felt conflicted, hopeless, helpless, and powerless. Research suggests students are more likely to be retained when they have a connection to the faculty and staff in their major department (Gallup, Inc., 2014) and have a well-established science identity (Williams, George-Jackson, Baber, & Trent, 2011). I was reminded of this research when “my babies” exited the room; most of them will not qualify to start first-year science classes for majors because they do not meet the mathematics requirement. However, although I was not an academic advisor, I would still write on their course scheduling guides a list of recommended courses that they were eligible to take for foundation building. Historically, UC advisors rarely recommend or schedule the students in such classes because they do not count toward a degree. The foundational classes are so much more than just “electives.” Students enhance their interest and shape their science identity in those classes; and they meet and engage with faculty and other students in their intended major in those classes. Fortunately, I was able to provide some of those experiences for intending CSM students, primarily Black, through the first-year seminar classes that I volunteered to teach. I even made myself the official advisor of record for some of the students, who would ask me if, or rather tell me that, I would be their advisor. “Be sure to schedule a meeting with your academic advisor in preparation for pre-registration for spring semester,” I reminded the class. “I thought you were my academic advisor,” proclaimed several of the students. “My advisor is creepy. And besides, he could care less about seeing me,” said Danielle. Another student, Brian, said, “I scheduled a meeting with my advisor, and the appointment lasted all of 10 minutes. He was like, ‘take this class and this class and choose two more classes to round out your schedule.’ And then he dismissed me! That’s why I came to see you, and you adjusted my schedule. He had me in all of the wrong classes and some of the classes overlapped with each other.” Another student, TayQuan, said, “Dr. B., you already know I’m not going to see anyone else but you. Whether you like it or not, you’re my advisor. You’re

the only one who has taken time out with me. Every time I think about quitting or don’t show up for class or miss a meeting, I can always expect an email or a phone call from you. So, you might as well add me to your list of advisees because I’m not going anywhere. And besides, you be having snacks in your office and you know I’m always hungry!” I never refused students’ requests for me to be their advisor, and I worked directly with their UC advisors to facilitate the transfer of records to me. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, I never received any pushback or expressions of concern that I was peeling off some of their students. They welcomed the transfers, as some of the UC advisors had upwards of 500 students in their caseload. In addition to pre-advising during orientation, volunteering to teach first-year seminars, and taking on the responsibility of being an academic advisor of record, I also co-created an ad hoc committee to focus on Black student outreach and enrollment, but our ideas were never well received by the university enrollment office. For example, we proposed hosting a special summer orientation for Black students, similar to the way the university’s orientation team hosts special sessions for students majoring in nursing or participating in the honors program. The proposal was rejected by the director of orientation because, as he expressed it in a meeting with the ad hoc committee, “if you all host a special orientation for the Black students, then all of the other sessions are going to look White and that wouldn’t be a good image to display and it would look like we aren’t a diverse institution.” Never mind that our goals were to create safe spaces for Black students and assist them with navigating the university, get them connected to key campus and community resources, and establish a nurturing environment and network, one which continuing Black students often said did not exist for them. Our methods for achieving these goals were rejected every step of the way for fear the White students would not be afforded enough opportunities to snap a selfie with a Black student and post it on the university’s social media pages in the name of promoting diversity. Ultimately, the ad hoc committee refocused our efforts to work with Black students in the local public high schools, and we had much success building relationships with the high school personnel and providing workshops for the students and their families on how to navigate the college issions process and how to be a successful college student. Not only did I engage students directly, I also led a series of discussions with the

leadership of CSM to express my disappointment with the direction of the college. In particular, I called attention to how we were complicit in the reproduction of White supremacy within our systems and structures. I spoke out against the constant desire to “fix” the students and lack of appetite to fix ourselves as a college through dismantling the very structures that were never designed to fully our intending majors. I expressed my concern for how the college exploited Black students out of convenience and quickly disposed of them at leisure. I even pointed out how I was being exploited. I asked, “Whatever happened to the faculty and staff who served on the search committee for my position?” They seemed to “get it,” or so I thought. It was clear that the leadership had no desire to look inward and see how dysfunctional CSM was on the inside. They could only see the deficiencies in our students. As a result, I had to make a choice: Continue to be infected or quarantine. I was stretched to my limits trying to be a separate system and safe space for my students, and I was no longer able to be true to myself, my scholarship, or my practice. Thus, I made the decision to leave.

Discussion: Institutional Diversity as Whiteness

While the academy tries hard not to discuss race and racism, the word “diversity” consistently shows up on university websites, mission statements, and student programming. The overutilization of the word “diversity” has not only created a perception of society as being a melting pot of happiness but also allowed institutions, educators, students, and policy makers to hold a poor understanding of issues of inequality and justice in society. The idea of diversity has come “overwhelmingly to mean the inclusion of people who look different” from Whiteness (Puwar, 2004). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1994) have argued the limits of diversity, or multiculturalism (often used interchangeably), and how it mirrors the traditions of liberalism. As expressed by Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995), “less often discussed are the growing tensions that exist between and among various groups … the interests of groups can be competing or their perspectives can be at odds” (p. 61). Moreover, students are tired of talking about diversity because the word and concept has been talked about at such a surface level that the concept seems simple, old, and solved. Applying diversity as an “add-on” to institutions, whether it be via faculty of color or programming,

simply “confirms the Whiteness of what is already in place” (Ahmed, 2012, p. 33). Entering the academy as professionals and academics of color, while very confident and proud of our carved-out expertise, earned and learned from our life and academic experiences, we have found that the reason why we were hired is not simply our expertise. The title of this chapter, and our presence in the academy as new professionals, is indicative of the add-on effect that Ahmed (2012) discusses, where our difference is simply added onto a space to make it look “diverse” and not act, sound, or function in a way that uproots Whiteness. This practice of saccharine diversity is not about changing the Whiteness of the academy, its practices, and its curriculum. Rather, it is about generating a perceived right image, by adding something or someone who will help change “the perceptions of whiteness rather than changing the whiteness of organizations” (Ahmed, 2012, p. 34). There is a difference between being utilized as an expert to assist in educating and being used as a mascot for a department and/or university. While our hiring and presence all personify the addition of “difference,” it is quite evident that the changes our critical perspectives and practices could make are not welcomed, further exemplifying the concept of being added onto the surface, but not being inserted into the actual functioning of the department. The role we have been hired to play is similar to that of a school mascot, dressed in a costume that covers from head to toe. Loved for their school spirit and energetic antics that draw out a crowd’s cheers, mascots serve as a symbol of a university. Their jovial antics include all things physical, but never any talking. At many institutions, the identity of the individual who dons the beloved mascot suit is the ultimate secret, never to be revealed. The individual must swear to never reveal his or her identity, never disrobe, and above all things, never, ever take off the mascot costume head in public. We were hired to silently serve as the mascots of a surface-level commitment to diversity. Placed at the forefront of meetings, conference presentations, and promotional items for departments, our difference is celebrated as something won, similar to a trophy. Thus, institutions set up expectations that are unattainable for critical pedagogy scholars, as the focus of our very hiring was to diversify, create a more inclusive image, and provide a practice that is added to the White normalcy of the space, not to call out and problematize it. So long as the “kumbaya effect” ⁴ is in play and previous unequal institutional practices are not challenged, the presence of a

diverse person is welcomed. Ahmed (2012) explains:

People of color are welcomed on condition they return that hospitality by integrating into a common organizational culture, or by “being” diverse, and allowing institutions to celebrate their diversity. (p. 43)

Utilizing this practice, the academy continues to call upon interest convergence, the critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 1993) construct first theorized by Derrick Bell (1980) as the point where “interests of Blacks in gaining racial equality have been accommodated only when they have converged with the interests of powerful Whites” (Taylor, 2009, p. 5). Applying Bell’s theory to people of color in general, the mere addition or increase of individuals of color is seen as a success for higher education institutions, and since working for an increased presence of diversity is a historical and current systematic problem for the academy, it fulfills an interest of institutions. However, the mere presence of diverse individuals in itself is insufficient for disrupting and dismantling White supremacy within higher education systems, governance, and structures. The interest convergence concept also warns that when Whiteness is under attack or is no longer the greatest beneficiary, the unspoken “ of agreement” or “memorandum of understanding” will be revisited or terminated without question or consideration.

The “Clap Back”: Strategies to Disrupt the “Hired on” Concept

In everyday circles, the “clap back” is the return response or “comeback” to a dis, ignorance, insult, shade, or read. The “clap back” is an art form. When done correctly, it can save one from the feeling of defeat, and often raises spirits and self-validation, because a good “clap back” is powerful. The “clap back” has the power to shift the narrative or circumstance, push back against resistance, or simply put someone or something on blast for public display, discussion, and/or ridicule. Done to a syncopated rhythm unique to each individual, it is a

necessary skill for your toolbox, especially within higher education settings that push diversity and multicultural narratives and yet fail to embrace inclusion and create spaces to critically engage issues of race, racism, marginalization, and inequalities. Throughout this chapter, we have shared honest, burdensome, and challenging experiences of being new professionals in spaces that do not and understand the need for critical race perspectives. However, while these challenges are very real, raw, and unfortunately common, we are still alive and kickin’. We have celebrated our triumphs and written down lessons from the challenges that have left us bruised, but not broken. We also acknowledge the work of scholars of color, such as Natasha Croom and Lori Patton (2012) and Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner, Juan Carlos Gonzalez, and J. Luke Wood (2008), who have documented similar experiences, challenges, and struggles. We draw inspiration from their work and others on exploring, thriving, surviving, and resisting everyday challenges of White supremacy, particularly within the higher education enterprise. Understanding that each individual is unique and views the world through various experiences and perspectives, we would like to take this section to share some strategies—reflective of how we have responded thus far to our challenges —to “clap back” against the notion of being hired on as faculty or as an . In particular, we offer the following three “clap backs” for your toolbox: Stand, Expand, and Leave. We highlight these “clap backs” in a logical order; however, we have come to acknowledge that how and when we choose to “clap back” as early career scholars and practitioners of color matters, given our position (e.g., faculty or ), institutional politics (e.g., tenure and promotion), and protection, or lack thereof, (e.g., labor union), and need for self-care and self-preservation. Grab a “tool” from the “clap back” toolbox at your own will to fit your circumstance.

Stand

In the words of Audre Lorde, “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak” (Lorde, 1978). People of color learned a long time ago that our silence would not save us. Thus, communities of color have built cross-generational

movements dedicated to fighting for justice. It is essential as early career scholars of color that we “clap back” to the “hired-on effect” by voicing our concerns, offering different perspectives on issues, and calling out injustices and unfair practices within the educational systems in which we are employed in order to effect change. Change does not happen overnight, and sometimes it does not happen at all. We have learned that by “calling attention to,” “speaking out,” “pushing back,” and “showing receipts” (i.e., data, literature, and personal narratives), we are, at the very least, creating awareness where there is ignorance. What senior leadership or policy makers choose to do (or not) with the presented receipts of injustice is up to them, but at least we know we have done our part in providing exposure. The failure to act, or not, also lets us know the institution’s position. It is then up to us to determine our next move. Sometimes the next move is taking a moment to retool our arguments, recruit some campus or community allies, gather more evidence and examples, and take a stand, again, and again, and again, until favorable results are produced. On the other hand, our next move could be moving on to prepare for the next “battle,” which is sure to come. We must choose our battles wisely. As people of color in a majority White space, we are often the lone voices who stand up for what is just, fair, and right. We put ourselves on the front lines for our students, our practice, our communities, and ourselves. However, due to the academy’s inequitable landscape for individuals of color and nonmajority, the front line can become a violent constant location. It is only a matter of time until we become overwhelmed, exhausted, and depleted from constantly fighting battles of inequality, whether it be with students, coworkers, departments, or the university as a whole. If we are unable to mend, strengthen, and care for ourselves, due to the constant location on the battlefield, we will surely be unable to care for those we have deemed our responsibility. When battles are chosen wisely, our voices are also more impactful. Although all matters of injustice are important to combat, waiting for the right time to make a bold statement or suggestion, or to take action, is imperative to making the greatest impact. If we remain strategic and methodical, we give little chance for our voice to be muted, because they will never see the battle coming. We acknowledge that “standing down” is never easy. In fact, it can be the most challenging thing to come to with. Outside perspectives from your village might prove the most beneficial because those close to you will hopefully be real with you about whether or not to take a seat or take a stand in a certain situation.

Expand

There are times when we find ourselves in a position in which there is unbearable resistance, when we are not able to disrupt or break up the systems that limit our presence and voice as early career scholars of color, that create barriers to student success, protect White supremacy, and/or reproduce racial injustices and oppression. In those moments we can “clap back” by finding ways to break through those systems. In particular, we can break through oppressive systems by way of expanding the boundaries of our official professional roles and responsibilities. In other words, we may have to step outside our job descriptions to protect and serve our students. We can seek external funding through grant opportunities to create initiatives in of our students. We can partner with colleagues across campus who are “about that life” to help students navigate campus and personal issues. We can make ourselves available to students as supplemental academic advisors or advisors for student groups. We can prepare and share, with the larger campus community, lectures, modules, and syllabi focused on combating racial injustices and inequalities and oppression within higher education. We can collaborate with cultural centers on campus to promote engagement opportunities. We can develop empirical studies about the impact of oppressive systems on student success and present our findings to the campus and local community and generate media attention. We do not have to shy away because we do not have the or “hired in” status we desire to disrupt oppressive systems. We can instead find ways to break through them by expanding our footprint to activate our mission and get desired results.

Leave

There is an old saying, “Your first move doesn’t have to be your last move.” Sometimes the ultimate “clap back” is to leave, on your own , a toxic work environment, in which you are treated as an “add-on,” in hopes of landing in a

place and space that is at least remotely better than your current situation. We understand that choosing to leave a job, no matter how toxic the environment, can be difficult, especially for young professionals of color, because we may internalize feelings of guilt and interpret our departure as quitting on our students, leaving them to dismantle their own barriers to success. It is in these moments that we have to take our mental health and physical well-being into consideration; reflect on our accomplishments; and take pride in the lives we were able to impact, even if for only a short period of time, and the barriers we were able to disrupt. In addition, we have to update our CVs and cover letters and prepare to “take our talents” to another institution and community that is more in alignment with our vision and mission. We must our worth! We can still honor our students and colleagues who “fought the good fight” with us by creating a path for our successors through participating in exit interviews with senior leadership. In the exit interviews, it is imperative that we candidly discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the institution and reflect on the “hired-on effect” and its impact in our performance, wellbeing, and decision to leave, in hopes that the successor will have a more positive experience and continue to make progress on dismantling and disrupting systems within higher education that serve as barriers to student success.

The Wrap-Up

The role of serving as the diversity/multicultural/intercultural expert is multidimensional with regard to education. We are often hired to educate and students in higher education, be it in the classroom or across campus in various capacities. While this is to be our main focus, it is never our only focus because we are often at war with the “hired-on” effect in which we constantly have to insert ourselves and stand up for issues of equity and justice. The “hiredon” effect is detrimental to institutions at various macro and micro levels. Higher education institutions that hire professionals of color only to add physical diversity on campus provide toxic signals to students and faculty that diversity is achieved by merely inserting difference on the surface. Therefore, it is imperative for early career scholars of color to “clap back” to the “hired-on” effect through taking a stand, expanding our footprint, and choosing to leave when necessary. Educating colleagues may not be part of our established job

description, nor is constantly having to push back against oppressive policies and practices that further marginalize or exploit students of color. But it is hard to ignore these issues and still manage to thrive and survive, because this work is not just work; it is embedded in the very fibers of our identities. Our real-life experiences are intertwined with the work we do, and the majority of the time we are not simply fighting against injustices for our students and communities; we are fighting against them because they directly affect us.

Notes

1The first-person-singular narratives in this chapter represent the authors’ personal experiences. We do not indicate which author is speaking in these cases, but the narratives are factual. 2The percentage of first-time, full-time, direct-from-high-school students who returned for a second year still pursuing a major in science and mathematics. 3The University College is home to students who are considered “at-risk” and need targeted resources, such as developmental programming, before qualifying for transfer into their intended majors. 4The naïve practice of wanting individuals to get along peacefully without acknowledging issues of inequity among identities.

References

Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and institutional life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bell, D. (1980). Shade of brown: New perspectives on school desegregation. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Chen, X. (2013). STEM attrition: College students’ paths into and out of STEM fields (NCES 2014-001). Washington, DC:National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Croom, N. N., & Patton, L. D. (2011–2012). The miner’s canary: A critical race perspective on the representation of black women full professors. Negro Educational Review, 62–63(1–4), 13–39. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (1993). Critical race theory: An annotated bibliography. Virginia Law Review, 79, 461–516. Gallup, Inc. (2014). Great jobs great lives: The 2014 Gallup-Purdue index report. Retrieved from Lumina Foundation website: https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/galluppurdueindex-report2014.pdf Ladson-Billings, G. J., & Tate, W. F. (1994). Toward a theory of critical race theory in education. Teachers College Record, 97, 47–68. Lorde, A. (1978). The black unicorn. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Puwar, N. (2004). Space invaders: Race, gender, and bodies out of place. Oxford, UK: Berg. Taylor, E. (2009). Critical race theory and interest convergence in the backlash of affirmative action: Washington state and Initiative 200. In E. Taylor, D. Gilborn, & G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp. 117–129). New York, NY: Routledge. Turner, C. S. V., Gonzales, J. C., & Luke Wood, J. (2008). Faculty of color in academe: What 20 years of literature tells us. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 1(3), 139–168.

Williams, M., George-Jackson, C., Baber, L., & Trent, W. (2011, April 8–12). Considering the role of gender in developing a science identity: Undergraduate students in STEM fields at large, public, research universities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Retrieved from http://stepup.education.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/Project%20STEPUP%20Science%20Ide

X, M. (1965). Malcolm X speaks. New York, NY: Grove.

Afterword

Trying to Make It Real—Compared to What?

G LORIA J. L ADSON -B ILLINGS University of Wisconsin, Madison

Race is a chimera—both a grotesque monster and a figment of our individual and collective imaginations. The question that this book raises is whether race is a condition or a process, and as the volume’s contributors have argued persuasively, the question is not amenable to an either/or response. Instead, race has taken on a “both/and” quality that makes it difficult for us to sort through and make sense of. Thus, as I contemplate these “closing” words, or more appropriately, the words after the other words have been offered, I want to proffer yet another perspective. This perspective suggests that rather than being a condition or a process, race is a project . The notion of a project suggests an ongoing, dynamic, evolutionary, never-

ending conception of being. More specifically, “project” used in this way comes from Heidegger’s use of entwerf in Being and Time (2008), which is translated as a “projection.” According to Inwood (1999), “an entwerf in Heidegger’s sense is not a particular plan or project, it is what makes any plan or project possible.” My argument is that it is not what race is that is significant. It is what race does to create and define the concepts of humanness, otherness, and difference that lead to exclusion, inequality, and injustice. To understand what I mean by the notion that race is a project, one might consider a robust concept such as “democracy.” In essence, democracy is a project. There are few places where we can directly point to democracy; rather, we can look at democratic practices. But democracy is the project in which we claim to engage. It does not have a definite ending point. We see ourselves as forever working to shape it, and, as the country’s founders declared, to “form a more perfect union.” Similarly, race may be considered a project. Its work is to create and maintain a hierarchy and to force us to produce gradations of humanity. Interestingly, race —unlike class or gender—is a relatively modern project. Sociologist Howard Winant (2002) details the systematic formation of race as a worldwide project at the close of World War II. This is not to suggest that race had not been operating before this time. Indeed, we can document conceptions of race as far back as the 1500s, but it takes shape as a hegemonic, global cultural model by the end of World War II in the United States, Europe, South Africa, and Brazil. The project operates on social, cultural, and symbolic levels to structure the material reality of people’s lives. In a spirit of transparency, I must confess that I come to my thinking about race through the social science lens of anthropology. Anthropologists have grappled with race in particular and peculiar ways. On the one hand, anthropology is the intellectual tool through which race has attained purchase. By “biologizing” race, anthropologists have been at the fore-front of establishing and maintaining racial categories and imbuing them with meaning. Anthropologists have participated in “studies” that fostered eugenicist notions grounded in measuring and evaluating skull size, skin color, hair texture, and the width and thickness of noses and lips, all in the purported service of proving some kind of objectivity behind the concept of race. By the time the field reversed itself on the reality of race, notions of race and racial inferiority were already deeply engrained in the minds of the body politic. The role that anthropology has played in establishing race as a sense-making

category has been pivotal in defining how we think about humanity. Anthropology was at the forefront of performing the sorting and ranking functions of race. The World’s Fairs and World Exhibitions relied on anthropology to display ethnic and cultural groups from the most “depraved/deprived” to the most “advanced.” It was no coincidence that these rankings held darker peoples from South Sudan/Africa in the lowest regard, while Northern and Western Europeans were considered the most advanced (Smedley & Smedley, 2011). Interestingly, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) embarked on a 10-year-long project called RACE: Are We So Different? in 2002 (see Goodman, Moses, & Jones, 2012). This project was designed to help undo much of the damage the field caused in the 19th century. Several arguments shape the project: (a) the idea of race was invented; (b) human biological variation is real, obvious, wonderful, and necessary; (c) the idea of race does not explain human variation; (d) race is both stable and protean, and; (e) we own the future of race. On one level, both natural and social scientists agree that race is not a biological reality, though it maintains significant power as a social construct. Indeed, scholar Sylvia Wynter has called it an “imaginary social signification” (1992). The project of race is to maintain hierarchy and the mythology of White supremacy, and despite sound science that debunks the concept, we live in a social world that continues to try to make it real. It is made to be real, but compared to what? It sits in a very different place from gender or class, and as a consequence, it remains undertheorized in most social science literature. In 1995, Ladson-Billings and Tate challenged conventional perspectives on race (particularly in education) and argued that despite the scientific denial of race as real, it nonetheless had real and material consequences. They argued that race still matters, and that race, coupled with the U.S. emphasis on property rights, may significantly inform our understanding of inequality in our society. LadsonBillings and Tate (1995) were creating work designed to help theorize race and move it beyond notions often seen in social sciences (such as psychology and sociology) that position race as merely a “variable.” By theorizing race, we can better understand the work of the racial project and how that project structures inequality throughout the education system. Race determines quality of and access to curriculum, academic tracks, special education, school funding, school disciplinary practices, and so forth. And it does this work without the overt intent of school professionals—despite their racial identities.

The chapters in this volume illustrate the ways that race is a project. The authors come from a variety of backgrounds—sociology, mathematics education, teacher education, history, and others—and that variety underscores the point I make regarding the project nature of race. Each author attempts to grapple with what race is and what work it does. And each of us represents a partial understanding of race, because as a project, it has an all-encoming, pervasive set of qualities that make it difficult to get our intellectual arms around. The fact that race shifts and changes in different eras for different purposes makes it among the most slippery of notions. That slipperiness keeps us chasing and pursuing it as if we could nail it down and tame it. But the launching of the project has made it like a genie in a bottle. It is out and about, and we cannot recapture it and tuck it back into some neat container. It has contaminated our entire culture, and we struggle to free ourselves from it as it changes, multiplies, and mutates with every new generation. More recently, Ibram X. Kendi (2016) developed an intellectual history of racist ideas that move from Cotton Mather to Angela Davis to describe how the project of race has been central to the development of the United States. This underscores the enduring nature of the project and the unlikelihood that we will soon eradicate it. This tracing of the idea is an important strategy for deciphering the power and permanence of race in America. Race is deeply woven into the nation’s fabric in ways that make it nearly impossible to unravel without tearing the whole society asunder. Is race real? Yes … and no. Du Bois (1903/1994) suggested that the problem of the 20th century would be the issue of the color line. However, we now find ourselves in the 21st century, and we are no closer to solving this problem. Electing a U.S. president of African descent did not solve it (some argue that it exacerbated it). Growing numbers of African Americans in public life—public service, business, entertainment, sports, arts— have done nothing to make us more comfortable with the racial project. Race challenges the false narrative of ongoing progress and reminds us that much of U.S. culture is like a pendulum that swings back and forth between degrees of “progressive” and “conservative.” I place those labels in quotation marks because such , like race, are “floating signifiers” (Levi-Strauss, 1950) that rarely have stable or unified meanings. However, we keep trying to make race real—compared to what?

References

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1994). The souls of Black folk. New York, NY: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1903) Goodman, A. H., Moses, Y. T., & Jones, J. L. (2012). Race: Are we so different? Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Heidegger, M. (2008). Being and time. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Inwood, M. (Ed.). (1999). A Heidegger dictionary. London, UK: Blackwell. Kendi, I. X. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. New York, NY: National Books. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97, 47–68. Levi-Strauss, C. (1987). Introduction to Marcel Mauss. London, UK: Routledge. (Original work published 1950) Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. (2011). Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview (4th ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Winant, H. (2002). The world is a ghetto: Race and democracy since World War II. New York, NY: Basic Books. Wynter, S. (1992). Do not call us Negros: How “multicultural” textbooks perpetuate racism. San Francisco, CA: Aspire Books.

About the Contributors

Editors

Adrienne D. Dixson is a professor of critical race theory and education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is also an faculty member in gender and women’s studies. Dixson has held leadership roles in a number of scholarly associations. She has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, reports, and edited volumes on culturally relevant pedagogy, education reform in New Orleans, critical race theory and education, and research on race and education.

Gloria J. Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Policy Studies, and Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Ladson-Billings is author of the critically acclaimed volumes The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children; Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms; and Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education.

Cecilia E. Suarez is an assistant professor of intercultural communication at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on access and equity for students of color in higher education and culturally relevant student development.

William T. Trent is a professor of education policy, organization and

leadership, and sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is director of the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities. He has taught courses in sociology of education, education and stratification, and postsecondary access at Illinois since 1983. He has served as an associate chancellor at Illinois and as a member of the National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment.

James D. Anderson is dean of the College of Education, the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Education, and professor of history, African American studies, and law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His scholarship focuses broadly on the history of U.S. education, with a subfield in the history of African American education.

Authors

Celia Rousseau Anderson is a professor at the University of Memphis. Her research focuses on critical race theory, urban education, and equity in mathematics education.

Ivory M. Berry is the director of student success for the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va. In this istrative faculty role, he provides leadership in the areas of academic advising, enrollment and retention, student engagement and communications, and students of concern. His research focuses on retaining Black college students in STEM disciplines and exploring high school students’ perceptions and firsthand experiences of racial educational equity reform.

A. Wade Boykin is a professor and graduate program director in the

Department of Psychology at Howard University. He is also the executive director of the Capstone Institute for School Reform at Howard University. Boykin has done extensive work in the areas of Black child development; the interface of culture, context, motivation, and cognition; and academic achievement in the American social context. In spring 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Education.

Mitchell James Chang is a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on diversity-related issues and initiatives on college campuses. He has written more than 90 publications, some of which have been cited in U.S. Supreme Court rulings concerning the use of race-conscious issions practices. Chang was elected in 2016 as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Higher Education.

Kelly M. Harris is a postdoctoral research associate in the Child Health and Education Laboratory in the Program in Occupational Therapy at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine. Her research uses geospatial and quantitative methods to examine the impacts of chronic disease, health care access, and neighborhood characteristics on academic achievement and attainment for youth.

Brittni D. Jones is a student retention coordinator and an adjunct instructor in first-year studies at Troy University. Her research interests focus broadly on social determinants of education, health, and related developmental outcomes in urban areas. She holds a Ph.D. in education from Washington University in St. Louis, where she conducted her research for this volume.

Zeus Leonardo is a professor and associate dean of education, and faculty of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an AERA Fellow and the vice president of AERA’s Division G (2017–2020). His research involves critical engagement with race and

class stratification in education, democratic schooling, and diversity in multiple forms, including epistemological and ideological difference. His book is Edward Said and Education, to be published by Routledge.

Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., is an associate professor of history at the University of Houston. His research focuses on race, gender, and ethnicity in medicine; health care politics; environmental health; and the transformation of disease identity in 20th-century America. He is currently writing a history of race and diabetes and co-editing the Oxford Handbook of American Medical History.

Elaine Richardson is a professor of literacy studies, Department of Teaching and Learning, in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. Her research interests include the libera-tory literacy, language, and discourse practices of people of the African Diaspora, most intimately those of Americans and Jamaicans of Black African descent.

Jocyl Sacramento is an assistant professor of ethnic studies at California State University, East Bay. Her research and teaching interests include K– 12 ethnic studies, Pinayism, critical pedagogy, comparative racialization, community-responsive pedagogies, and Asian American studies. Her work has appeared in Urban Review and Amerasia Journal.

Daniel G. Solorzano is a professor of social science and comparative education at the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching and research interests include critical race theory in education, racial microaggressions, racial microaffirmations, and critical race spatial analysis. He has authored around 100 research articles and book chapters on issues related to educational access and equity for underrepresented student populations and communities in the United States. Solorzano is a recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award.

David O. Stovall is a professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests are located at the intersection of race, place, and school.

William F. Tate IV is the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He currently serves as dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education. His scholarship focuses on the development of epidemiological and geospatial models to explain the social determinants of education attainment as well as health and developmental outcomes.