Critical Race Theory
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CriticalRaceTheory.pdf
Assignment: How does the Critical Race Theory apply to the study of dismattling the school to prison pipeline.
1. 6-7 pages 2. APA format 3. Use resorces listed in addition to others, if needed.
I’m conducting a qualitative study on solutions to school to prison pipeline. The study seeks to answer the following questions:
● RQ. 1. How will teaching and classroom structure keep at-risk youth engaged?
● RQ. 2. What is the positive behavioral plan effective in reducing or eliminating school suspensions of at-risk youth?
Topic: School to Prison Pipeline- The school-to-prison pipeline is a process through which students are pushed out of schools and into prisons. In other words, it is a process of criminalizing youth that is carried out by disciplinary policies and practices within schools that put students into contact with law enforcement.
Resources to Use in assignment
Clement, B. (2004). The White community's dissent of bolling. Historical Society of Washington D.C., 16(4), 89-109. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2000). Critical race theory: the cutting edge. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2005). The role of critical race theory in understanding race, crime, and justice issues. In Inaugural Colloquium, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, December (Vol. 13). Gillborn, D., & Ladson-Billings, G. (2016). Foundations of critical race theory in education. London, UK: Routledge.
Background Information Critical Race Theory and Education Critical race theory (often referred to by its acronym CRT) emerged during
the early 1980s as scholars of color in legal studies began to examine the
intransigence of racism within the landscape of the United States following
the civil rights movement and the role of the law in maintaining unequal race
relations. CRT serves as a counter to discussions that focus on diversity
without specifically examining race and power. This entry briefly describes
the origins of critical race theory, its central tenets, its major branches, and
examples of research in education.
Tenets of Critical Race Theory
The main goal of critical race theorists is to expose hidden systemic and
customary ways in which racism works by drawing from a wide variety of
sources of knowledge that range from statistics to social science research to
personal experience. Critical race theorists have elaborated on the following
central tenets, with some variation among theorists in exactly how these are
broken out.
Centrality of Racism
Critical race theorists assume that racism is not an aberration, but rather a
fundamental, endemic, and normalized way of organizing society. Beginning
with the appropriation of indigenous lands and building the economy on a
system of slavery, White people created race and racism for their own
benefit. Although racism is linked with and contributes to other forms of
oppression (such as gender, class, or immigration status), critical race
theorists center race when analyzing linked forms of oppression.
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The forms that racism take today have shifted from those of the past, but it
continues to be evident in the disproportionate access that Whites have to
resources such as jobs, wealth, housing, and education, and in the dominant
Eurocentric worldview that is used to explain inequalities. White people,
generally believing that racism is a thing of the past, tend not to notice racial
disparities, and when they do, attribute them to something other than the
workings of racism. People of color, based on everyday experience, have a
much clearer picture of how racism works, although they may be taught by
Whites to distrust their own understandings. By assuming that racism is
endemic to society rather than an aberration, CRT asks how it is structured
and why it persists, even when it has been purportedly ameliorated.
Challenges to Claims of Neutrality, Color Blindness, and Meritocracy
The law is commonly understood as impartial and neutral, applied to all
individuals equally without regard to race or other demographic identities.
Within a system of competitive individualism, people experience widely
different levels of success. The dominant ideology attributes individual
disparities to talent and effort, and racial disparities to those factors plus
lingering effects of historical racism. CRT challenges the idea that laws and
institutions are racially neutral, holding that claims of neutrality and color
blindness mask White privileges and power.
Cheryl Harris's theory of Whiteness as property elaborates on this tenet.
According to Harris, both slavery and seizure of Indian land established and
protected an interest in Whiteness itself. Indian land was sold cheaply to
European immigrants or White Americans; slaves could not own land, and
states restricted rights of free Blacks to own property or work in certain jobs.
Slavery was replaced by legal segregation and racialized restrictions until
1954. Whiteness guaranteed legal entitlement to property and to freedoms
that non-Whites did not have. Over time, Whites accumulated property
through this overtly racist and legalized system, passing property on to their
children. Thus, Whiteness became linked with property and took on legal
protections of property rights. On paper, laws may apply equally to
everyone, but in practice, Whites use property, power, and customary ways
of behaving (such as treating other Whites as competent while questioning
the competence of non-Whites) that have the effect of maintaining racism.
Whites as Beneficiaries of Racial Remedies
Bell advanced the notion of “interest convergence,” which holds that Whites
act on their own self-interest, and advance interests of people of color only
as long as they converge with White interests. He based this notion on an
analysis of who actually benefited from policies such as school desegregation
and affirmative action, finding that even though the policies purported to
benefit people of color, Whites used them to benefit White interests. For
example, money to support school desegregation disproportionately went to
predominantly White schools that received African American transfer
students, and White teachers replaced Black teachers to make schools
palatable to White parents.
Centrality of Experiential Knowledge
The dominant ideology and knowledge system, based on a White
worldview—often termed majoritarian stories—denies or masks racism. Critical race theorists assume that the people who understand racism best
are not its perpetrators, but rather those who are routinely victimized by it.
Experiential knowledge that directly names race and racism can be shared in
a variety of forms, including stories, interviews, family histories,testimónios (testimonies), biographies, and community documents. By sharing personal
and community experiences of racism, people of color create counter-stories
to the dominant ideology. Redefining and reinterpreting reality from the
points of view of people of color serves collective empowerment and
knowledge
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reconstruction, and it challenges racism.
The significance of experiential knowledge has implications for research.
Although critical race theorists use a variety of research tools,
counter-storytelling has emerged as a central tool. Stories are important
because they provide the interpretive frameworks to make sense of
experience. Counter- stories explicitly rooted in the experiences of
oppressed peoples interpret those experiences in relationship to racism.
Many critical race theorists then create composite counter-stories based on
interviews or biographies to illustrate how race works in specific contexts,
such as in the college classroom.
Commitment to Working for Social Justice
Ultimately, critical race theorists are committed to working for
social justice. Although some theorists see racism as
intractable, most hope that deep analyses of it, coupled with
the development of rich counter-stories about how people have
worked against racism, will ultimately result in its elimination.
For example, Tara Yosso's concept of “community cultural
wealth” examines community resources that university students
of color access and use to navigate and succeed within racist
educational systems. An understanding of strategies and
resources within communities of color refutes deficit-oriented perspectives
and points toward productive ways forward.
Branches of Critical Race Theory
Much of the initial work in CRT was articulated largely within a Black–White
binary. Although scholars of color found the focus on racism immensely
helpful, many felt that related concerns such as gender, sexual orientation,
language, class, and colonialism were being ignored and that the histories
and experiences of diverse communities of color needed to be brought into
the conversation. Work that maps critical race theory against other
intersecting identities and structures of oppression has led to a “family tree”
with related branches.
Latina/o CRT (LatCrit) links an analysis of racism with immigration status,
language, culture, and gender. Tribal CRT (TribalCrit) analyzes colonization
as a fundamental basis for U.S. society and critiques relationships between
the U.S. federal government and indigenous peoples. Colonization is
examined in terms of appropriation of land and in terms of how European
American thought, knowledge, and power structures continue to dominate
and colonize. Asian CRT (AsianCrit) examines racism in past and current
nativism and immigration policies and the use of the “model minority”
stereotype as a form of racialized control.
Feminist CRT (FemCrit) examines gendered oppression that people of color
experience. For example, Crenshaw uses an analysis of the intersection of
race and gender to critique the inadequate and sometimes demeaning
counseling available to women of color at rape crisis centers, and the
general neglect of women of color who are raped or battered. White CRT
(WhiteCrit) examines race, racism, and racial identity as it is enacted by
Whites, naming and exposing the workings of White privilege.
Derrick Bell was the first African American law professor on the Harvard Law
School Faculty and is widely consider the originator of critical race theory.
His books include Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism and Race, Racism, and American Law. Source: David Shankbone, photographer; Wikimedia Commons. http://www.sage-ereference.com/view/diversityineducation/n154.xml?result=146&q=&print Page 3 of 5 Critical Race Theory and Education : Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education 6/6/12 2:29 PM
Critical Race Theory in Education Research
Research in education that is based on critical race theory is of two
related kinds: critiques of policies and practices through a CRT lens, and
documentation of strategies to navigate and resist racism.
For example, Tyrone Howard studied the underachievement of African
American males in PreK–12 schools, and education researchers' relative
silence about this problem. Howard suggests that to develop meaningful
interventions, we first must understand the problem as African American
males experience and interpret it, and that understanding must allow for
discussion of racism. Howard used counter-storytelling as a method as
he spent time with 10 young African American men in different schools.
He found them to be keenly aware of negative racial stereotypes that
were applied to them, and of instances in which race was a significant
factor that shaped how teachers and others treated them. He
documented many instances of “racial micro- aggressions,” which are
subtle but harmful forms of treatment such as put-downs, ignoring Black
students' accomplishments, or treating Black students as incompetent.
Based on this analysis, Howard suggests implications for testing and
disciplinary policies that persistently penalize African American male
students.
Daniel Solórzano and Dolores Delgado Bernal examined the desire of
Chicana/o students to create equitable learning environments. They
used LatCrit theory, which they explain extends CRT by developing a
pan-Latina/o coalition across differences such as language, skin color,
gender, and immigration status. To show active agency in making social
change, Solórzano and Delgado Bernal developed a typology of forms of
resistance to oppression based on an analysis of interviews with former
Chicana/o high school and university students in Los Angeles who had
protested the education they were receiving during the 1960s.
