Critical Race Theory in Education and Qualitative Inquiry

Introduction

In the winter of 2002, Qualitative Inquiry (QI) published a special issue on critical race theory (CRT) in education and its contribution to qualitative research (2002). This special issue (edited by Daniel Solorzano, Tara Yosso, Marvin Lynn and Laurence Parker), was to focus attention on CRT as an emerging theoretical framework through its connection to qualitative studies in education, and how race-neutral policies, practices, and laws perpetuated racial/ethnic subordination. The articles and concepts in the 2002 issue emphasized the utility of qualitative research toward developing a critical race methodological perspective within historical and cultural contexts, to deconstruct meanings of race and racism (Bell, 1992; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). This framework challenged dominant racial discourse (e.g., colorblindness, meritocracy) and showed why these concepts and terms effectively worked to create an interest convergence where people of color gained some advantages (e.g., during the civil rights movement, for example); but not at the expense of Whites (Bell, 1980). Originally developed by legal scholars of color, CRT was grounded in a social reality that was defined by racialized collective historical experiences of persons of color (Valdes, McCristal Culp, & Harris, 2002). CRT theorists typically utilized fictional dialogues, stories, chronicles, and personal testimonies in the form of counter stories or counter narratives that related different views on racism and discrimination from the ones White scholars usually heard and assumed (Delgado, 1990). There were a number of defining principles that formed the basic assumptions, perspectives, research methodology, and pedagogy of CRT (Matsuda, 1996; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Tate, 1997).

In the 2002 issue, the articles addressed the centrality of racism as an integral element of U.S. institutions, daily social interactions, and contexts. In education, racism and racial capitalism has been and continues to be imbedded within the structures, discourses, and policies that guide the daily practices of schools and universities which seek to make race a commodity within current neo-liberal politics. This was done to “color-blindly” ignore the harder steps needed for substantive racial change at a social or materialist level (Goldberg, 2009; Leong, 2013; Taylor, Gillborn, & Ladson-Billings, 2009). Race and racism have been central constructs that have intersected with other dimensions of one’s identity, such as language, gender, sexuality, and social class (Crenshaw, 1995). For people of color, each of these dimensions of one’s identity has potentially elicited multiple forms of subordination, yet each dimension has been subjected to different forms of oppression (Carbado, 2013). The articles also used CRT in combination with qualitative research to highlight the importance of whiteness as property that has defined whiteness, power dynamics and how these have been connected to legal and physical property in historical racial terms (i.e., slavery and the taking of land for the conquest of tribal nations, Harris, 1993). We also attempted to show through CRT and qualitative research how it was useful to critically examine the affirmative action debate which has pushed diversity as a commodification of race for the racial capital benefit of higher education, while scant attention is paid to more structural racial change on college campuses (Gusa, 2010; Leong, 2013; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). The articles in the 2002 special issue linked CRT to qualitative research methodologies and the CRT foundational tenet of challenging dominant racial ideology governed by claims of objectivity, meritocracy, colorblindness, and schools regarding race neutrality, leaving no child behind, racial achievement gaps, and now that of a postracial society (see Crenshaw, 2011). CRT used in this way critiqued these terms and revealed how they were used to foster a dominant ideological discourse of colorblindness and race neutrality which acted as a camouflage for the self-interest, power, and privilege of dominant groups in U.S. society (Delgado, 1989; López, 2003).

The centrality of experiential knowledge linked to racism and a connection to historical context and interdisciplinary perspectives have been fundamental principles of CRT. Furthermore, these tenets have been used in qualitative research as legitimate avenues toward the understanding of racial subordination and White supremacy. The previous special issue highlighted the application of a CRT framework in an analysis of qualitative research and practice in the field of education that focused on the experiential knowledge of people of color, and how this centering of race and racism should be viewed as valued data stemming directly from lived experiences with racial discrimination (Duncan, 2002). The experiential knowledge came from storytelling, family history, biographies, scenarios, parables, chronicles, and narratives (Delgado, 1989, 1990). We also felt it was necessary to assert that CRT in qualitative studies challenged a historicism and the unidisciplinary focus of most analyses in educational research. Instead, we posited that historical context was of critical importance when analyzing race and racism as well as relying on different bases of knowledge or ways of knowing from fields such as African American studies, Latino/a studies, Chicana/o studies, American Indian studies, Asian American/Pacific Island studies, and gender and women’s studies. Finally, we argued that CRT in qualitative research had a fundamental commitment to a social justice agenda that was engaged in a struggle to eliminate all forms of racial, gender, language, sexuality, and class subordination (Matsuda, 1996). In education, these theoretical frameworks have been conceived as a social justice project that has sought to link theory with practice, scholarship with teaching, and the academy with the community (Chapman, 2007; Dunbar, 2001; Venzant Chambers & McCready, 2011).

These defining elements of CRT and critical race studies (CRS) formed a framework that served to document the racial realism contexts of schools, colleges, and communities and how/why this was important for research and social action. ¹ For example, the article by Fernandez (2002) took CRT and applied it to Puerto Rican youth culture and Chicago House Music as social location in which to interrogate how identities of race, gender, sexuality, and class get produced for urban youth. She argued that we must understand the racial, spatial, cultural, and political logics of inner cities to account for how various social forces intersect in young people’s lives. Based on ethnographic interviews conducted with Puerto Rican Chicago high school students in the late 1990s, the author addressed the question, how and why House music was meaningful to Latino/a youth. Fernandez concluded that House music served multiple for purposes for urban Latino/a youth—a site of leisure and pleasure, and a form of cultural affirmation. It was also a way of resisting repressive educational practices, and a means of earning a living within the highly racially polarized context of Chicago politics. Delgado Bernal (2002) addressed the significance of applying Chicana feminist epistemology and Latina/o Critical Theory (LatCrit) to research on Chicanas/os in education. LatCrit evolved from CRT as an analytical lens that offered greater sensitivity in analyses of Latinas/os’ life experiences and social conditions. Unlike CRT, LatCrit includes analytical tenets that account for language, immigration, and generational status, all of which form important dimensions of Latinas/os’ cultural and ethnic heterogeneity and the threat of racism against them (Montoya, 1999). Drawing from her research on Chicana/o undergraduates, Delgado Bernal used her work to further explore the connections between Chicana feminist epistemology in an analysis of Chicana/os in higher education (Delgado Bernal, 2002). In sum, our aim of this special issue was to provide a more holistic picture of the possibilities and problems involved in recognizing, adopting and moving toward a critical theory of race in qualitative research and how it has been exemplified in fields such as education, its intersections with gender, social class, and postcolonialism and other standpoint theories in qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2007). We also used this special issue to document and justify the utility of combining CRT with qualitative research. In this way, we felt the articles spoke to methodological implications and ethnic epistemologies, by linking CRT’s conceptual components and demonstrating its potential for explaining how racism was manifested in various forms.

As different racial-cultural epistemologies and ontologies made their mark in the study of race and racism (e.g., social constructionism, racial formation, discursive construction; see Pascale, 2008) and have appeared in QI and other journals, it seems appropriate to take a look forward at these new emerging positions with respect to how and why CRT/CRS has changed and where we go from here. In 2002, we posited that despite the progress made in qualitative research, there was evidence that it was problematic for scholars to conduct research on race and racism at the center of study. Those that did were subjected to more vigorous cross-examination and justification regarding the legitimacy of the research (Parker & Lynn, 2002; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). For this special issue, the articles highlighted will illustrate where and how far CRT/CRS has utilized perspectives from other fields (e.g., law, history, gender and women’s studies, ethnic studies, education), and in what ways it is a part of qualitative methodological discussions about racism broadly.

Overview of CRT and Connections to Qualitative Research in Education

Critical race scholarship (especially in education) has made important contributions to the study of qualitative research. This body of work called attention to the inherent racism imbedded in social contexts and structures. Furthermore, this area of research offered ways to think about how to conduct qualitative research in education that described racialized conditions of discriminatory impact and treatment and could serve as a data forum to discuss policy, legal action, or social and political trends and their impact on racialized communities both in the United States and the United Kingdom (Alemán & Alemán, 2010; Carter, 2008; Dixson & Rousseau, 2006; Gillborn, 2005; Howard, 2008; Knaus, 2009; McGee & Martin, 2011). ² Ladson-Billings (2000) discussed the ways CRT helped inform debates about the relevancy of ethnic epistemologies in qualitative research. She historically placed CRT within in a multidisciplinary context and discussed ways CRT could be used to question acceptance of standardized ways of thinking and conducting educational research and practice. Ladson-Billings outlined how CRT could be seen as both theory and method in the sense that it not only guided how one viewed the research context but also how the theory shaped the research process.

In the previous special issue, we argued for the importance of qualitative studies that centered the examination of race and racism in educational research. We also made the case for the utility of CRT as a tool to not only transform our research practices, but also provide alternatives to inherently racist research practices that further marginalize communities of color (Parker & Lynn, 2002). Of particular relevance was the development of a critical race methodology for conducting qualitative research articulated by Solórzano and Yosso (2002). Critical race methodology in educational research provided a perspective linked to change in the ways communities of color were studied and written about. This change was informed by the central points of CRT which fundamentally challenged White supremacy and its links to legalized discrimination and manifestations of implicit and explicit racism in social contexts. Since that time, a number of works have utilized critical race methodology to provide insights on the ways racism has been operationalized in education settings. For example, Vaught (2011) used intensive interviews, document analysis of school records, and secondary data of school funding resources, media accounts, observations to triangulate and present how White supremacy was at work in the creation and maintenance of a corrupt school system that had an intended harmful impact on African American student achievement and outcomes. Vaught’s research provided us with insights regarding how to do critical race ethnography, in that the research findings were linked to specific tenets of CRT; yet, the counter stories were not meant to solicit sympathy and false empathy from Whites. Rather, critical race ethnographies were intended to serve more of a purpose of triggering responsibility and action against overt racism, implicit bias, and structural racism which have a deleterious impact on persons of color and their material and social/psychological conditions.

Where CRT in Qualitative Research Has Been and Where It Seems to Be Going With This Special Issue

Based on the aforementioned overview, most of the qualitative research that has used CRT, particularly in education has been grounded in the idea of race as a social construction deeply rooted in the notion of whiteness as property and White supremacy (Dixson & Rousseau, 2006; Harris, 1993; Lynn & Dixson, 2013; Solórzano, 1998; Taylor et al., 2009). Race, as a concept, has evolved as a function of historical social, political, and economic contexts (Winant, 2001, 2004). The qualitative research here has focused on CRT as providing a forum to expose racial discrimination and issue a call to work toward combating all forms of racial subordination, from racial micro aggressions on college campuses, to continued acts of racialized violence directed toward African American and Latino/a and Chicano/a, American Indian, Asian/Pacific Islander and youth of color in cities, suburbs, and rural areas (Stovall, 2013; Yosso, Smith, Ceja, & Solórzano, 2009). These previous studies have centered on the social construction of racism at the macro and micro levels.

What this special issue attempts to do is examine in more depth the racial productivity of the choices people of color make within this context. The “postracial” state (that Bonilla-Silva, 2001; Dávila, 2008; Crenshaw, 2011; and Perry, 2011 discussed and critiqued) has created a politically dominant discourse that has de-historicized racism and has asserted that significant racial progress can be made without making race and racism the center of focus. Within this political and social climate, for example, it is reasonable to say that Latinos are hard-working industrious and family oriented and are the new living examples of the American dream; but Latinos can also be vilified as being criminals, not learning English and adapting to American ways, and should be deported. People of color are engaged in race-producing practices in their daily negotiations with each other and, more importantly, with how White institutions and people, particularly those in authority (police, school administrators, teachers) interpret their racial identities (Carbado & Gulati, 2003, 2013). The articles in this special issue of QI attempt to highlight the race constructing choices based on the nuanced but powerful ways institutional/structural racism is at work in the neo-liberal era where the state is no longer responsible of adjudicating racism in a neo-liberal postracial world (Goldberg, 2009).

The articles in this special issue attempt to move CRT/CRS in a different direction as well as build on previous generations of work in this area. First, Ledesma and Calderon survey the landscape of the field of CRT in both law and education and other fields. Their article sets the groundwork for looking at the new directions that qualitative research in education and in law can work across disciplines to fashion a more integrated and common sense account of how race and racism shapes social life and everyday experience in educational settings. The article by Solórzano and Perez Huber draw on sociolinguistic discourse to discuss the visual images of who is and what it means to be a “Mexican” in the United States and how this can be a form of unconscious racism that then gets played out in macro and micro racial aggressions. The article by Hidalgo speaks to how the use of new technologies as well as traditional ways of storytelling through photo novellas can provide ways that we can understand the performativity of race and how racial discourses can be used for demonstrative purposes to challenge racism and show its effects on persons of color in terms of their material economic and social conditions. Taliaferro’s article and Olden’s research in her article both use historical lenses to discuss racism through CRT. The Taliaferro’s article places emphasis on the use of counter storytelling and slave narratives to shed light on the postracial context in the United Stated and why storytelling as a methodological tool is important when it is combined with historical accounts of racial domination and the collective African American struggle against it. Olden’s article uses CRT in combination with historical research methods of oral histories, primary source document analysis, and legal readings of the reaction of Chicano parents and activist to the Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1 (1973) Denver school district U.S. Supreme Court holding. In many ways, this 5-4 decision shaped not only the U.S. jurisprudence turn against legal comprehensive racial remedies for those wronged by segregationist schooling practice, but it also forced a discussion about racial and ethnic identity, gender, and political ideology among Chicano/a communities. The Gillborn article and the Houh and Kalsen article (from a law/case study perspective) both employ versions of intersectionality to call for looking at multiple areas of identity (e.g., class, sexuality, immigration status, disability, religion as well as race and gender) to analyze the education status of identity categories related to race, gender, social class, and disability in the United Kingdom; to the coalition building efforts of low-income African American women with other women who were university affiliated in a participatory action research project to develop and sustain a community advocacy center focused on poverty and women’s issues. The article by Garcia connects critical race narratives of being a high school teacher in a major city in the northeast working with predominantly African American, Latino/a and immigrant students and the personalized stories of the students identity struggles with race, gender, social class, and sexual orientation and his own role as a teacher with these youths. Finally, the Dixson, Buras, and Jeffers article uses CRT as a way to analyze the seemingly race-neutral policy attempts to impose charter schools in New Orleans post-Katrina. This has resulted in the manifestation of neo-liberalism as a form of White capitalist supremacy, at the expense of any true democratic input by African American citizens at large.

The research presented in this issue illustrates ways CRT can be used as methodology (in the form of counter stories and counter narratives for use in critical race ethnographies, for example) and as a theory in and of itself that can analytically and conceptually frame a study (Vaught, 2011). The authors also attempt to offer lenses or ways of seeing what McCall (2005) and Nash (2008) call for in the complexity of intersectionality. The articles in this special issue speak not only to the centrality of race and racism in CRT but also on how in combination (for example) with gender, disability and other aspects of how persons of color negotiate their identities with everyday life in a “post-racial” world (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013). These identities are not bound up as fixed and inextricably bound; rather, they exemplify an intersectional methodology. What I hope readers take from these articles is how CRT/CRS has moved into more specific areas of methodological complexity. These can be categorized as anticategorical complexity, which is based on scholarship that calls attention to the social processes of categorization and the workings of exclusion and hierarchy that draws and maintains boundaries of race, gender, and so on (Nash, 2008); intracategorical complexity in which the research problematizes the exclusionary implications of categorization and then present narratives that represent the multiplicity of persons and who they are and how they represent themselves in ways that demonstrate the inadequacy of the categories such as race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, etc.; and intercategorical complexity which presents a methodological approach that is grounded in a premise that there are relationships of oppression among already legally and socially defined groups, and they are imperfect and ever-changing and these relationships are at the center of the analysis. This particular type of intercategorical complexity can be strategically useful in critical race qualitative research studies that both call the categories themselves into question, but at the same time displays the linkages among the categories of race, gender, etc., and inequality. So, for example, while counter stories and counter narratives could be useful to tell a story about racial categories and discrimination, if someone is African American or Latino and gay or lesbian, and fear being outed, different ways to tell their story will have to be found and categories used and questioned at the same time. These approaches also remind us of the importance of racial reflexivity as something more than just simple “member checking” of findings, but to deeply question assumptions of why research is being done and for what purpose regarding the researcher as self (Pillow, 2003).

In conclusion, the articles in this special issue take what was highlighted in the 2002 special issue, and leads us through an “analysis of the various ontological categories that inform the way race functions as a stratifying force in school and society” (Duncan, 2005, p. 95). CRT/CRS through qualitative research methodology, especially in educational contexts takes up the dual responsibility and challenge of uncovering the epistemic and ontological foundations of White supremacy in a “postracial” world that turns a blind eye to continued police violence toward African American youth, as well as illustrating the complexity of racialized choices of persons of immigrant youths of color in colleges and universities who may have to hide their citizenship status, or their sexual identity for fear of being outed or deported or putting their families in danger. I write this as the events in Ferguson, Missouri and the killing of Michael Brown are viewed by Whites (according to most polls, see Kristof, 2014) as being given too much attention and should recede to the background. Yet, the feelings of hurt, anger, and outrage are still at the forefront of the hearts and minds of African Americans and other progressive allies. There is a particular kind of critical race realism that is needed today to confront how much change is really needed on all fronts, from doing and validating research on racism and changing educational policy, to just stopping racial violence and attacks. ³ I would like to thank Norman Denzin for presenting the opportunity to do another special issue and a special thank you to Tara Yosso (who read a previous version of this introduction and provided feedback), Marvin Lynn, and Daniel Solórzano all of the critical race colleagues and students who developed and expanded this work to beyond what it was in 2002.