Condition or Process? Researching Race in Education

by Adrienne D. Dixon

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).

students began to “recenter themselves as strong and intelligent,” taking on various student leadership positions on campus.

The ethnic studies epistemologies transformed the ways students related to knowledge and their communities.

“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).

colonialism in education rears its head in the central aspect of education as a knowledge industry.

Decolonizing knowledge in schools is no less than decolonizing society at large.

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margin as a complex and contentious space or place where People of Color experience race, gender, and class subordination.

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.

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

microaggressions as “stunning, automatic acts of disregard that stem from unconscious attitudes of white superiority and constitute a verification of black inferiority” (p. 1576).

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)

(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.

Use for survey?

(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.

Use for survey?

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].

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].

racial microaggressions as one form of systemic everyday racism that serves to keep those at the racial margins in their place.

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).

Read this

“Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students” (Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000).

Read this

“You’ve given me a name for my pain.”

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),

Look up all of these

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

“Using the Critical Race Tools of Racial and Gender Microaggressions to Examine Everyday Racism in Academic Spaces.”

Read and share

would like to share five points to remember about racial microaggressions: 1. Remember that the “micro” in microaggressions does not mean “less than.” The micro in microaggressions means “in the everyday.” 2. Remember the cumulative impact of verbal and nonverbal microaggressive assaults on People of Color in the everyday. 3. Remember that racial microaggressions matter because they are symptoms of larger structural problems—racism and White supremacy. 4. Remember 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.

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Kohli, R., & Solorzano, D. (2012). Teachers, please learn our names! Racial microaggressions and the K–12 classroom. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 15, 441–462.

Ledesma, M., & Solorzano, D. (2013). Naming their pain: How everyday microaggressions impact students and teachers. In D. Carter Andrews & F. Tuitt (Eds.), Contesting the myth of a “post racial” era: The continued significance of race in U.S. education (pp. 112–127). New York: Peter Lang.

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Perez Huber, L., & Solorzano, D. (2015a). Visualizing everyday racism: Critical race theory, visual microaggressions, and the historical image of Mexican banditry. Qualitative Inquiry, 21, 223–238.

Perez Huber, L., & Solorzano, D. (2015c). Racial microaggressions: What they are, what they are not, and why they matter (Latino Policy & Issues Brief No. 30). Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

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Solorzano, D., & Allen, W. (2000). A case study of racial microaggressions and campus racial climate at the University of California, Berkeley. An expert report commissioned by the plaintiffs in Castaneda et al. v. UC Regents et al., United States Federal Court, Northern District of California.

Solorzano, D., Allen, W., & Carroll, G. (2002). Keeping race in place: A case study of racial microaggressions and campus racial climate at the University of California, Berkeley. UCLA Chicano/Latino Law Review, 23, 15–111.

Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college stu...

Solorzano, D., & Yosso, T. (2001). Maintaining social justice hopes within academic realities: A Freirean approach to critical race/LatCrit pedagogy. Denver Law Review, 78, 595–621.

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Instead of seeing the two presidential administrations 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 people simply did not possess a realistic image of capitalism; they were full of immature utopian expectations.