scholarly journals Why Are All the White Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: Toward Challenging Constructions of a Persecuted White Collective

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 679
Author(s):  
Uma Mazyck Jayakumar ◽  
Annie S. Adamian ◽  
Sara E. Grummert ◽  
Cameron T. Schmidt-Temple ◽  
Andrew T. Arroyo

In the context of ongoing antagonism on college campuses, attacks on Critical Race Theory, and widespread backlash against racial justice initiatives, this paper underscores the growing need to recognize co-optation and other counterinsurgent strategies used against racial justice to make room for transformative scholarship. By presenting qualitative interviews from 15 white HBCU students, we illustrate how diversity research, advocacy, and organizing previously used to advocate for racial justice has instead constructed distorted understandings of race and racism and has been used to expand ideologies of whiteness. The findings show what CRT scholars have cautioned about for decades—when left uninterrupted, ahistorical approaches to racial diversity programming and research may lend to the co-optation of justice-focused diversity language and the appropriation of BIPOC strategies of resistance. This not only inhibits and detracts from racial justice work, but can function to expand white supremacy. We relate these narratives to an emerging racial backlash whereby white people attempt to distort understandings of structural racism to claim a “persecuted” status—a delusion that we argue warrants a new ideological frame. We posit this work lays the foundation for advancing equity in one of the most counterinsurgent eras in higher education (Matias & Newlove, 2017).

Author(s):  
Joanna Brooks

Racism is not a simply a character flaw or extremist conduct; racism is the centuries-old system of social organization that has marked people with dark skin as available for exploitation—for advantage-taking of their lands, labor, bodies, cultures, and so forth. “White supremacy” refers not only to the grossest forms of racist terrorism but also to the entire system of ideas, beliefs, and practices that give white people better chances based on perceived skin color and ancestry. This chapter reviews American Christian theology, history, US law, and critical race theory to frame an assessment of white American Christianity’s failure to grapple with anti-Black racism as a moral issue.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 876-897
Author(s):  
Saanà A. Polk ◽  
Nicole Vazquez ◽  
Mimi E. Kim ◽  
Yolanda R. Green

The continued presence of racism and white supremacy has risen to a crisis level as today’s global pandemic, police abuse targeting Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC) communities, and mass urban uprisings rock the nation. This article presents a case study of a West Coast school of social work that has carried out a five-year systematic campaign to move all levels of the program beyond a multicultural orientation towards critical race theory. This study reveals the results of a self-organized cross-racial committee within a school of social work, motivated by an ambitious goal to implement a racial justice orientation throughout the school’s personnel, practices, policies, and curricula. The committee has been further characterized by its commitment to engage across the power-laden divisions of field faculty, tenure track faculty, and administrative staff. The article offers documented stages of development, narratives from across differences of identity and professional role, and thick descriptions of strategies that led to the adoption and infusion of an intersectional critical race analysis throughout the school’s curricula. The organic development of the campaign and the leveraging of opportunities throughout the campus and across campuses offer important lessons for other schools of social work undergoing transformational change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Novak

This article presents a theoretical question: what is giftedness, but an expression of Black joy? This is presented with relevant real-world examples and #BlackVoices through youth poetry. The framework of critical race theory is used as a lens, to situate the world in which Black joy is found. The author argues that this manifestation, situated within the structural racism ever present in the system of education, has the unfortunate impact of igniting educators’ anti-blackness, resulting in the missingness (Gentry et al., 2019) of gifted Black students from gifted programs and services. The author delves into constructs of white supremacy, white rage, and antiblackness as the foundational concepts that contribute to this missingness, using research and more youth poetry to substantiate the claims. #BlackVoices are featured throughout, as emic perspectives, giving voice, heart, soul, and joy to the research, the words on the page.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110627
Author(s):  
Hyung Chol Yoo ◽  
Abigail K. Gabriel ◽  
Sumie Okazaki

Research within Asian American psychology continually grows to include a range of topics that expand on the heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity of the Asian American psychological experience. Still, research focused on distinct racialization and psychological processes of Asians in America is limited. To advance scientific knowledge on the study of race and racism in the lives of Asian Americans, we draw on Asian critical race theory and an Asian Americanist perspective that emphasizes the unique history of oppression, resilience, and resistance among Asian Americans. First, we discuss the rationale and significance of applying Asian critical race theory to Asian American psychology. Second, we review the racialized history of Asians in America, including the dissemination of essentialist stereotypes (e.g., perpetual foreigner, model minority, and sexual deviants) and the political formation of an Asian American racial identity beginning in the late 1960s. We emphasize that this history is inextricably linked to how race and racism is understood and studied today in Asian American psychology. Finally, we discuss the implications of Asian critical race theory and an Asian Americanist perspective to research within Asian American psychology and conclude with suggestions for future research to advance current theory and methodology.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (14) ◽  
pp. 2133-2145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Hall

On the cusp of Western civilization, Caucasians aspired to a racial world order defining Caucasian as superior race status. Today, racial diversity is a societal theme facilitated by laws, which deems racial equality a right and racial discrimination illegal. Nevertheless, by globalization, a racial world order exists by locating light skin at the zenith of humanity. As pertains to the globalization of light skin, culture and social criteria are most significant considering the demands of a racist racial hierarchy. The existence of such a hierarchy by replacing racism with colorism then necessitates moving beyond race category. Critical race theory (CRT) per light skin as new world order must defer to critical skin theory (CST). Colorism per CST operates identical in manner to racism per CRT. CST must then be elevated to priority over CRT such that the future of humanity may be rescued from the tenacious transgressions of a racist societal past.


Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Nancy López ◽  
Howard Hogan

What’s your street race? If you were walking down the street what race do you think strangers would automatically assume you are based on what you look like? What is the universe of data and conceptual gaps that complicate or prevent rigorous data collection and analysis for advancing racial justice? Using Latinx communities in the U.S. as an example, we argue that scholars, researchers, practitioners and communities across traditional academic, sectoral and disciplinary boundaries can advance liberation by engaging the ontologies, epistemologies and conceptual guideposts of critical race theory and intersectionality in knowledge production for equity-use. This means not flattening the difference between race (master social status and relational positionality in a racially stratified society based on the social meanings ascribed to a conglomeration of one’s physical characteristics, including skin color, facial features and hair texture) and origin (ethnicity, cultural background, nationality or ancestry). We discuss the urgency of revising the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards, as well as the Census and other administrative data to include separate questions on self-identified race (mark all that apply) and street race (mark only one). We imagine street race as a rigorous “gold standard” for identifying and rectifying racialized structural inequities.


2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110540
Author(s):  
Jeremy Hau Lam ◽  
Katrina Le ◽  
Laurence Parker

This article emerged from undergraduate students in an Honors College class on critical race theory at the University of Utah during the spring semester 2020 during the pandemic. The counterstories evolve around critical race theory/Asian American Crit and the historical and current violence against the Asian American community in the United States. Given the recent anti-Asian American backlash which has emerged through the COVID-19 crisis, to the March 2021 murders of the Asian American women and others in Atlanta, we present these counterstories with the imperative of their importance for critical social justice to combat White supremacy.


Author(s):  
Ronald William Whitaker II ◽  
Angela Campbell ◽  
Jeramie Iannelli

In his classic book titled Race Matters, West courageously deals with issues of race and racism in an unapologetic manner. In this chapter, the authors also unapologetically deal with issues of race and racism within the context of education and society. Specifically, the authors highlight a graduate education course within their institution that compels both students and professors to be vulnerable and truthful about race, racism, diversity, equity, systemic inequalities, and White privilege through service learning. The authors argue that his approach is necessary give the fact that historically, the aforementioned has impacted the educational experiences for students of Color, but in particular, Black and Brown children. The authors explore this work through critical race theory. The authors conclude the chapter with implications for practice.


Author(s):  
Chelsea Privette

Race has yet to be discussed as a significant factor in the field of speech-language pathology. Race is often conflated with nonmainstream dialects and discussed in purely linguistic terms. However, the terms we use to describe dialects are highly racialized, centering white mainstream norms and treating nonmainstream varieties of English as “different” and, therefore, inferior. Hierarchical thinking about language contributes to the misdiagnosis in Black and other communities of color because racialized language ideologies have been left unstated. This chapter demonstrates through a critical race theory approach how structural racism shapes the field's conceptualization of language and competence. Using an intersectional lens in particular, this chapter discusses race, disability, and language ideology as systems of domination that compound the effects of racism for communities of color. CRT is then used to reveal, critique, and intervene on the historically embedded racist structures that continue to manifest in speech-language pathology research, teaching, and practice today.


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