FURTHER DEFENSE OF THE RACIALIZATION CONCEPT

In my article, Racialization: A Defense of the Concept, I argue that ‘race’ fails as an analytic category and that we should think in terms of ‘racialization’ and ‘racialized groups’ instead. I define these concepts and defend them against a range of criticisms. In Rethinking Racialization: The Analytical Limits of Racialization, Deniz Uyan critiques my “theory of racialization”. However, I do not defend a theory of racialization; I defend the concept of racialization. I argue that racialization is a useful idea, but I do not advance a theory to explain or predict the phenomena it describes. While Uyan’s critique therefore misses its mark, it raises important questions about the explanatory scope of the racialization concept. Ironically, I may be even more skeptical of the prospects of any general theory of racialization than Uyan. I argue that while we ought to develop theories to explain particular instances of racialization, we should not develop a general theory of racialization, because it is simply too varied in its agents and their intents, the mechanisms through which it operates, and the outcomes it produces. While hope for any general theory of racialisation should be abandoned, I argue that the racialisation concept is still extremely useful. It offers a necessary alternative to race realist concepts, allowing us to point to the wide-ranging effects of belief in race without falsely implying that race itself is real. Uyan does not focus on my arguments against racial realism. However, the theoretical failures and normative risks of racial realism motivate my defense of the racialization concept. In this paper, I reiterate my arguments against racial realism and offer further defense of the concepts of ‘racialization’ and ‘racialized group’.

Black Parents’ Perspectives on Instruction: Racial Realism at a Predominantly White, Independent, Urban Elementary School

What do Black parents say about the curriculum in a predominantly White independent elementary school in a large urban area? This study explores tensions around topics such as slavery and immigration. While parents did not say they wanted a critical multicultural curriculum, many valued attention to racial diversity. Because parents did not want their children to be hurt or marginalized, however, they used racial realism to navigate the dangers of the environment. There were some differences among parents based on their families’ identity. This article uses critical race theory to analyze the parents’ perceptions and explores implications for schools.

Racial Realism

Realism as it has been articulated by white, middle-class literary gatekeepers since its heyday in the early twentieth century (and frequently into the present) has failed to address racism and imperialism of the era. Gene Jarrett describes black authors developing new literary forms in order “to re-create a lived or living world according to prevailing ideologies of race or racial difference.” This chapter expands Jarrett’s definition of “racial realism” beyond the black-white binary in order to show how writers of color from a variety of backgrounds crafted their own versions of realism, deploying allegory and making strategic use of stock genres such as the oriental romance and the western. For white readers in particular, these seemingly “nonrealist” plot elements provided intellectual distance from the contemporary injustices of racism in the age of US imperialism. However, for in-group readers, racial realism functioned both literally and figuratively to highlight experiences of racism and to legitimize histories too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented in mainstream literary realism. Writers such as Winnifred Eaton and Mourning Dove created their own texts that were shaped by multiple literary ancestors and spoke simultaneously, though distinctly, to white readers and to their own communities of color.

How to Be a Biological Racial Realist

Quayshawn Spencer shows that there is a widely used race talk in American English where race is a biological division and biologically real. That race talk is the Office of Management and Budget’s since 1997. Spencer shows that what race is, in this race talk, is just a set of five biological populations in the human species. After defending this qualified biological racial realism, Spencer shows how his qualified biological racial realism is helpful in answering the question of whether any folk racial scheme has epistemic value in medical genetics.

Spencer’s Reply to Glasgow, Haslanger, and Jeffers

Quayshawn Spencer clarifies that his defense of biological racial realism in Chapter 3—which is called “OMB race theory”—is meant to be a part of a larger radically pluralist theory about the nature and reality of race in American English. Next, Spencer defends OMB race theory against the South Asian mismatch objection from Glasgow and Jeffers. Third, Spencer raises an empirical adequacy objection against Glasgow’s, Haslanger’s, and Jeffers’s race theories insofar as they are unable to predict how race and races are talked about in multiple national discussions, such as whether Rachel Dolezal is wrong to claim a Black racial identity and whether Harvard University has been unlawfully discriminating against Asian applicants in undergraduate admissions.

Research on Racism in Teacher Education in the United States

Racial realism, as posited by Derrick Bell, is a movement that provides a means for black Americans to have their voice and outrage about the racism that they endure heard. Critical race theorists in the United States have come to understand and accept the fact that racial equality is an elusive goal and as such studying education—teacher education in particular—requires the use of analytical tools that allow for the identification and calling out of instances of racism and institutions in which racism is entrenched. The tools for doing such work have not traditionally been a part of teacher education research. However, in 1995 Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate introduced a tool, critical race theory, to the field of education. Since that time, education scholars have used this theoretical tool to produce research that illuminates the pernicious ways in which racism impacts teacher education in the United States.

Overkill: Black Lives and the Spectacle of the Atlanta Cheating Scandal

This article examines the 2015 Atlanta cheating scandal trials and sentencing. Using critical race theory, the authors argue that cheating is a natural outgrowth of market-based school reform and that racial realism will always lead to scrutiny of Black performance. The sentences of these Black educators is overkill, rooted in anti-Blackness, and can be best understood as a means of preserving Whiteness as property.