For Latinx, by Latinx: Race-conscious leadership in policy implementation

Policy implementation research tends to document the failures of reform, describing the myriad ways implementers miss the mark in translating intent into impact; or in the words of Derrick Bell, policy scholars are left with examining the “unfilled hopes of racial reform” (2004, p. 185). In contrast, this article presents an intrinsic case study where campus leaders took a race-conscious approach to implementing a state-wide reform known as the Student Equity Policy. I constructed the TrenzaPolicy Implementation Framework to center the experience, knowledge, and assets of Latinx leaders in community college that oversee and implement policy reform. The framework highlights the raced-gendered perspectives of Latinx leaders in community college to understand their motivations to implement policy in race-conscious ways (Delgado Bernal, 2002). I conducted in-depth and sustained fieldwork to learn how implementers understood and responded to state-level reform in race-conscious ways and used the policy to target and address one of the most pressing issues in higher education, the inequitable rates of transfer for Latinx students. I share how the salience of racialized-gendered identity, cultural intuition, social context, and enacting agency allowed leaders to envision more race-conscious possibilities for policy reform and its implementation on campus.

The Soul Savers: A 21st Century Homage to Derrick Bell’s Space Traders or Should Black People Leave America?

Note: Narrative storytelling is a staple of legal jurisprudence. The Case of the Speluncean Explorers by Lon Fuller and The Space Traders by Derrick Bell are two of the most well-known and celebrated legal stories. The Soul Savers parable that follows pays tribute to Professor Bell’s prescient, apocalyptic racial tale. Professor Bell, a founding member of Critical Race Theory, wrote The Space Traders to instigate discussions about America’s deeply rooted entanglements with race and racism. The Soul Savers is offered as an attempt to follow in Professor Bell’s narrative footsteps by raising and pondering new and old frameworks about the rule of law and racial progress. The year 2020 marks the thirty-year anniversary of Bell’s initial iteration of the Space Traders tale.

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.

Reading Professor Obama: Race and the American Constitutional Tradition

"Reading Professor Obama" mines Barack Obama’s syllabus on “Current Issues in Racism and the Law” for evidence of his beliefs about race, law, and jurisprudence. The syllabus forhis 1994 seminar at the University of Chicago, which provides the reading assignments and structure for the course, has been available on the New York Times website since July 2008. Other than a few responses solicited by the New York Times when it published the syllabus, however, there has been little attention to the material Obama assigned or to what it suggests about Obama’s approach to the law and race.The class began with four weeks of foundational readings, followed by four weeks of student-led class discussions. The readings started by discussing the malleability of racial categories and progressed to cases from the nineteenth century on Native Americans and on slavery. The second day’s readings shifted to the Reconstruction era and changes in the Constitution and statutory law, as well as the rise of the “Jim Crow” system of segregation and the response of African American intellectuals. The third class covered the Civil Rights revolution and retrenchment. It included reading from such diverse figures as Robert Bork, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. The fourth class, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” addressed some of the enduring issues of inequality facing our nation, the fragility of the African American middle class, continuing racism against African Americans, and a plea for more understanding. After the initial four class meetings, student groups selected additional readings and led class discussions on a variety of race-related topics. The syllabus has suggested topics for the presentations and brief discussion of those topics.The media has called attention to President Obama’s public relationship with Derrick Bell; notwithstanding the option to read Bell’s summaries of cases in lieu of the actual opinions, the readings have no overt endorsement of Derrick Bell, Critical Race Theory (“CRT”), or Bell’s Interest-Convergence theory. Obama included many critics of CRT and offered readings that seemingly demonstrate his hope for substantially more dialog and perhaps, ultimately, economic uplift of those labeled by some of his readings “the truly disadvantaged.” Obama’s use of the Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? as the title of the last group of readings suggests that Obama did not share Bell’s vision of the unalterable nature of racism.The readings, while instructive, are just the starting point of our analysis. Obama’s suggested topics encourage students to wrestle with the modern consequences of racism and to question its malleability. Thus, we suggest that the readings and group presentation topics reveal Obama, the teacher, as interested in, but not necessarily aligned with, many of the key questions of CRT. The syllabus fits with the story that Obama focuses on issues that unite Americans while he seeks equal treatment. This may reflect the future of constitutional doctrine related to race.

The Story Behind a Letter in Support of Professor Derrick Bell

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Discerning Critical Moments: Lessons From the Life of Derrick Bell

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