Qualitative Inquiry

This introduction presents an overview of the special issue on critical race theory (CRT)/critical race studies (CRS) that appeared in a 2002 issue of Qualitative Inquiry. I then go on to discuss how this new set of articles builds on the previous work of CRT in connection to qualitative studies and explores the racial productivity of choices people of color make in their daily negotiations with each other and White institutions within the context of neo-liberal racism in a postracial society. What is hoped for from this special issue is that a different kind of critical race realism emerges, both in terms of critical research and methodologies as well as acts of progressive change.

This article examines the development of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education, paying attention to how researchers use CRT (and its branches) in the study of K-12 and higher education. The article reviews CRT literature with a focus on CRT scholarship that offers tools to engage with and work against racism within education. The authors highlight works that embody the critical origins of CRT in both the law and elsewhere, with a goal of demonstrating that CRT work means more than just pointing to race. It requires an engagement and articulation with the material, structural, and ideological mechanisms of White supremacy.

Drawing from critical race and sociolinguistic discourse analysis, this article further develops the conceptual tool of racial microaggressions—the systemic, cumulative, everyday forms of racism experienced by People of Color—to articulate a type of racial microaggression, we call visual microaggressions. Visual microaggressions are systemic, everyday visual assaults based on race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname that emerge in various mediums such as textbooks, children’s books, advertisements, film and television, dance and theater performance, and public signage and statuary. These microaggressions reinforce institutional racism and perpetuate ideologies of white supremacy. In this article, we use a racial microaggressions analytical framework to examine how the “Mexican bandit” visual microaggression has been utilized as a multimodal text that (re)produces racist discourses that in turn reinforce dominant power structures. These discourses have allowed for the Mexican bandit image to pervade the public imagination of Latinas/os for over 100 years.

Critical race theory (CRT) has fundamentally been about “talking back” through the production of coutnernarratives that are, above all else, intended to interrogate and subvert the logic of multiple rationalities—legal, neoliberal, and scientific among others—and their role in reinforcing racism under the guise of integration, assimilation, colorblindness, and more recently post-racialism. To this end, counterstorytelling is CRT’s modus operandi. Although the critical race movement has ushered counterstory center-stage over the past several years, it is important to note that critical race counterstorytelling has historically been fundamental political strategy in ongoing struggles over the relations of power, knowledge, and difference in the United States and beyond. In this article, the author situates the emergence of critical race counterstorytelling within the U.S. abolitionist movement and argues that it played a critical role in challenging the idea that rationality was the only and/or the best way to practice democracy for the common good. In so doing, critical race counterstorytelling catalyzes the first movement for social justice in the United States. Calling on this history acts as a reminder of the revolutionary potential of critical race counterstorytelling as political strategy in current era of post-racialism.

Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) as an analytical framework, this article examines school desegregation in Denver, CO, to trace the history of racial formation in the post-World War II United States. As the first case to address de facto segregation in the North, Keyes, et al. v. School District No. 1, et al. is an important moment for understanding postwar racial processes. The case demonstrates both that race is a fluid category and that Mexican Americans are more central to the history of school desegregation than many scholars have acknowledged. Keyes provides an excellent case study into the dynamics of race making because the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision ultimately hinged on whether Mexican American students were White or non-White. By shifting the lens to racial formation, I suggest that historians have critical insights to gain from including CRT and LatCrit in our methodologies.

In this article, the authors discuss how they—as legal scholars—have incorporated principles of participatory action research into their work as critical race/feminist legal researchers. Concerned particularly with how predatory lending practices are exacerbating economic inequalities in the United States, the authors describe their ongoing community-based research on the “fringe economy” and the importance of bringing critical race/feminist insights to issues of economic justice.

The article explores the utility of intersectionality as an aspect of critical race theory (CRT) in education. Drawing on research with Black middle-class parents in England, the article explores the intersecting roles of race, class, and gender in the construction and deployment of dis/ability in education. The author concludes that intersectionality is a vital aspect of understanding race inequity but that racism retains a primacy for critical race scholars in three key ways: namely, empirical primacy (as a central axis of oppression in the everyday reality of schools), personal/autobiographical primacy (as a vital component in how critical race scholars view themselves and their experience of the world), and political primacy (as a point of group coherence and activism).

This article will focus on both the racial implications of the charter school “movement” in New Orleans after Katrina and the resistance to it by local citizens. We argue that it is difficult to ignore the manner in which White supremacist ideology has been normalized in the reform as it has historically in U.S. public education. Drawing on separate but complementary research by the authors, this article will be multi-vocal and reflect our positionalities as researchers who are “insiders.”

Augmented Fotonovelas are a multi-modal new media object centering the knowledge of the Latina/o community in ways accessible and meaningful to multiple audiences by incorporating video interviews, photographs, interactive mapping, smart phone technology, and Augmented Reality (AR) to produce Augmented Scholarship. Augmented Fotonovelas are visual counter-stories highlighting the role of race along with other forms of subordination, focusing on lived experiences, and engaging Communities of Color as co-collaborators in a creative research process. They are pedagogical and social justice tools with the power to raise public consciousness, elicit community action, and social change.

In this article, I discuss the use of a critical race praxis (CRP) and how I applied it in an English Language Arts high school class. I am guided by Yamamoto’s definition of CRP: a critical pragmatic analysis of racial realities and their intersections with other forms of oppression combined with educating for democracy, and organizing for social justice and change. My goal was to heighten students’ racial literacy and their agency to resist other forms of oppression. I conclude the article with an analysis of my practice using CRP and the tenets of critical theory in education.