Orchestrating Critical Race Talk Towards Institutional Change

How teachers of color produce critical race talk to advance racially marginalized groups’ educational and humane interests.

Introduction

In a time of increasing public awareness about race, academic institutions are becoming more receptive to conversations on the topic. Previous research illustrates how efforts to avoid speaking about race perpetuate the advancement of racist structures. Simultaneously, research also indicates that teachers of color disproportionately carry the burden of facilitating talks focused on race and racism. As a result, these teachers have to navigate conversations based on their geography, lived experiences, and physical presentation. Teachers who can navigate the power dynamics in their respective work environments while leveraging their identities to move organizational conversations towards more effective critical race talk successfully. 

Josephine H. Pham is an Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in Education at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Much of her research focuses on how teachers of color in K-12 settings navigate their spaces to make their institutions more equitable and just. 

Methods and Findings

The author conducted a two-stage longitudinal study over two years to understand the antiracist actions of six teachers of color in K-12 schools, mainly The author conducted a two-stage longitudinal study over two years to understand the antiracist actions of six teachers of color in K-12 schools, mainly comprised of students of color. Over the 2016-2017 school year, all six teachers participated in the study’s first stage, which entailed several one-on-one interviews, focus group discussions, and observations to understand their justice-oriented behaviors in institutions. For the second stage, four teachers participated in an ethnographic study focused on their conversations about race. Pham collected 110 hours of video and audio recordings across the study. The author intentionally chose teachers of color with a range of racial identities, ethnic identities, gender identities, years of experience, educational levels, and experience teaching various grade levels and subjects. Additionally, the teachers were located in various geographic contexts within Los Angeles. 

The setting of this study is significant in the author’s analysis; Pham notes that while critical race talk might be more socially accepted in Los Angeles, it still could be contentious as it would be in most parts of the United States. 

The author builds upon previous work in raciolinguistics, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and critical geography to understand how speakers navigate racial dynamics through critical race conversations. Raciolinguistics studies how race is constructed through language and how racial constructs influence language. CRT is an academic and legal field analyzing the relationship between institutionalized racism, resistance efforts, and the interests of dominant social groups. Critical geography examines the role of physical space in power dynamics and inequality. 

Through this work, Pham develops a place-based raciolinguistics, which is both:

1. A theory explaining the norms for interactions that uphold and replicate “white supremacist, colonial, cis-heteropatriarchal normativity in locally specific ways” and 
2. A linguistic, ethnographic hermeneutic to analyze how the significance of race and place are re-developed and changed to amplify racially marginalized people’s educational opportunities. 

Findings

Pham identified three ways that teachers of color advance the educational and humane interests of racially marginalized groups through critical race talk:

1. “Intentionally inviting white discomfort;”; 
2. “Renegotiating embodied tensions of co-producing critical race talk;” and
3. “Purposefully (dis)engaging in critical race talk.”

To highlight these actions and illuminate their impacts, the author delves into an instance where one teacher demonstrates them:

Example

• In naming and pushing back on white supremacy and power dynamics, one teacher, “Lucia,” embraced white participants’ discomfort in a conversation. Lucia’s tactics were shaped by her time in anti-colonial and teacher-led organizing. Within her past racialized experiences with communications, she was accused of being harsh or divisive when discussing race; hence, in this conversation, she took a warm, approachable tone with the primarily white educational leadership team. For instance, she ended many sentences with questions to gain consensus with her white counterparts. She also directly named white supremacy and centered personal critical race talk to upend discourse that avoided talking about race, even when race was central. In one instance, she directly pushed back against the myth of reverse racism. Additionally, she highlighted her solidarity with students of color by grouping herself with them by using the pronoun “we” when highlighting the violence they face. 
  
  Another teacher, “R. Love,” demonstrated how different people engage in critical race talk based on their lived, racialized experiences and status in power structures. As a Black woman, R. Love framed her role as a “caring and credible” speaker to give her the influence to increase Black students’ educational resources and opportunities. As a Black woman, her presence created opportunities for more imaginative educational spaces centering on Blackness. For instance, she gave a presentation within her institution about her experiences and expertise supporting Black boys’ education, during which she was emotionally expressive and moved the audience deeply. In this presentation, she was able to garner responses by displaying her vulnerability about racist experiences she’s witnessed her students undergo; her vulnerability was conveyed through her passionate tone and her willingness to cry in front of others.
  
  Furthermore, she positioned herself as having a status as high as and equal to her peers. She undertook an additional role of teaching one of the few classes in her school that elevated the importance of culture and race. Through her racialized and gendered social positionality and her work in this class, she helped other participants of the study freely express their racial identities and the difficulties they encountered teaching social justice classes in their institutions. 
  
  A third teacher, “Ryan” purposefully engages and disengages in conversations about race. Ryan demonstrated comfort and ease with speaking about race in casual interactions, which he does through channeling his racialized and gendered privileges as an Asian American male teacher in a predominantly Mexican American school. For instance, he challenged another teacher who asked him a racially insensitive question through a joke, which allowed the other teacher to reflect on the effect of the question without feeling attacked. Alternatively, he learned that disengagement could be an effective tool for progressing racial justice with groups of people with diverse ideologies. For instance, when organizing other teachers to be prepared to strike, he disengaged critical race talk to achieve his goal of moving people who are ideologically in the middle. This was an example of disengaging in critical race talk that moved groups towards racially just outcomes. 

Conclusions

The figure below visualizes how racialized speakers within institutions further social change. The blue boxes represent the placed-based and societal contexts the teachers must navigate. 

Through this research, the author demonstrates that teachers’ overall power in driving organizational transformation depends on their power, racial literacy, and social positioning and re-positioning. Pham also illustrated how the teachers’ impact is inextricably tied to identity and space by using the examples of the three teachers. Moreover, further research into the full impacts of affect, emotions, and embodiment is necessary to understand their interconnected effects on critical race talk.