Critical Race Theory as a Lens for Understanding Costs of Academic Success for High-Achieving Students of Color

• In Event: Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: Habits of Spoken or Written Discourse for Academic Success

Abstract

In this paper, critical race theory is applied to previous work on racial opportunity cost to explore deleterious effects of restrictive cultural norms and values on the educational experiences of students of color. Interviews with 18 African American and Latina/o freshmen and sophomore college students about their high school experiences revealed that academic success was often “costly” to their racial/ethnic identity. Ultimately, findings reveal that CRT offers important explanatory value for identifying and ultimately disrupting the systemic and restrictive nature of these spaces.

Author

• Terah Talei Venzant Chambers, Texas A&M University