The Politics of Nativism in U.S. Public Education: Critical Race Theory and Burundian Children with Refugee Status

• In Event: Supporting Epistemological Diversity and Widening the Struggle for Justice: New Directions in Critical Qualitative Research

Abstract

Purposes
In this paper the researchers frame the representation of a three-year ethnographic data with critical race theory and analyze the political discourse of nativism and the ways in which it exacerbates neoconservative commitments in one public school. The researchers introduce a community project they created with Burundian families on public education. These families, who are Black immigrants, recently resettled in Riverhill (pseudonym), a predominantly white, industrialized, mono-lingual city in Appalachia. The project, a series of community and family meetings, addressed the history, socialization, and politics of public education in the U.S.
With the rise of immigrant children in our nation’s classrooms, and with growing numbers of refugee children among them, there is a need for such innovative research and rigorous theoretical work that identifies issues children and families with refugee status face in public schools. We represent our research about one local school, interviews with teachers and principals, and fieldwork from the community project with the families.
Theoretical Context
Critical race theory centers experiences of people of color who historically have been marginalized by whitestream narratives (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), includes analyses of race, racism, and the permanence of racism (Bell, 1992), and often addresses systemic issues of disenfranchisement, poverty, and oppression. This ethnographic work is situated at intersections of education, race, and issues of assimilation, and CRT provides effective context from which to analyze the data from Burundian families and the educators who teach their children, specifically issues of race, racism and whiteness as property.
Methodology and Data
This is a three-year ethnographic study that is informed by postcritical ethnographic practice including reflexivity, and critiques of objectification, objectivity, and power (Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). The researchers found that experiences with public schools discouraged many children, with Riverhill County School educators reporting that they felt under-prepared to teach in culturally sensitive and relevant ways. Findings are reported thematically from the in vivo and sociologically constucted coding (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) of fieldnotes, interviews with educators, and Burundian families. Themes include Burundian student 1) disorientation and discouragement and 2) tracking into special education; Burundian parent's 3) identification of white supremacy and racial hierarchies in school systems 4) and economic systems; and educators' 5) articulations of assimilationist practices.
Scholarly significance of the study
The researchers argue that the explicit and implicit continuation of nativist politics, originating as early as 1850 in the United States, continue to permeate the standardized testing movement, school structures, and the current state of high stakes testing. The Burundians have only been in the United States for three years, and because their experiences are particular and local, this new data is essential for a broader conversations around refugee experiences in U.S. schools. Analyzing how their stories and their teachers' are historically situated in a larger, longer trend of nativism in U.S. politics and educational policy will provide an opportunity to engage in a much needed dialogue about the consequences of an environment of high stakes testing on students of color with refugee status in public education.

Authors

• Allison Daniel Anders, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville

• Jessica Nina Lester, Indiana University

• Nicholas S. Mariner, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville