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Creating Spaces to Combat Racial Harm: Lessons From a Research-Community Partnership

Sat, April 9, 4:05 to 5:35pm, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 102 B

Abstract

This poster is about a design project between researchers and students, teachers, and staff at an urban high school to address racialized inequities. The collaboration developed within the context of a larger study of Black students’ learning experiences in the district. Findings suggested that racialized inequities at the school were not only a matter of access (e.g students of color not being qualified for or aware of elite academies within the school), but also a matter of retention (e.g that students of color within those spaces are often isolated and either choose to leave or are pushed out). This finding created the context for a collaboration between our research team, teachers, administrators, and students to create a designed intervention towards addressing racialized inequities at the school. The genesis, process and results of our collaboration are the focus of this study.

We draw on ideas of Black Suffering in schools (Dumas, 2014) and notions of politicized trust (Vakil, Kirshner, Nasir, Mckinney de Royston, forthcoming) to develop a theoretical framework that addresses a) the ways that students of color navigate racial harm within spaces that they are "lucky" or "exceptional" to be a part of, and b) the importance of political-racial solidarity between researchers and community partners. We question how students’ of color existence within elite spaces creates racial harm for other “less exceptional” students of color and obfuscates the structural racism that positions them as such. Exploring exceptionalism as racial harm helps us interrogate the deeply embedded, often subtle ways white supremacy functions within schools. Politicized trust helps us situate our design collaboration within larger struggles for racial justice happening locally and nationally.

Our design approach is rooted in equity-oriented and participatory approaches to design (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010). After developing relationships with several students and teachers who were part of our larger, ethnographic investigation at the school, we developed a design team consisting of three teachers, one administrator, and six students to discuss racialized equity issues at the school and brainstorm ways we can address these issues through a research-practice partnership. Our data includes audio recordings from interviews with each of our design partners, audio recordings from seven design meetings, and field notes taken after each design meeting.

As a result of our design meetings during Spring 2015, students and teachers are launching a club in Fall 2015 that focuses on providing socioemotional and academic support to students of color within elite spaces at the school. We have learned the following from our design process: a) students of color who are enrolled in elite spaces in the school experience a unique form of suffering due to their “exceptional” status in relation to other students of color in the school, b) there is an urgent need for formalized spaces within the school to tackle issues related to racialized inequities, and c) the collaboration was sustained through ongoings forms of politicized trust between researchers, students, teachers, and administrators involved in the project.

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