Separating Our Labor From Our Humanity: The Commodification of Teachers of Color

• In Event: "The Struggle Itself Is the Point": Critical Race Analyses of the Preparation and Praxis of Teachers of Color

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that teachers of Color play a role in remedying racial disparities of achievement (Villegas & Irvine, 2010). Teachers of Color have been described as having cultural match with students of Color, and as serving as cultural brokers with the community (Eddy & Easton-Brooks, 2011). Based on the assets they bring to the education of students of Color, recruiting ‘diversity’ has become the goal of many teacher education programs and districts. From targeted recruitment sessions to pipeline programs, there is a push to grow more teachers of Color into the field (Irizarry, 2007; Sakash & Chou, 2007). Despite these efforts, teachers of Color report feeling isolated, racialized, silenced and overlooked for leadership opportunities (Author, 2015). Teachers of Color also leave the field each year at a rate 24% higher than their white counterparts (Eddy & Easton Brooks, 2011).

A foundational argument of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is that US institutions are structured to protect white property rights over human rights (Harris, 1993). Even schools that serve students of Color are designed to serve white economic interests (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Thus, when teachers of Color are recruited into the field, we must contextualize their work not only within a predominantly white workforce, but also within structures designed to reproduce racial and class inequities. Karl Marx (1867) used the term ‘commodification’ to describe when workers are alienated from their labor, when their humanity is disconnected from what they can produce. Bridging this Marxist lens to CRT, this paper argues that when social justice oriented teachers of Color are isolated, racialized and silenced within their work (Author, 2015), they are disconnected from their histories, identities and goals of transformation, resulting in their commodification.

Using select data from qualitative questionnaires, interviews and digital narratives of 298 social justice oriented teachers of Color, we demonstrate how the labor of teachers of Color is often understood only in terms of its material value to schools (i.e. the ability to raise student of Color test scores), rather than its humanistic value (their pedagogy, advocacy or activism). In this way, teachers of Color are no longer treated as people with intrinsic worth and the ability to challenge and transform education, but instead as commodities that are useful to the academic success of students of Color (Marx, 1867; Lapayese, 2007). This commodification of teachers of Color prevents any challenge to the status quo and, in turn, alienates teachers of Color from their professional work.

This paper adds to discourse on what an effective educator looks like for students of Color, but also raises questions on the exploitation of teachers of Color. When teachers of Color are recruited to work in a system that replicates class power and increases social inequality (Picower, 2011), we prevent them from serving their own communities and make them complicit in their own oppression. Thus, researchers, policymakers, and teacher educators must complicate recruitment efforts to also consider how to allow teachers of Color to realize their potential to transform schools.

Authors

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

• Josephine Pham, University of California - Los Angeles