Forsaking Neutrality in Political Science: Making the Case to Intellectually Assassinate

• In Event: Working Within the Tensions: Exploring Dilemmas in Participatory and Humanizing Research With Young People

Abstract

The author conducted a self-study of her “American Political Thought” political science course utilizing anonymous midterm evaluations to unpack the ways students reflect on critical whiteness and critical race pedagogy. As a political scientist of color, the author utilizes critical whiteness alongside critical race pedagogy to suggest Political Science educators must forsake neutrality to embrace the tensions in the classroom. The author reveals the tensions faced when “teaching in the line of fire” (Tuitt et al, 2009). For this paper, the author navigated the question: What are the ways political science students in an American Political Thought course reflect on my use of critical whiteness and critical race pedagogy?
Critical whiteness studies interrogates whiteness which breaks the silence imposed on not only students of color, but educators of color who put their bodies on the line. Critical whiteness studies interrogates how the lived experiences of people of color are normalized and essentialized. Also, critical whiteness problematizes the theory and methods researchers use to analyze, collect data, and conduct research. For instance, in political science, white narratives are deemed as the norm and foundational learning of “American Political Thought.” This focus deems moments by which people of color experience and navigate political process and phenomena successfully and authentically as adverse to American politics. In order to unveil the normalized tension of whiteness, critical race pedagogy was used to human the sociopolitical narratives of folks of color. Critical race pedagogy “…offers insights, perspectives, methods, and pedagogies that guide our efforts to identify, analyze, and transform the structural and cultural aspects of education that maintain subordinate and dominant racial positions in and out of the classroom” (Solórzano, Ceja & Yosso, 2001, p. 63).
In order to unpack the ways in which students navigated the author’s pedagogy and curriculum, the author uses critical hermeneutics of midterm evaluations as a method to reflect the inner-subjectivities of student’s experiences with race centered in political science. Critical hermeneutics takes into account the “[r]ecognition of the influence of prejudice, conditioned by historical circumstances on interpretive stances, foregrounds the necessity of critical analysis of such prejudices” (Kinsella, 2006, p. 6). Critical hermeneutics methodology is necessary to disrupt positivist ideologies in political science.
The findings indicate it is time for Political Science educators to intellectually assassinate (Mackey, 2015) ideas that perpetuate whiteness rather than forsake Black and Brown bodies. To intellectually assassinate with a love for humanity means relying on theories that interrogate and refute ideas rather than people. There are three implications proposed to humanize students along their political science journeys. One, political science educators must push students to see race and racism as embedded in politics. Two, political scientists may want to revisit the way classes are codified and named to normalize racialized experiences as part of the American experience. Three, political science educators must recognize the responsibility of educating the next generation of lobbyists, political scientists, nonprofit executives, community organizers, who must refute, identify and intellectually assassinate deficit laden, colorblind, racist rhetoric in their respective fields.

Author

• Janiece Zalina Mackey, Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism (YAASPA)