Theorizing a Critical Race Content Analysis for Children's Books About People of Color

• In Event: Critical Analyses of Children's and Young Adult Literature: Uncovering Discourses of Power and Representation About Latinx Communities

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Research has found negative portrayals of Latinas/os, African Americans and other People of Color in children’s literature has stereotypically romanticized the histories, languages, and cultures of these groups (Harris, 1990; Martinez-Roldan, 2013). Scholars have taken up a Critical Content Analysis to explore the ways People of Color are portrayed in children’s literature, utilizing critical theories that can uncover how systems of power operate (Johnson, Mathis, and Short, 2016). The purpose of this study is to theorize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) can be used in alignment with Critical Content Analysis to develop a new methodological approach for critically analyzing portrayals of People of Color in children’s literature.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

For more than a decade, educational researchers have been utilizing CRT as a theoretical framework to analyze the role of racism and its intersections with other forms of oppression in the lives of People of Color in education and beyond. Solorzano (1998) outlined five tenets of CRT that form the basic perspectives of this theoretical framework. As applied to this study, a CRT framework informs the analytic process through:
1. Centering the analytical focus on race, racism, and the intersections of multiple forms of oppression;
2. Challenging dominant ideologies of colorblindness that claim books (i.e. children’s books, textbooks, etc.) are neutral;
3. Recognizing the significance of experiential knowledge of Communities of Color in the positionality of the author and within storylines;
4. Utilizing interdisciplinary perspectives, beyond the field of education in the analytic process;
5. Holding an overall commitment to racial and social justice.

Methods & Data
This study is conceptual, offering a theorization of a Critical Race Content Analysis. However, we present examples of how this analysis can be applied to data through an analysis of children’s books. To do this, we draw from a collection of 64 children’s books catalogued by the CCBC by and about Latinas/os published in 2015.

Findings
We found that most scholars using a CRT framework in the analysis of children’s books are not using the central tenets of a CRT analysis, and in particular, are not imbedding those tenets within their analytical approach (Hughes-Hassell, Barkley and Koehler, 2009; McNair, 2008; Rogers and Mosely, 2006). We use Critical Content Analysis because of its methodological alignment with CRT, and its utility to examine children’s literature in particular (Johnson, Mathis and Short, 2016). We argue that CRT can offer a powerful theoretical foundation to this methodology. From our theorizing, we offer a Critical Race Content Analysis sheet, a research tool that can be utilized in the analysis of intersectionality in children’s books.

Significance
This study offers a new approach of using CRT in the analysis of children’s books. Most notably, we offer the methodological tool of a Critical Race Content Analysis sheet for scholars interested in applying Critical Content Analysis and CRT in the examination of the varied and complex portrayals of People of Color in these books.

Authors

• Lindsay Perez Huber, California State University - Long Beach

• Lorena Camargo Gonzalez, University of California - Los Angeles