Racial Justice–Oriented Teachers of Color: Possibilities of Transformation in Schools

• In Event: A Nuanced Portrait of the Demographic Divide: Resisting Monolithic Representations of Teachers of Color

Abstract

This paper aims to change the conversation around diversity in the teaching force from one of representation to instead exploring the epistemological shift that teachers of Color can bring when they carry a commitment to racial justice and are engaged in spaces to strengthen their racial literacy. For many students of Color, school has been a place of forced assimilation to the history, language, and ways of being of dominant communities. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, boarding schools, Americanization schools, and segregated schools were created to strip Indigenous, Mexican American, Native Hawaiian, and African America children of their language, culture, and dignity (Spring, 1994). From its historical inception, formal schooling was, in fact, not designed to serve communities of Color, but rather was created as a place of control and indoctrination. Throughout this shameful racial history of U.S. public schools, there have always existed teachers of Color who have resisted its assimilationist goals, have disrupted linguistic and cultural hierarchies, and who passed along community-based knowledge (Siddle-Walker, 1996).

Today, schools continue to serve as a racializing force as students of Color have disproportionate access to quality, resourced, and relevant educational opportunities (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). While teachers of Color have been noted to have a stronger awareness of inequity and engage more in culturally responsive pedagogy (Cherng & Davis, 2016; Easton-Brooks, 2019), teachers of Color are not automatically positioned to serve students of Color in transformative ways. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT)— a framework designed to name and challenge racism embedded in laws, policies, and practice (Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 1997), I analyzed qualitative narratives of 441 geographically and racially diverse teachers of Color who identified as racial justice-oriented and attended a critical professional development space that supported their racial justice guided professional goals. In this paper, I describe the racialized challenges they face in their teacher education and schools. I then explore the structure and impact of the professional development space as they aimed to challenge the racialized structures of schools. Last, I share how these teachers of Color continue the legacy of disrupting racism and shifting schools towards the knowledge systems of communities of Color by pushing against low expectations, engaging relationally within dehumanizing conditions, providing a culturally sustaining education, and affirming the worth and agency of students of Color and their families. In addition to highlighting the agency and power of critical teachers of Color, this research has implications for how teacher education, schools and districts must support justice-oriented teachers of Color both racially and ideologically.

Author

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside