Black Words in White Worlds: Using Critical Race Theory to Examine Antiblackness in Literacy Education

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Racialized Research Perspectives in Education

Abstract

As scholarship in literacy education directs greater attention to social and cultural factors impacting literacy performance, matters of race have yet to receive the full consideration it deserves. Even more concerning is the failure to recognize how racially discriminating policies are promoted through legislation and literacy education reform. While education has growingly welcomed critical race theory as a theoretical framework necessary for understanding the role of race in education, its absence from much of the research on Black males and literacy has created a space for anti-black literacy policies to thrive. In this conceptual paper, I argue that if scholars are serious about solving the literacy disparity between Black males and other students, critical race theory must be centralized.

Author

• Mario Worlds, University of Florida