Counterstorytelling: Critical Race Praxis as Sabotage in the Academy

• In Event: "Disruption, Interruption, Change...It's Not Enough. What We Need Is Sabotage": Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage in/of the Academy

Abstract

In an age of emboldened white supremacy, critical qualitative researchers have a responsibility to engage in explicitly anti-racist work to dismantle racist systems and structures of academia. This requires honest reflection on whiteness and our attempts – and failures – as educators and researchers to recognize how it impacts our practice; it demands that we sabotage reflexivities of comfort.

Purpose & Theoretical Framework: As university-based researchers who have engaged in participatory methods with marginalized populations, we have rising concerns about the power dynamics embedded in our interactions with co-researchers from racial and ethnic minority groups. In this manuscript, we use critical race and critical whiteness theory and counter-storytelling methodology to surface and confront the ways race affects our work in multiracial, intergenerational research collectives. Our goals are to encourage increased reflexivity about racial dynamics among white scholars and PAR practitioners and to expose and grapple with the ways in which institutions, especially higher education (and its policies, norms, and cultures), often subtly perpetuate colorblind ideologies and preserve white privilege.

Methods and Data Sources: We do so by examining three experiences of the same event, a research retreat on our university’s campus during an ongoing PAR project with youth of color, from the perspectives of three female, early career scholars: an Asian American doctoral candidate (Author 4), a Black doctoral candidate (Author 3), and a white junior faculty member (Author 2). We followed a version of Solórzano and Yosso’s (2002) procedure for counter-storytelling. First, Authors 1, 2, and 3 discussed examples of racial tensions in the event through informal conversations over the following months. Author 1 interviewed each co-author separately to more formally document their experiences of the event, transcribed each interview into narrative form, sent it to the co-author to check for accuracy and provide additional reflections, and incorporated it into the findings. Then, we analyzed the findings through a series of emails and video conferences, grappling with ongoing discomfort about the incident and the layered power dynamics revealed in the stories. Finally, we identified the key implications that stood out as most pertinent to our practice as critical scholar-educators and returned to the CRT literature for insight.

Conclusions and Significance: We demonstrate Yamamoto’s (1997) critical race praxis framework for “experience-rethinking-translation-engagement” with experiences of injustice and their implications for our future work as critical educators and PAR scholars. We provide insights for applying counter-storytelling and critical race praxis to educational research – starting with our own attitudes and unconscious behaviors and working towards broader institutional and structural change. Amidst rising xenophobia, worldwide protests for racial justice, and a global pandemic overwhelmingly affecting marginalized populations, citizen-scholars can no longer tolerate white supremacy in academia.

Authors

• Melissa Hauber-Özer, George Mason University

• Meagan Call-Cummings, George Mason University

• Sharrell Hassell-Goodman, George Mason University

• Elisabeth Chan, George Mason University