A Historical Blueprint: Using Critical Race Theory to Analyze Archival Documents From 1990s Student of Color Activism

• In Event: "Countering the Violence of Abstraction": Advancing the Tools of Critical Race Studies for Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives & Research Questions
This paper is part of a broader project that historicizes the departmental history of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. In prior work, Author provided a historical narrative about the role of student leaders in demanding a Chicana/o Studies department between 1990-1993 through a sit-in and hunger strike. This paper responds to the AERA call for submissions seeking “expanded and theoretical and empirical toolsets” by analyzing archival documents, specifically letters written to then UCLA’s Chancellor Young. The research question is: How did California’s racial climate in the 1990s impact student efforts to demand a Chicana/o Studies department?

Theory
There is a growing body of scholarship in education that employs historical methods using a critical race theory (CRT) lens. “The challenge to ahistoricism,” is one of CRT’s foundational tenets; for CRT scholars, “that means any attempt made to investigate the world with an eye toward racial inequalities will inevitably lead to consideration of the past” (Morris and Parker, 2019, p. 23). Further, within the field of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Wodak (2015) discussed Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), “developed to analyze the constitution of anti-Semitic stereotyped images” (p. 1).

Methods/Source
DHA is a method to analyze discourse in the past, and from its inception, centered the ways discourse upholds racism. DHA involves ten principles including interdisciplinarity, teamwork, triangulation, orientation toward application, and that “the historical context is taken into account in interpreting texts and discourses” (Wodak, 2015, p. 2). García and Yosso (2020) discussed that constructing critical historical narratives through a CRT lens requires triangulation and they propose oral history, institutional archives, and newspapers as archival genres. Using CRT and DHA as method, this paper analyzes 100 letters written to UCLA Chancellor Young in support and against a department of Chicana/o Studies, between 1990-1993. Archives of public letters written to university leaders in higher education are seldomly analyzed in research.

Findings
I argue that California’s Racial Climate in the 1990s was anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant (i.e. Proposition 187) and directly informed the rhetoric and discourse in the letters to Chancellor Young. Early analysis of the letters against Chicana/o Studies found that the writers used racial codes to argue that Chicana/o Studies did not belong at UCLA. The students demanding a department were framed as foreigners and criminals. Further, letters in support of the student efforts framed UCLA as a regionally and globally recognized institution that should combat racism and reflect the increasing demographic growth of Latinas/os in Los Angeles County in the early 1990s. Those letters framed the student leaders as brave and courageous.

Significance
This project has implications during our current national racial climate that is fostering white supremacy through discourse that attacks racialized groups, CRT, and voting rights of racially minoritized communities. The letters serve as a historical blueprint that white supremacy is endemic. This project positions California and UCLA as a historical case study to understand how the contemporary rise of white supremacy impacts Students of Color in higher education.

Author

• José Manuel Aguilar-Hernández, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona