"We Have to Bring It Real Hard": Exploring Critical Race English Education Through a Critical Family Book Club

• In Event: Toward Decolonial Classrooms and Learning: Disrupting Dominant and Normative Practices of Language, Literacies, and Culture

Abstract

Objectives:
Presenter One illustrates how Critical Race English Education (CREE) can support educators to better understand why anti-Black racism and white supremacy have deep historical connections to English language arts (ELA) and how we must disrupt anti-Black racism in ELA classrooms. CREE challenges ELA teachers to positively (re)imagine ELA classrooms where Black lives, minds, and brilliance matter. Presenter One illustrates how he implemented a critical race family book club with family-student dyads. He analyzes how the literacy uses between families and children affects and responds to the intersections of identity, race, and racism. Through the implementation of a critical race family book club, this chapter seeks to capture the families and youths’ beliefs, thoughts, reactions, and vulnerabilities when engaged in a book club centered on critical race issues. The presenter surmises that educators cannot create true and authentic justice-oriented spaces in their classrooms if we do not build with and learn from Black families and communities.

Theoretical Framework:
The author proposes CREE) as a theoretical and pedagogical construct that tackles race, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy within English education, ELA classrooms, and beyond. Black youth are not presented with the opportunities to explore their multiple identities or given the opportunities to participate in racial justice movements of our current time such as #BlackLivesMatter and #Sayhername movements. Presenter One theorizes CREE and how CREE extends on Critical Race Theory, BlackCrit, and Critical Race Pedagogy.

Methods:
The critical family book club is guided by three questions:(1) What happens when parents, students, and a researcher/educator/facilitator are engaged in a critical family book club? (2) What dominant, counterstories, and/or racial stories emerge from parents and children as they read a book that focuses on critical race issues? (3) How do parents’ racial-related experiences impact how they create critical dialogue with their children pertaining to issues, such as anti-black racism, whiteness, and Blackness? Data sources include the book club, semi-structured interviews, unstructured interviews, and focus groups. These data sources captured the dialogue, narratives, and verbal interactions of families and youth as well as my observations and reflections upon families’ interactions.

Findings/Significance of Study:
As with society in general, parents who participated in the critical family book club reflected a range of racial, ethnic, linguistic, and gendered identities. For some parents, guardians, and children, the pain from their racial experiences was visceral. Some chose to recast this pain into praxis, which allowed them to actively fight against and speak back to anti-Black racism. The book club provided a beginning for much-needed conversations. One caveat of doing this work is sometimes discussions open up lifetimes of pain that have remained beneath the surface for some. It is necessary for researchers, teachers, and teacher educators to be prepared to find ways to support families, communities, and children work through what can be deemed as a challenging and difficult process.

Author

• Lamar L. Johnson, Michigan State University