Beyond Binaries in Racial Analyses of U.S. Early Care and Education

• In Event: Seeking Truth Through an Authentic Understanding of Teachers' Lived Experiences

Abstract

Purpose
This paper discusses a nonbinary study of early childhood educators’ “dual pandemic” experiences (i.e., the intersection of racism and COVID-19, see Jones, 2021). Its broad purpose has been to prompt reflection and discussion about creating a more equitable post-pandemic ECE system for New York City (NYC).
Theoretical Framework
The study is dialogic by design (Bakhtin, 1984). Fourteen initial meetings were held with ECE stakeholders in NYC (e.g., city administrative agencies, professional organizations). The purpose of these meetings was to both shape the study and to begin a process of collaborative sense-making (three co-interpretive follow-up meetings have been held to date).
An additional aspect of dialogism involves navigating a tension in mixed-methods research between so-called quantitative and qualitative methods (Francis, 1999). This quant/qual binary elides the possibility of mixing different disciplines’ methods (e.g., history and anthropology) or placing different forms of data into dialogue with each other (Covarrubias, Nava, Lara, Burciaga, Vélez, & Solorzano, 2018).
Methods
The approach was constant comparison - with a twist (Glaser, 1965). The survey data were initially summarized through descriptive statistics. Textual data were read deductively (i.e., stressors, experiences of racism, etc.) and inductively (i.e., unanticipated issues). Emerging impressions led to further statistical analyses - and back to the textual data.
Data Sources
The data were from a survey sent to members of New York’s early childhood registry who worked in NYC (n=663), from which a sample of contributors identifying as Black, Indigenous, or Other People of Color (BIPOC) was drawn (n=28) for phenomenological interviews (Seidman, 1998).
Findings
In what might seem like a throw away finding, race was significantly associated with experiencing racism. However, the picture became more nuanced when the data were disaggregated and compared with the interview transcripts. Those identifying as Black, Asian American, and Bi/Multi-Racial reported being affected by racism at much higher rates (62.9%, 72.9%, and 68%, respectively) than Latine/o/a/x (46.9%) or Indigenous (0%) contributors. However, a key impression from the interviews was that contributors’ experiences of racism differed widely and resist essentializing, with notable examples being between people of color (e.g., a Latina discussing discrimination by an Asian American administrator or a Black director sharing her surprise at being hired at a primarily Asian American center).
Significance
Acknowledging limitations in the study’s sampling, as well as its participation in reproducing race, this analysis suggests the interpersonal complexities that exist beyond historical Black/white and contemporary BIPOC/white binary constructions of race relations (Kim, 1999; Wilkerson, 2020). This has exigent implications for how the field’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts are being conceptualized. Who are they being designed for; by whom; in consultation with whom; and in what ways are they addressing how the U.S.’s caste system expresses itself in ECE spaces?

Author

• Mark Nagasawa, Bank Street College of Education
  Presenting Author