Racial Microaggressions and Racial Microaffirmations Within Educational Historical Research

• In Event: Past and Present: Examining Racial Microaggressions and Racial Microaffirmations Within Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives
In alignment with the AERA 2023 call to engage a “deep, sustained, and systematic interrogation” of truth, this paper assesses how institutionalized racism and tangential forms of oppression have impacted the (mis)construction and (mis)implementation of educational policies. We root our analytic inquiry in a Critical Race tradition and leverage such conceptual tools as racial microaggressions (Pierce, 1970) and racial microaffirmations (Perez Huber et al., 2021). Jointly, these tools afford us the paradigms necessary for examining how educational policies prominent in the 1960s and 1970s impacted the ways Communities of Color experienced racialized forms of marginalization in the everyday, and how they responded to these everyday forms of state-sanctioned aggression (Solorzano & Perez Huber, 2020). With a focus on the 1960s and 1970s, we find that educational and social policies intended to ameliorate educational challenges for Communities of Color were often contested; these challenges further perpetuated cyclical patterns of racism.

Theoretical Framework (s) & Methods
This paper centers the theoretical and methodological tools of CRT in Education and Chicana/Latina Feminisms to inform a historical sensibility within educational research (Escobedo & Camargo Gonzalez, 2022).These theoretical paradigms prompt us to center the experiential knowledge of People of Color and provide tools for acknowledging that race and racism are endemic structures that have historically impacted educational processes. This theoretical perspective also allows us to frame racial microaggressions as everyday expressions of institutional racism and white supremacy (Perez Huber & Solorzano, 2015).

Data Sources
To situate our conversation within a historical perspective, we draw extensively from primary sources gathered from two distinct research projects. The first author draws on primary sources from over ten distinct archival collections, personal documents, and oral histories to examine the activism of Chicana/o librarians engaged in challenging racism within library services and literature. The second author draws on newspaper articles and personal documents that examine the educational life trajectories of Mothers and Daughters of Color.

Findings & Scholarly Significance
This paper illustrates the importance of analyzing racial microaggressions and racial microaffirmations within educational historical research. With a focus on the 1960s and 1970s, we find that educational and social policies intended to ameliorate challenges for People of Color and individuals with minoritized identities in education were often challenged or contested resulting in cyclical patterns of racism. For example, the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968 (Stewner-Manzanares, 1998) was a policy passed due to the activism of people engaged in actions to demand curriculum for students with limited English proficiency. BEA was challenged, and attacked, in subsequent years and the English Only movement that followed is an example of how institutionalized racism is part of the history of this policy. A historical insight into understanding racial microaggressions and racial microaffirmations is important because it allows for the identification of the ways in which contemporary policies perpetuate racism today. Moreover, the use of historical methods such as primary sources and oral histories gives us a new perspective on the scholarship around racial microaggressions and racial microaffirmations.

Authors

• Cindy R. Escobedo, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Lorena Camargo Gonzalez, California State University - Sacramento
  Presenting Author