Disrupting the Educational Racial Contract of Islamophobia: Racialized Curricular Expectations of Muslims in Children's Literature

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: Children's Literature as a Form of Resistance to Racial Oppression (Table 7)

Abstract

When racialized knowledge is built into curriculum in schools, children are susceptible to beliefs that perpetuate hierarchical understandings of particular groups. This paper seeks to illuminate orientalist underpinnings of award-winning children’s literature as one of the manifestations of educators’ expectations of students. Utilizing racialized curricular expectations as an analytical tool, this study deconstructs Muslim stereotypes and their racial, gender, and religious representations in the following ways: (1) educational racial contract, (2) racial othering as racial selfing, and (3) racist empathy. Despite the best intensions, these books perpetuated dominant curricular narratives through subtle idealizations of white middle-class Christian values and sustains Muslim stereotypes. This work calls upon educators to interrogate curricula that racializes students and teaches them ways to be raced.

Author

• Kelly Deits Cutler, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author