Why We Need Critical Race Theory: Moving Toward Critical Race Praxis in P–20 Education

• In Event: Education for the People: Centering Grassroots, Self-Determination, and Justice in Education Research

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper the co-authors, educators and organizers working together in a liberatory curriculum development organization put forth a conceptualization of Critical Race Praxis in Education as it applies to P-20 curriculum and education writ large. After presenting the CRP as a conceptual framework and critical race counterstory stories as methodology, examples of the co-authors’ organizational praxes are presented within conceptual, material, performative, and reflexive tenants of Yamamoto’s (1997) Critical Race Praxis framework. We conclude the paper with offerings useful to all learners, P-20 educators, researchers, school administrators, and community members advancing more just educational futures: a commitment to the on the groundwork, situating social justice as an experiential phenomenon, the utilization of interdisciplinary approaches, collaborative work and capacity building, and a commitment to self and collective care.
Theoretical Frameworks
Critical Race Praxis is a concept brought forward by legal scholar Eric Yamamoto. In his work with Black, Latinx, and Asian garment workers in downtown Los Angeles, he derived the concept from the observations of his and his student’s work in a legal clinic. As they were assisting garment workers in fighting wage theft from employers, his work to address tensions amongst the racial/ethnic groups led him to engage in praxis. Because praxis is understood as action and reflection in the world to change it, we utilize Yamamoto’s tenets, while adjusting them to education, to conceptualize our work with educators.
Methods and data source
We build upon the pedagogical functions described by Solórzano and Yosso (2002) in this study. To do so we employ critical race counterstories to retell our experiences as justice-centered educators of color building P-20 curriculum while also challenging the majoritarian stories about curriculum and pedagogy in P-20 schools. In doing so, we put forth a model of CRP that, we hope, supports more justice-centered praxes in P-20 spaces in and out of schools. Central to the CRP are the stories, experiences, analyses, and actions of dispossessed people’s moving towards liberatory and just futures in midst of structural violence endemic to their worlds. In our case, we center our own struggles using CRP as a vehicle to guide our curriculum development work (Ladson-Billings, 1998) . We employ critical race counterstories (Yosso, 2013) as a methodological tool (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) to reflect deeply on our organizational and interpersonal praxes and, ultimately, conceptualize CRP within the context of P-20 education.
Results and scholarly significance
We share examples in this paper of how CRP's conceptual, material, performative, and reflexive tenets guide our work, and we conclude the paper by articulating a reimagined set of CRP tenets that more purposefully bound an educational movement towards CRP in education. We hope that readers can contextualize these tenets into their own spaces, realities, and starting points. They are not meant to be prescriptive. Rather they are meant to serve as a catalyst to either begin, or continue, the work of engaging in educational and curricular praxes that move us toward liberation, not away from it.

Authors

• Asif Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Erica R. Davila, Lewis University

• Valentina Gamboa-Turner, Northeastern Illinois University

• Ananka Kesari Shony

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago