“It Helped Me See From a Different Perspective”: Historical Inquiry to Promote Counter-Hegemonic Racial Literacy

• In Event: Constructing Possibilities: New Directions in Social Studies Research and Practice for Racial Justice

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a technology-assisted historical inquiry into redlining. We developed and implemented a weeklong curricular intervention for high school sophomores that used an AI-modeling platform to investigate hundreds of primary sources from the HOLC’s “residential security maps” in the 1930s, coupled with investigations of scholarly and first-hand neighborhood descriptions. We asked: How did student inquiry into redlining shape their historical and present-day racial awareness, and, how might this form of historical inquiry promote counterhegemonic racial literacy towards critical racial consciousness? Examining field notes, surveys, and interviews, we noted two initial themes: 1) historical inquiry served as a counterhegemonic literacy practice and 2) students progressed in racial meaning-making as they began to develop critical racial consciousness.

Authors

• Victoria Newton, North Carolina State University

• Cassandra Rubinstein, North Carolina State University

• Amato Nocera, North Carolina State University