In Pursuit of Racial Justice: Contesting State Violence With a Pedagogy for the People

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium presents the challenges a three-year community-university collaboration experienced in seeking to cultivate racial justice through a community-centered pedagogy in a state actively retrenching white supremacist ideologies through its legislative policies. Led by state legislators and elected officials, attacks on ethnic studies curriculum, race-based epistemologies and histories, and labor protections have created a politically hostile environment that offsets efforts to foster community based partnerships that center racially marginalized histories, imagine fair and equitable labor conditions, and develop alternative and decolonial educational sites. The three papers shared here consider the difficulties emboldening visions for racially just futures for schools, neighborhoods, medical care, higher education, communities and workplaces when political actors use their power to ensure continued oppression and exclusion.

Sub Unit

• SIG-School, University, Community Collaborative Research

Chair

• Sonya Maria Aleman, University of Texas - San Antonio

Participants

• Jose Villagran, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Jerry Gonzalez, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Carolina Arango-Vargas, University of Texas - San Antonio

Papers

• Centering the Forbidden: Race and Labor in Texas - Jose Villagran, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Rebel Histories: Challenging State-Mandated History in the Public Sphere - Jerry Gonzalez, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Escuelita de Paz y Justicia: Decolonizing Pedagogies for San Antonio’s Westside - Sonya Maria Aleman, University of Texas - San Antonio; Carolina Arango-Vargas, University of Texas - San Antonio

Discussant

• Alejandra Elenes, University of Texas - San Antonio