Interrogating Racialized Educational Exclusion: A Critical Race Educational History of Phoenix Union High School System

• In Event: zzzzzz Withdrawn per 4/23 Emergent Historical Methodologies and Pedagogies: Chicana/o/Latina/o Movement-Building Researchers Disrupting Supremacist Educational Infrastructures

Abstract

Objectives
This paper focuses on the experiences of students of color navigating the axis of racialized educational exclusion between the inception of Phoenix Union High School (PUHS) in 1895 and its closure in 1982 (Valencia, 1980, 1984, 2008). Specifically centering on understanding the relational racialized educational experiences of students of color by looking at how this exclusion took shape over time, beginning with the school’s establishment as solely for white students (Buchanan, 1978).

Theoretical Framework
Archival research has implored me to further analyze how race, racism, and racialization function within the district and its schools historically from a relational lens (Luckingham, 1994; Menchaca, 2001; Molina, 2013). This paper uses historical inquiry to wrestle with questions centering on educational inequities encountered by communities of color in Phoenix. As a critical race historian of education, I draw from Critical Race Theory in education (Solorzano and Yosso, 2002) and Critical Race Educational History (Santos et.al, 2107, Partida and Ramirez, 2023) to contextualize the historical lived experiences of students of color navigating diverse inequalities along the educational pipeline.

Methods
In the larger scope of Phoenix educational histories, more documentation is needed of communities of color’s educational experiences. This paper utilizes historical research methods to document and place in conversation the 20th-century educational histories of Phoenix communities of color. Furthermore, it draws on current archival research and analysis of primary sources located in various collections from the Arizona Historical Society (AHS) in Tempe, Arizona.

Findings
The current analysis of primary archival sources held by the AHS Collections aids in the composition of historical counterstories that reinterpret, disrupt, or interrupt the “pervasive discourses that may paint communities and people, particularly communities and people of color, in grim, dismal ways” (Milner and Howard, 2013). Current findings have helped to identify patterns and themes analyzed and placed in conversation to construct a narrative centering on the racialized experience of Phoenix students and communities of color through a relational lens

Scholarly Significance
The instances of racialized exclusion experienced by students of color across the PUHS system do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are part of a larger historical narrative not solely contained to one specific community of color. This moment of resistance is intertwined with the educational histories of other students of color within this high school and district which further exemplifies the embedded structure of racialized inequalities. (Echeverria, 2014; Grigsby, 1986; Meeks 2010; Melcher, 1991; Muñoz, 2023; Robinson, 1955, 1956; Whitaker, 2005).

Author

• Bryant Partida, Loyola Marymount University