Critical Race Methodologies: An Overview and Example from New Orleans Post-Katrina

• In Event: Reflections on Practices in the "Field": Lessons in Creative, Critical, Postcritical, and Community Research

Abstract

In this presentation the authors address Critical Race Methodologies and share critical race community based research with Black educators in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. Both critical race methodologies and postcritical ethnography share commitments to justice, social transformation, deep belief in the democratic project, and mutual interest in challenging dominant stories that reinforce the social order as natural. In this presentation the authors introduce the history of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical race methodologies and then address work with Black educators in New Orleans post-Katrina. The authors examine the role of critical race methodology and postcritical orientations in the research and explicate how both informed writing and representation.
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, the levee system failed, resulting in 80% of New Orleans flooding. The unprecedented damage spilled over to every aspect of life, with over 1,000,000 people forced to evacuate the region. When the Orleans Parish School Board placed 7,500 school employees on disaster leave without pay on September 15, 2005, 4,500 teachers lost their jobs, resulting in the largest single displacement of African American teachers since desegregation (Author, 2010). The natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina coupled with the disastrous human response during and after the hurricane called forth my activist and scholar selves in powerful ways.
After conducting a yearlong ethnography of Black educator experiences with school reform in New Orleans after Katrina, I found myself frustrated with the reductive feel of the data I was representing in my writing. The presentation details alternatives I considered. Ultimately, I constructed a composite character counter storytelling (Author, 2010, 2015, 2024). Writing about the experiences of my participants required a strategy beyond using pseudonyms in order to protect their identities.
In this presentation we detail how the displacement of Black educators demanded a critical representation, how the trauma of the hurricane on the community demanded an evocative one and how the ongoing vulnerability of the educators required a strategy of deep anonymity.

Authors

• Daniella Cook Sumpter, University of South Carolina

• Michelle Lorraine Bryan, University of South Carolina