The Future of Critical Methodology: Commitments and Community

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Undergirding much of the current political climate are battles over how people should learn
about and make sense of race, racism, and the world in which we live. Since 2020, over 800
pieces of legislation have been introduced in the United States seeking to restrict the types of
engagement people can have with understanding race, power, and other social systems
(Alexander, 2022; CRT Forward, n.d). In addition, for a long time now, scholars have identified
that socialized understandings of inequality that primarily attribute disparities to individual effort
and racial stereotypes explain resistance to race-consciousness (e.g., Kluegel & Smith, 1986;
Sears, 1988). In other words, people’s understandings of the state of the world are critical to their
support for justice. While it has long been the case that the politics of justice have been central to
American political development (Jost, 2009), people’s understanding of and learning about race,
racism, and other social contexts are much more explicitly points of concern in our current
political climate. Therefore, the construction of knowledge is central to not only the mission of
the academy, but also the norms, ideologies, and politics that both expand and contract
possibilities for just futures

Sub Unit

• AERA Science and Policy Sessions

Participants

• Meagan Call-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University

• Robert Graham, University of Maryland

• Wendy Castillo, Montclair State University

• Richard Blissett, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Jori N. Hall, University of Illinois at Chicago