Nuancing Racial Identity: Uniting Critical Race Theory and Gee’s Theory of Identity

• In Event: Unforgetting the Past, Disrupting the Present: Border-Crossing Approaches to Inclusive Education Policy, Research, and Practice

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale and modality for attending to the nuances of racial identity. Theorizing racial identity as socially constructed and affectively lived, we — the authors — argue that said nuances are critical sites for understanding how racially minoritized children with and without disability labels and their families experience the world and why they experience the world in the ways that they do. We propose that, when paired with critical race theory (CRT; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), Gee’s (2000) theory of identity offers a pathway for intentionally recognizing and attending to the many identity boundaries and related emotional experiences that exist among specific racially minoritized groups.

Theoretical Framework
First, we build on Waitoller and Kozleski’s (2013) notion of inclusive education and CRT to recognize inclusive education as a justice project, particularly for racially minoritized students and their families. We emphasize intersectionality and humanizing methodologies to honor full, complex lives — not just oppression. Second, we employ sociocultural theory to advance an understanding of identity as socially constructed through participation in cultural practices, discursively produced, and shaped through boundary construction. Third, we center affect and emotion as essential to identity formation, highlighting the racialized emotional geographies of schooling and the emotional toll of misrecognition, misrepresentation, and misdistribution.

Methods and Data Sources
Our primary data sources for this conceptual paper are the theories themselves, that is, CRT and Gee’s (2000) theory of identity. We construct our argument, in part, by exploring the opportunities and complexities of employing CRT and Gee (2000) individually and jointly in the context of learning and building with racially minoritized people. Our theoretical framework informs our analysis.
Most of the examples we offer to support our claims speak to the lived experiences of Black people. We highlight Black stories because anti-Blackness is a global phenomenon, positioning Blackness in direct opposition to Whiteness and rendering it a primary site of racial dehumanization. Further, Black communities have been subjected to some of the most enduring and violent forms of racial oppression. This includes the persistent flattening of Black racial identity through reductive and often pathologizing stereotypes.

Results and Significance
CRT is a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the lived experiences of racially minoritized people, particularly regarding racism. However, when using CRT, some people risk flattening or homogenizing racial identity and overlooking the divergent histories of racial groups. Such flattening can occur when (a) generalizing experiences of racism, (b) emphasizing structural identities and oppression, (c) using broad group categories (e.g., people of Color), and (d) inconsistently engaging with intersectionality. This flattening clashes with the critical inclusive education principles of redistribution, recognition, and representation (Waitoller & Kozleski, 2013).
We posit that Gee’s (2000) four identity types — nature, institution, discourse, and affinity — when paired with CRT, can help users advance relational agency (Edwards, 2007) and nuance racial identity in ways necessary for realizing critical inclusive education research and practice for racially minoritized children and families.

Authors

• William A. Proffitt, Montclair State University

• Courtney L. Wilt, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Inna Stepaniuk, Simon Fraser University