New Directions in CRT in the Social Studies

• In Event: Dreaming Out Loud: Critical Race Theory and Social Studies Futures

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation features authors who explore branches of CRT that were in their nascent stages or had not yet been theorized at the time the Ladson-Billings book was published, thus offering “new” directions of CRT as applied in social studies teaching and research.
Theoretical framework
The authors in this group engage QuareCrit, AsianCrit, LatCrit, and youth participatory action research (YPAR) through a CRT lens. QuareCrit, in comparison to queer theory, positions race and class as central elements to the corporeal construction of queer bodies. As Johnson (2001) argues, quare speaks from a “culture-specific positionality” (p. 2) and “moves beyond simply theorizing subjectivity and agency as discursively mediated to theorizing how that mediation may propel material bodies into action” (p. 9). AsianCrit (Chang, 1993; Iftikar & Museus, 2018) and LatCrit (Pérez Huber, 2010; Solórzano & Bernal, 2001) are branches of CRT that emerged from Asian American and Latinx legal scholarship respectively to better articulate the particular ways in which each community is uniquely racialized alongside transnational experiences and issues related to language, colorism, and Indigeneity. The YPAR authors emphasize counternarratives to center the schooling and activist experiences of young people of color.
Methods of inquiry and data sources
The chapters that employ QuareCrit and AsianCrit are conceptual. The LatCrit chapter uses a case study of a local Latinx activist youth group while the YPAR chapter explores findings from a year-long study at a Midwestern high school. For the latter chapters, observations, interviews, and artifacts were collected and analyzed through their respective CRT lenses.
Substantiated conclusions
The chapter centered on quare theory in social studies argues that who and what is classified as human in the teaching of LGBTQ-inclusive social studies has to do with how the queer-subject aligns itself to homonormative conceptions of “citizen” (i.e., allowing LGBTQ bodies – largely white bodies – to engage, pervade, and participate in heteronormative practices and institutions). The chapters on AsianCrit, LatCrit, and YPAR share a common conclusion about the possibilities of civic resistance and the need for marginalized groups to demand and create their own unique spaces.
Scholarly significance
Given the overwhelmingly white, cishet, middle class, English monolingual teaching force, the scholarship featured in this presentation exemplifies the need for those on the margins to create new spaces for civic engagement, empowerment, and joy, whether in the context of rising white nationalism in the South, anti-Asian American racism and violence during COVID-19, heteronormativity throughout U.S. society, or the long-oppressive spaces of schools created by and for the white middle class.

Authors

• Jon Michael Wargo, Boston College

• Sohyun An, Kennesaw State University

• Ryan Oto, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Amina Smaller

• Eva Garcia