Critical Race Praxis as School Formation: Promise, Challenges, and Contradictions

• In Event: Continuous Improvement Research and Critical Theoretical Perspectives: Bridging Two Conversations With a Common Goal?

Abstract

Legal Scholar Eric Yamamoto posits four tenets of critical race praxis in education: conceptual (what we're trying to do), material (what we need to do it), performative (the execution of what we set out to do), and the reflexive (using what did/didn't go well to inform future work). In this account of school creation, the tenets allow for a space to theorize on the real and perceived tensions between groups (researchers, community members, community organizers, school system, school partners, etc.) along the lines of race, class, ethnicity, power, and educational policy. As the design team for Social Justice High School (SOJO) got closer to the final deposit of the proposal to Chicago Public Schools (CPS), SOJO was pulled into the revolving door of neoliberal housing and educational policy. Connecting business interests to educational development, the policy has created a veneer that continues to marginalize and isolate low- income/working-class Black and Latinx communities. Paired with the responsibilities of preparing the final proposal for submission to CPS, the process layers included a host of participants entering and exiting the process. From my participation on the design team, I slowly learned that solidarity was a contested phenomenon, challenging me to understand collective over singular desires to speak truth to power.

Author

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago