African American Family Day: The Recognition and Non-recognition of Race

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 11. Race/Ethnicity, Schools, and Youth

Abstract

Extensive research has been dedicated recently to demonstrating how the colorblind ideology helps to conceal the structural privileges of whiteness. Less attention, however, has been paid to questioning what effect the adherence to a colorblind ideology has on social actors within institutions such as education. Drawing from ethnographic data I collected from a middle-school in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) at an event called African-American Family Day. I argue that the educational institution’s adherence to a racial colorblind ideology has a silencing effect on these presenters. The silencing effect constrains the presenters from constructing or articulating a discourse around race. In the article, I demonstrate how the African-American parents that attend this event experience a paradoxical situation of having an event dedicated to them, coupled with predominately black presenters, yet the presenters largely avoided a racialized discourse during their presentations. For these African-American parents, the event has a disempowering effect as the presenters do not engage with a central aspect of their parental concerns.

Author

• Aaron Crawford, University of California-Los Angeles