Constructing Race: Negotiating Difference in the Context of an Education Activist Movement

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 35
  In Roundtable Session: Policy and People: Exploring the Use of Organizing and Activism in Education Policy

Abstract

Recent efforts to “opt out” of assessments have focused attention on the role that testing plays in accountability reforms. While often invoking the disproportionate impact of these reforms on communities of color, opting out has been more widespread in affluent, suburban communities. This study explores how resistance to testing is embedded in larger discourses of race, privilege, and opportunity in education. Through discourse analysis, we explore how activists frame the different racial interests at play in this movement, as well as how they locate themselves within (or outside) these groups. We show how such racial categories are not static, but shaped by context, in ways that often subvert efforts to build cross-racial coalitions in this movement.

Authors

• Maravene Taylor-Heine, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Terri S. Wilson, University of Colorado Boulder