Back It Up; What Do You Mean Race Isn't Real? The Importance of Race Fundamentals in Antiracist Education

• In Event: What Now? Dismantling Whiteness in the Next Era of White Supremacy

Abstract

The demand for anti-racist and racial justice training and workshops in community organizations and groups have gone up exponentially. Many of these calls were expected follow-up as communities and organizations made Black Lives Matter statements following the murder of George Floyd and the January 6th insurrection, although these statements were often performative. The requests around anti-racist education run the gamut from those that stick to implicit bias to those that demand racial justice action items. Yet, regardless of how critical this race education is, much of it, including that led by critical race scholars often assumes that learners understand race as a sociopolitical, hierarchical, and oppressive construction, designed by and for those who consider themselves whites (Leonardo, 2013; Omi & Winant, 2015).

Theoretical Framing:
In this paper, I use critical theoretical and critical autoethnographic (Nishi, 2018; Hughes & Pennington, 2017) methods paired with a Critical Race Theoretical/ Critical Race Praxis (McKay, 2010) framework to analyze the fundamental misgivings in anti-racism education devoid of this critical grounding. These misgivings include the assumption of race as biological difference or inherent, a deficit perspective of People of Color (Harper, 2010), and a host of color evasive perspectives (Annamma, et al., 2017; Bonilla-Silva, 2014).

The author, a higher education scholar and community educator/trainer draws on her experience working within schools, religious communities, health organizations, and other community groups to both critique current anti-racist education and offer andragogical principles to improve and render anti-racist training/education more effective.

Scholarly Significance:
Cabrera (2018) offers an appreciative and additive critique of CRT that it is missing a theory of race, noting that some People of Color offer a race critique through a color-evasive lens that centers their experience and might be argued to be a counterstory (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and adhere to CRT tenets. However, arguably this goes against the spirit and intent of CRT scholars and founders. Cabrera (2018) thus advocates for scholars to offer a theory of race within their CRT work. Similarly, to offer an effective anti-racist education, we as educators must begin with a solid grounding in the history of race and race-making in the United States and globally. Without this grounding, we run the risk of participants’ work in anti-racism remaining performative and not realizing real and lasting change that critical race education calls for.

Author

• Naomi Nishi, Colorado State University - Fort Collins