Studying White Supremacy, Examining the Unconscious: Race Reflexivity in Critical Race Ethnography

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Ethnographic Approaches at the Intersections of Curriculum, Ideology, Language, and Race(ism) in Bilingual Spaces

Abstract

The paper takes readers through my journey as a scholar in learning race scholarship, particularly in employing critical race theory (CRT), and some of the reflexivity I engaged in. As such, it functions to provide an example of a scholar’s knowledge acquisition and the decisions made when conducting a Critical Race ethnography to study white supremacy, race, and racism in schooling contexts. More specifically, I provide scholars of race with an example of using the typology of reflexive modes of thought outlined by sociologists Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond (2012) and extended by sociologist Wendy Moore’s (2012) critique of Emirbayer and Desmond’s article. Before describing the reflexivity typology, I briefly situate the ethnographic tradition in which I locate my study, and I summarize my inquiry into a two-way dual-language program. I then describe the three levels of reflexivity in relation to my learning about and use of CRT and other race theories. By providing scholars of race with an example of one scholar’s reflexive thinking, I hope to encourage more education scholars of race to engage in kind.
My ethnography explores the policies, program practices, pedagogy, and ideologies of the DL program. For example, I examined the teachers’ practices in regards to culturally relevant pedagogy’s sociopolitical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 2014). I also examined how the policies and program practices attended to equity for Latinxs. The study intervened in the fields of bilingual education and race studies in education by showing how a DL program perpetuates Whites’ inequitable material accumulation and the superiority of a white racial identity. I found that DL whitewashed bilingual education through policies benefiting Whites while excluding many Latinx students and other students of color from a bilingual education (Author, forthcoming).

Author

• Laura Carolina Chavez-Moreno, University of California - Los Angeles