Marvin Lynn. University of Maryland, College Park. Tara J. Yosso. University of California, Santa Barbara ... University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A century ...
QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / February 2002 Lynn et al. / EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Critical Race Theory and Education: Qualitative Research in the New Millennium Marvin Lynn University of Maryland, College Park Tara J. Yosso University of California, Santa Barbara Daniel G. Solórzano University of California, Los Angeles Laurence Parker University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign A century after the great American sociologist W.E.B. DuBois predicted that racism would continue to emerge as one of this country’s key problems, educational researchers, practitioners, and students are still in need of a language that will provide the necessary tools for effectively analyzing and coming to terms with the impact of race and racism on education. In part because of the reemergence of conservative pseudoscientific discourses in the 1990s and the predominance of class and gender epistemologies, discussions about race and racism in education have been either pushed to the margins or effectively destabilized. As faculty of color seeking to do transformative work that addresses issues of race and racism in education, we sometimes struggle with the limited ways in which our work and the work of other scholars concerned with race is interpreted and viewed by our colleagues. We have been fortunate because although the field of education has not wholly embraced race discourse, we have benefited significantly from the work of scholars in other fields such as ethnic studies, sociology, and law. We have borrowed heavily from and actively situated our work within these rich traditions—particularly ethnic studies (e.g., African American and Chicano studies). Even still, we continue to seek to find ways in which to create a discourse that engages larger questions of racial inequality in education and in society. For many of us, critical race theory (CRT) has begun to meet this growing need. Qualitative Inquiry, Volume 8 Number 1, 2002 3-6 © 2002 Sage Publications
3
4
QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / February 2002
When we (Marvin Lynn and Tara Yosso) were first introduced to CRT through the scholarship and teaching of Daniel Solórzano and Laurence Parker (both coeditors of this special issue), we were inspired and encouraged to continue to be explicit about the nature of race and racism in educational research and practice, even in the face of what appeared to be a widespread conservatization of educational discourse. Even more important, we felt it our task to continue to find ways to expand these conversations by sharing our work and the work of our colleagues with the larger educational research community. Organizations such as the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, the National Council of Black Studies, the Association of Black Sociologists, and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) have provided us with important laboratories through which to develop our work in CRT. Ethnic studies organizations such as the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies and the National Council of Black Studies have provided us with ways in which to link our work in education with that of scholars in other fields committed to educational equality for students of color. We have received important feedback from our ethnic studies counterparts regarding the ways in which CRT incorporates existing analyses of racial inequality into its framework. The Association of Black Sociologists also provided some of us with networks through which to engage in such dialogue with sociologists addressing issues of race in their work. Through AERA, we have been able to meet and interact with other scholars across the country who are working on CRT in education. For example, Parker presented his work on CRT and qualitative research in 1997 at the AERA conference in Chicago, where he met Solórzano. Parker then incorporated Solórzano’s work into a special issue on CRT in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (1998). The next year, Solórzano and Yosso presented their work on critical race curriculum at AERA in San Diego, where Parker also sat on a panel and discussed CRT. In 1999, Yosso and Solórzano put together a panel for AERA where other colleagues also participated. Finally, in 2000, Lynn and Yosso again put together a panel for AERA, which set out to address questions raised in the previous conferences and on our campuses about CRT and its application to qualitative research in education. This special issue of Qualitative Inquiry is an outgrowth of that 2000 panel, but our work with CRT in education has been developing individually and in collaboration over many years. Before laying out the structure of the special issue, we want to provide a brief overview of CRT. CRT stems from the race-based critique of the critical legal studies movement in the early 1980s and the lack of attention paid to race in critical legal scholarship (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). One can also view CRT as following a path similar to postmodernist and/or poststructuralist criticisms of
Lynn et al. / EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
5
research and policy language that reject modernist notions of single-truth claims of objective discipline-based knowledge and policy answers (Jinks, 1997). Borrowing from Harding’s (1987) search for a feminist methodology from feminist epistemology and ontology, the following articles attempt to explore CRT as an ontological and epistemological framework with which to analyze race. The “theory” of CRT asks what needs attention analysis regarding qualitative research and the importance of race. The articles in this special issue will also explore whether there is a distinctive method of CRT inquiry, how CRT methodology challenges or complements traditional methodologies, and on what grounds one would defend the assumptions and research inquiries of CRT researchers. Employing multidisciplinary frameworks, the articles in this special issue will address a variety of historical, methodological, and epistemological issues as they relate to the scope and trajectory of educational research in the 21st century. This special issue will begin with an article by Parker and Lynn that not only addresses the necessity for race theorizing in educational research but also explicitly examines the ways in which CRT can be used as a tool through which to perform this important function. This article attempts to link CRT to other discussions that have appeared in Qualitative Inquiry addressing race-based work in qualitative research. The next set of articles address important methodological questions. Solórzano and Yosso, for example, take on the important task of defining the contours of what is being termed a critical race method, which they argue uses the experiences of minorities as a way in which to combat racial oppression. Next, Fernández talks about the ways in which she has used CRT in her work as a way to give shape to the personal narratives of Latino/Latina students in urban schools. The next article on method, written by Smith-Maddox and Solórzano, discusses the ways CRT can be used as a framework for conducting research on the learning and development of preservice teachers. The article by Duncan addresses the ways CRT can help researchers begin the process of interrogating their own racial thinking and discusses its implications for reshaping how we “do” educational research. The final article, by Delgado Bernal, discusses issues of epistemology in educational research through critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and Chicana feminist epistemologies. In her article, she asks us to rethink our notions regarding what counts as useful knowledge when considering epistemological beliefs and ontological content. We invite the reader to join with us as we challenge dominant notions about race and racism in the context of education and qualitative research. It is our hope that this special issue will be followed by a series of journal issues, books, articles, university courses, community dialogues, and national conferences that address CRT and education in the coming years.
6
QUALITATIVE INQUIRY / February 2002
REFERENCES Harding, S. (Ed.). (1987). Introduction. Is there a feminist method? Feminism and methodology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jinks, D. P. (1997). Essays in refusal: Pre-theoretical commitments in postmodern anthropology and critical race theory. Yale Law Journal, 107, 499-528.
