In education, it is common to put the condition of "safety" around public race dialogue. The authors argue that this procedural rule maintains white comfort zones and becomes a symbolic form of violence experienced by people of color. In other words, they ask, "Safety for whom?" A subtle but fundamental violence is enacted in safe discourses on…

This article argues that multiculturalism, especially when it is led and controlled by Whites, and in the absence of collective anti-racist struggles, can reproduce the ontologies, epistemologies, and practices of white supremacy. I use a case study of a reenactment of Atlantic black slavery, produced by white teachers to investigate whether…

Public schools in some areas of the U.S. are as segregated as they were prior to court-ordered busing, in part due to school choice policies that appear to exacerbate extant segregation. In particular, Latina/o students are increasingly isolated in schools characterized as being in cycles of decline. Our case study of one such school is based on a…

This paper examines the pedagogical implications of the Occupy Movement from a Latin American decolonial theoretical perspective. Central to this analysis is a geo-political understanding of the ways in which capital and coloniality are historically "entangled." Building upon the notion of a "neoliberal revolution" advanced by various Marxist…

Numerous studies show the effectiveness of culturally responsive teaching with urban students of color. Yet few articulate the dynamics of how whiteness impacts the delivery of culturally responsive teaching. Using critical "whiteness" studies, critical race theory, and Black feminist concepts, this article interrogates the effectiveness…

In this article, we trace Bell's influence in our lives from graduate students to teacher educators and engaged scholars, and note how we have always read Bell alongside and inseparable from Latino/a Studies and Latina/Chicana feminist thought. We highlight the powerful and fruitful tensions of these interconnections in addressing our…

Collegiate secret societies, as distinguished from Greek-letter fraternal organizations, enjoyed prominence within many American campus communities from the early nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century (Baird, 1879; Hitchcock, 1863; Slosson, 1910; Veysey, 1965). The establishment of these elite groups preceded the maturation of…

In this paper, I discuss the possibilities that emerge from using literary fiction as a tool for teaching social theory and critical consciousness. Focusing on data from a social theory course I taught in fall 2007, along with my experiences teaching social theory, I evaluate the utility of utilizing literary fiction in the social theory…

Charter schools have substantial bipartisan support for their expansion. Yet, the bulk of charter school research ascertains that the majority of students in charter schools do not significantly outscore their traditional school peers on measurable indicators of academic performance. Additionally, students in charter schools do not have comparable…

In this essay, the author discusses schooling in the context of war, privatization, and the general neo-liberal shift in education. Specifically, the author reflects on the experiences of three schools in Medellin, Colombia, that are found in the cross-hairs of an ongoing civil conflict. In contrast to the prevailing ideologies and social…

This action research, which utilizes critical race theory's counter-storytelling, analyses a process of debunking White students' epistemology of ignorance in a history course at an urban public high school. After piloting a raced curriculum that deliberately re-centers marginalized counter-stories of students of colour, I document its…

This paper begins by illustrating how the social model of disability currently dominant in emancipatory disability research projects a reality "out there". Drawing on John Law's (2004) writing on how statements are turned into taken-for-granted assumptions, we argue that the model of research exemplified by Colin Barnes (2002) stifles rather than…

The authors argue for a research and conceptual agenda that complicates and disrupts common narratives in teacher education that have serious implications for race. Building on the pivotal work of legal scholar Derrick Bell and through a critical race theory (CRT) lens, this article challenges researchers to broaden and complexify traditional…

In this article, the authors engage critical performance pedagogy scholarship on whiteness to both question and extend two persistent trends in the literature. Although intersectionality is commonly referenced in the literature, the larger impulse underscoring Crenshaw's (1991) concept is often footnoted, tangentially marked, or given mere surface…

The purpose of this paper is to philosophically explore a "realization-focused" capabilities theory of social justice, as articulated by AmartyaSen and Martha Nussbaum, as foundational to a theory of critical peace education. Paulo Freire's philosophy of critical pedagogy has had and continues to have a profound influence on the theory and…