jrgarciaf

Critical Race Theory

2008-10-22T08:53:00.002-04:00

Let me try to tackle Critical Race Theory (CRT) in a paragraph, which I'm sure will leave many with some or a lot of questions. CRT looks at the world through a race conscious lens. This means that when it comes to identifying and analyzing oppressive structures, whether deliberate or incidental, race is at the forefront of this process. It breaks from traditional Critical Theory and argues that CT has a history of ignoring the importance of race. Pay attention to the word "importance", Why? Because CRT does not reject the theoretical claims of CT, rather, it takes from these and changes the dynamic of Capitalism/Racism and, perhaps, frames it as Racims/Capitalism. What I mean here is that CT looks at oppressive structures as the result of a capitalist ideology. CRT argues that while the capitalist ideology is core, race, historically, has served as a buffer and the strongest reinforcer of capitalist structures. In addition, capitalism has thrived because of racist ideological forces taht dehumanize beyond what traditional ogliarchic (is that a word?) ideology ever has. A personal note, I am not using CRT "instead of" anything else, rather, I use CRT because it centralizes the theme(s) that I am interested in exploring through my dissertation process. From CRT, like other traditions (latina/o critical theory, critical asian studies, critical race feminism, queer theory, etc.), branch off that focus on a particular form of oppression:

2008-09-29T10:40:00.003-04:00

Hello everyone,

I don't know how many will be able to read this latest post but, hopefully, some will eventually. I do have ideas as to what my goals for this class are. I also have a schedule to get them done by. My first goal is to present the final draft of my proposal to CHPR (I think) and have final approval. This I hope to get everything in by this week.
Also I hope to begin writing the first chapter of my dissertation. I hope to have the completed draft of my first chapter by the end of October.
Subsequently I hope to have chapter 2 written by the end of November. And yes Chapter 3 before 2009.
As for reading I have selected three books for this quarter. Courageous conversations (including a facilitator's guide), Critical Pedagogy and race, and Everyday anti-racism.

That is about it!

2006-06-25T20:25:00.000-04:00

There are several quotes that I would like to point out:

75 "Our appreciation of an educational situation is contingent on the context within which we encountered it and the theoretical frames we brought with us to the observations" I think he intentionally speaks in the first person and is reflecting on his own practice. This is reassuring because when I first read his piece I found his use of third person "they" (teachers) troubling.

75 "To be critical is to assume that humans are active agents whose reflcective self-analysis, whose knowledge of the world leads to action" This line resonates well with the call of self-awareness and self-reflection of previous pieces.

76 "If knowledge is a form of cultural capital, then lack of access to it spells major problems for those on the margins of the culture of power" I completely agree, but here I'm thinking that if critical postmodern action research has the purpose of redefining knowledge, then democratic access to knowledge - to engage in critical discussion, reflection and action - indeed is key. But key to his previous point of (not his own words) self awareness and self-reflection. Now my question to Kincheloe would be, are you then in agreement with Delpit that we need to teach explicitly the culture of power, in this case to teachers (apparently suffering from tragic disenlightenment)

79 "meaning is a contested entity" YES!

82 "Educational action research needs to move beyond exclusive concern with the individual and institutuonal levels of inquiry towards an understanding of the social and cultural structures that help shape the educational lives of individuals and help determine the consequesnces of schooling". Individual "levels of inquiry" versus the "lives of individuals"

I have to end it here. But I need to add a few memos to this blog

Carol I will be there tomorrow. sorry I didn't email

2006-06-20T22:11:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Bethany's candid blog I shall share a story as well. About a year ago I engaged my students in conversations about race and racism in schooling as I often do. In doing so, one of the commets I made at the time was that "in a racialized world we breathe in and breathe out racism". I explained how we all act in racist and prejudicious ways, not missing a beat one students aked: "So Mr. are you saying you are a racist". I responded "yes", "but I am also aware that I act in racist and prejudicious ways and awareness is key to resisting". (this some might have heard this story before but it ends differently this time)

One students returned home and explained the lesson to the mother. Although, by his own account, he tried to be excited and describe how valuable the conversation had been, "it really made me think"; the mother acted with great apprehension and I was then called down to "clarify" the lesson to the school department. Despite my union rep's insistence that I "keep my mouth shut" because it gets me in trouble when I'm upset, I didn't. When I explained the lesson and the context in which I was making this statement everyone understood well the nature, and perhaps need for this kind of discussion.

Well yippee right? Not quite. My student - a black male that always "got in trouble" except during my class where he participated actively and was one of the leading voices in class discussions - was forbidden from being in my class. I tried on several occasions to talk with the mother (who refused to be present at any meeting). My attempts where useless. Immediately afterwards anger, resent, and many other emotions built themselves up in me and ultimately were released upon the student. His attempts to come into my class and chill were met with "you are not allowed to be in my class, you know this". After a while I began talking to him but never in an engaging way. He was expelled from the school this year. Although my awareness of this was little I do wonder, what if I had fought harder? Channeled my energy and build up of emotions in "proactive rather than reactive" ways, a common phrase I use with students.

I wish I had the level of optimism that Lee Ann Bell et al have. My frustration comes out of the fact that I can articulate controversial ideas for my students to think through and come out with a better sense of their/our situatedness, but at least in this case I was unable to provide my student with the necessary "skills" for them to do the same with others. How true is this quote "Language plays such an important role in perpetuating oppression that miscommunication and misunderstanding can easily arise" (468)

2006-06-13T22:14:00.000-04:00

Points I enjoyed reading

Democratic goals vs. Social control goals
Cooperative vs Competitive
Schooling as Institutionalized oppression (not his words)
Star trek like writing "takes us where nobody's gone before"
Amibiguity is what it's all about - Neutrality is dead
Reform over and over and over again is dead
Teachers as political beings
Teachers as knowledgeable beings NOT experts
His criticism of the right
Students as knowledgeable beings NOT deficient
His acknowledgement of the power dinamic in the classroom
Teachers as reasearchers - evolving practices
His piece on the unfortune of positivism and his outline on it.

Things I didn't like

His definition of agency
His canonization like process of authors
His disregard of authors (Vygotsky, Bourdieu, Delpit)
His disregard of ethic and moral develpment through critical pedagogy
His positivist assumption that History and Science can be taught the same way (ok it's a leap)
His, simingly, equation poor = lower level (ignorance); thus contradiciont (p.28, first full paragraph) "I start where they are"

Question:

If studies show (recent AERA article read in 631) that problem-solving curriculum does not improve achievement? Is this the way to go.
Yes, perhaps it does depend on what I am measuring and why. Or does it? How can I teach in this way if I know they will encounter SAT, MCAT, GRE, etc, etc, etc and their skill at passing these will determine alot of their future! On top of this, can I really expect my students to succeed once in college if, for a fact, most science courses remain lecture driven.

In other words, getting back to an earlier blog discussion with Jay, can I seriously promote a socialist anti-capitalist, critical society when I know I live off a very different one, and succeed (even intellectually - dialectical exchange with professors cost money) Yes Freire did it and so did Ghandi, they endured many things. For what? 750000 copies of his book (of which perhaps only half read, and of those only half got it!) Sorry I sound so frustrated, in reality I just like to include an oppositional voice. IN any case last thing I didn't like about Kinchloe. He didn't seem very hopeful.

2006-06-12T00:11:00.000-04:00

I think it is very important to talk about the ways in which Freire uses "oppressed" and "oppressor" and the dynamic relations between the two. His critique of "ignorance" is not one sided. Freire is not talking about educating the oppressor or "teaching the culture of power", Freire's intent is to develop dialogic education. For this he places as much responsability on the oppressed as he does on the oppressor. In my words, we all need to become reflective and critical beings whether (in Jay's words) we own the means of production or work for them. IN Freire's words "It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors" Where's "power" now Foucault?

2006-06-11T23:05:00.000-04:00

Finally someone I can hope with!

When I first read Freire a few years back I wasn't too impressed. I thought his language was condescending and disrespectful of "the oppressed". Please don't ask me what I was thinking just know I've changed position... I am proud to announce that I am free"er" of my oppressor.

This time around I immediately thought of Maya societies and their encounter with spaniards. Yes indeed beyond a critical pedagogue, Freire is also a post-colonialist (according to D. Macedo). Maya were introduced to "religion" very quickly and despite what some believe to be a renunciation of their beliefs as reflected by the adoption to a new form of "worship", others (of which I include myself) see Maya cultures as an adapting and synthesizing of new practices into their vision of diety.
In todays Yucatan, Peten, and Quiche, Mayan culture is not defined by one "dominant" society but by a mosaic of villages that despite their variations in language and culture, are very much rooted in ancient Maya tradition. In spite of it all, they (we) remain "evolving here".

The above sound like a great survival story. But in reality it is the story of humanity. We are not void of knowledge "empty" heads that need to be filled. Interpollated beings that can only name our situation without an ability to determine our existence and resist. We all carry and exchange knowledge through communication with each other "The pursuit of full humanity [] cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity". We all have and need to admit to having humanity "...a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world".

"Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it".

2006-06-07T01:14:00.000-04:00

Question: what would you rather have your child say 'I be rich' or 'I am poor'??????? I wish I had come up with the question myself but I didn't.

2006-06-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

Here is how my journey began. The first paragraph (a really long run on sentence) indisposed me. How arrogant and self-serving to write in this way. I felt like putting it down and just forgetting about it. As it is required reading, I the oppressed must read it. So I did... and then I got into it. What I think I got:

Educators must reflect on our habitus (beliefs - practices - pedagogy) "process of education" as it contributes systematically and institutionally to the power dynamics in society, all along resisting and reproducing resistance (educational institutions as institutions of resistance) to the historical class structure and value system. UH, OK!

Academic markets are structured through a hierarchy of fields that create objective conditions in the individual that predisposition and determine her aspirations. In doing so individuals "hope for nothing that they have not obtain and obtain nothing that they have not hoped for" and aspire, expect, inline and desire in corrupted (constructed) ways or not at all. HELP!

Outside of the Academic market education is not the great equalizer, at least not how it's constructed in secondary and higher ed. Strength of the individual and merit are dead or don't count. Economic power is all that matters and all the education in the world is not going to help if you are not of the "right" social class. Economic power relates to cultural power for its acquisition is a matter of buying commodities of the academic market (pre-k, tutoring, music lessons, private schooling, "the right" books, etc) THIS FEELS LIKE A LONG SHOT

BOURDIEU TALKS DELPIT

PB: "apprehension and possession of cultural goods as symbolic goods are possible only to those who hold the code of making it possible to decipher them"
LS: "The rules of the culture of pwoer are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power - If you are not a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules makes acquiring power easier"

PB: "an institution officially entrusted with the transmission of the instruments of appropriation of the dominant culure which neglects methodically to transmit these instruments indispensable to the success of its undertaking is bound to become the monopoly of those social classes capable of transmitting by their own means"
LD: "To provide schooling for everyone's children that reflects liberal, middle-class values and aspirations is to ensure the maintenance of the status quo, to ensure that power, the culture of power, remains in the hands of those who already have it"

PB: "...the transmission of this competence is in direct relation to the distance between the linguistic and cultural competence implicitly demanded by the educational transmission of educational culture and the linguistic and cultural competence inculcated by primary education in the different social classes"
LS: "in other words, the attempt by the teacher to reduce an exhibition of power by expressing herself in indirect terms may remove the very explicitness that the child needs to understand the rules of the new classroom culture"

LS: When I speak of the "culture of power" I do not speak of how I wish thing should be, but of how they are.
PB: -maybe for class discussion its one in my zone...-

2006-06-04T22:21:00.000-04:00

"What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms - in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical and obligator to people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal" (Nitzsche, 1873)

"Michelle Foo-co" argues that "Peace would... be a form of war, and the State a means of wagin it" HUH? This is why I love to hate to read Foucault. In many ways I disagree with his point of view (and yes agree with it too). First I don't think that Peace (or the signifier PEACE) is defined in oposition to war. Therefore if I say "peace" as a salutation I am not sayin "Let's not fight", likewise if I desire "peace of mind" it is not because I have been waging mental battles (unless I am doing CSandED work). But I do agree that peace as it is mos comonly used in today's "parole" is related to the idea of war (or not being at). When he does this sort of "meaning existing in oposition to..." thing he reminds me of a"structuralist".

I think MF was at his best on page 122, in his analysis of the State aparatus. Here I think he puts in practice what he preaches "the important thing is to avoid trying to do for the event what was previously done with the concept of structure". Here he refers to prohibitions as conditioning and conditioned relationships. In refering to prohibitions he does not set them in binary opposition to X, Y, Z. Instead he sets it in multiple and indefinite power relations.

Here's my explanation with some help from History of Sexuality. Children are alcoholized through prohibitions or what MF calls a repressive hypothesis. By denying them from the freedom to drink before they are 21 we are "forcing [it] into hidding making possible [its] discovery". In addition we are constructing (I don't think MF would use this word) children as drinkers in need of control therfore we have added a new signifier to the child: drunk. This is the same when we control, scrutinize or prohibit "possible" sexual activity, we create children as sexualized beings.

2006-05-31T21:44:00.000-04:00

"There is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded". I like this quote it's hopeful

To all who read the article perhaps this link helps http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/editions/spn/problems/intellectuals.htm#n5
footnotes included

Gramsci's writings make me think that although we are all intellectual creatures we are also situated creatures which makes for situated intellectuals. So why does he talk about "trained gorilla" given the above quote? is he rejecting Taylor's view or does he see both in society. Wait he can't be if he's saying ALL HUMAN ACTIVITY is participant of intellect.
Thus what he identifies as the problem of "crating a new stratum of intellectuals" is in reality the solution. Supporting each social individual's intellectual activity and "modifying its relationship with the muscular-nervous effort" (why do the translators need to use "muscular-nervous effort" isn't this also know as "movement").

From the intro I also took that history is dependent on who's telling the story and who's telling the story is dependent on how long have they been members of a "storytelling group" and furthermore how long have these storytellers been telling their stories.

Gramsci's revolution on the west is based on criticism of history and how it is constructructed and society and its structure or mode of production, "socio-historical criticism".

Apparently Gramsci and Marx differ in how one views individual action or "intellect" what I also like to sometimes refer to as agency. While Marx seems to rely (excessively according to Gramsci) on economism, (organic) Gramsci finds that ideology (conjuctural) also plays a key role in how individuals relate to the structure and superstructure.
Here I'm going on a big limb.... I wouls almost say that while Marx finds structure and superstructure are in a dialectic relations, Gramsci believes that superstructure and intellectuasl (i.e. all humans) are in a dialectic relation.

Final thought does Gramsci suggest all politicians are demagogues and as such those who from the communist party for example, enter the political scence become demagogues as well or is he saying that they should play demagogue roles or none of the above. Not sure on that one.

I'll end here Gramsci is a pain in the neck, literally, I don't know if it's the way I was sittting or a wind that entered the room but I have a bad pain in my neck.

2006-05-24T23:42:00.000-04:00

Through my first quick read of Giroux et al's piece, Bhabha's notion of third space kept coming to mind, for it is here, he contends, that among contradictions and ambivalence cultural identity emerges. This idea of third space or "spaces between" fits well into Giroux et al's argument for a continuously evolving concept of culture. In these spaces of resistance is where one fights the idea that culture "has already been defined" and begin (or continue) processes of transformation (9). In many ways what the authors are labeling "counter-disciplinary" or "proper study of culture" (9).
"Cultures are produced as groups make sense of their social existence in the course of everyday experience" Although this quote really comes from Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts (see Notes 1) I was relieved to read this for how to define culture is always a struggle for me. I know what it is (I think) but I'm never quite sure how to put it into words.
"The most important aim of counter-disciplinary process is social change"(14). I think the challenge implicit in this quote and clearly stated in the article is moving beyond academia into public space. Furthermore to develop an awareness that like Ladson-Billings writes research needs to be in the public interest, or as the article states "We cannot capitulate to the disciplinary notion that research has as its only audience other experts in the field" (13).
Now for the question, disagreement or in-need-of-further-discussion piece. I can see how "disciplines are historically arbitrary" but I cannot see "interdisciplinary programs" particularly Women's studies, and Black studies, as having "failed"(2). To bring it back to my first point I think that these exist in a third space where it is not about isolation into a separate discipline but the creation of counter-disciplinary voices that unlike the rest maintain focus on historically silenced discourses.
I end with two questions that perhaps don't fit into this discussion but that kept coming to mind as I read the article. How would Delpit's argument of "teaching the culture of power" fit in here? and Does anyone else see a need to talk about agency?

2006-05-22T19:35:00.000-04:00

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/09502386.html
A cultural studies journal, FREE sample

2006-05-22T18:55:00.000-04:00

third link
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/critical/
A list of authors that if you click on one will take you to links where you can read about them, join a discussion group online (or just read their discussion - my favorite), read their work online, or other.

second link
http://theory.eserver.org/dir/Cultural_Studies
Has sources for many disciplines, critical studies, critical legal studies, cultural studies, and others

2006-05-22T18:25:00.000-04:00

Positivism is a philosophy developed by Auguste Comte in the beginning of the 19th century, which stated that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge. This view is sometimes referred to as scientism. As an approach to the philosophy of science deriving from Enlightenment thinkers like Pierre-Simon Laplace (and many others), positivism was first systematically theorized by Auguste Comte, who saw the scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, and who observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. Brazil's national motto, Ordem e Progresso ("Order and Progress") was taken from Comte's positivism, also influential in Poland. Positivism is also the most evolved stage of society in anthropological Evolutionism, the point where science and rational explanation for scientific phenomena develops.
The key features of positivism as of the 1950s, as defined in the "received view", are (Hacking, 1981):
A focus on science as a product, a linguistic or numerical set of statements;
A concern with axiomatization, that is, with demonstrating the logical structure and coherence of these statements;
An insistence on at least some of these statements being testable, that is amenable to being verified, confirmed, or falsified by the empirical observation of reality; statements that would, by their nature, be regarded as untestable included the teleological; (Thus positivism rejects much of classical metaphysics.)
The belief that science is markedly cumulative;
The belief that science is predominantly transcultural;
The belief that science rests on specific results that are dissociated from the personality and social position of the investigator;
The belief that science contains theories or research traditions that are largely commensurable;
The belief that science sometimes incorporates new ideas that are discontinuous from old ones;
The belief that science involves the idea of the unity of science, that there is, underlying the various scientific disciplines, basically one science about one real world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism

"The belief that science contains theories or research traditions that are largely commensurable"

2006-05-22T18:13:00.000-04:00

Ok so heeeeere's my blog.... It's like cell phones... I resisted but.... I caved in. At least I'm getting credit for it.