summer semester. One of the more perplexing issues Xavier commented on was the historical heritage of African Americans in this country that many of his European American classmates do not know about or their unwillingness to learn about these individuals. To reinforce his point, Xavier commented on an exercise required of his entire class. Apparently, the class was grouped for some instructional lesson and Xavier‟s professor presented Xavier‟s group with a picture of a mulatto individual who appeared to be of a very light skin complexion seated with dark
skin African Americans in 1840‟s New Orleans, Louisiana. Xavier explained to me that he was bothered by the ignorance the white members of his group displayed while trying to get a better understanding of the picture. Xavier explained to me that he had a difficult time understanding how his classmates did not know the mulatto individual was also a slave. Totally flustered, Xavier responds:
I’m sitting there thinking, my God, these people are going to be teaching history and social studies and they don’t understand the racial implications and it made me think. As black people, we are forced to learn the history of white people, we’ve got to know it to make it through but white people, they don’t need to know anything about us and its sad.
In the middle of the fall semester, Xavier and I discussed how not only the fall semester was going but I wanted to learn if there were issues that were identified in the summer semester that reemerged in the fall. The poignant action of silence once again reared itself and began to take control of Xavier‟s class. The required education course has become an unlikely place for relief concerning the silence of Xavier‟s classmates. With the addition of two other African
American students now in Xavier‟s class, the class had five African American students and this addition changed the entire class dynamics. Xavier pointed out that even the professor mentioned the class silence concerning issues of race. According to Xavier:
It seems the white students are not saying the black students are taking over but it seems like they are not really discussing. I think its unwillingness, maybe fear, and maybe I think sometimes it’s just they disagree with what’s being said but they don’t know how to present it in a way where they do not seem like, well, if I say this they are going to think that I’m racist.
An essential component of my data collection was the collection of my research participants‟ journals they kept during the entire inquiry. As part of that data, I am including what LB wrote to sum up his fall experience. In a response dated December 25th LB wrote:
Its unseasonably warm here on the Gulf coast and tomorrow morning it should be in the seventies before the sun even comes up. I mention this because it was this abnormal climate change that made me think of what control black folks do NOT have over the world and even our own lives. Of course, that brainstorm led me to reflect more in this free time of mine on the subject of this study; being a black male in the graduate teacher education program. This last semester ended with the same lessons as the previous semester. The first is that white supremacy lives on in the minds of more non-whites than it does in whites. Whites may continue to take for granted white privilege but many of them are too ashamed to entertain ideas of white supremacy while many of us of color still do.
Tate (1999) asks, “Is it possible to have racial progress in a society where racism is endemic” (p. 257)? I carefully reviewed this question and applied it to the narratives of my research
participants. I must inform the reader that Jon‟s narrative does not support an approach
To help me answer Tate‟s (1999) question I sought out the seminal work of Scheurich and Young (1997). In this limited work I cannot fully address the issues of race and racism in society or in the field of education. I am seeking to confine the broad ideals of race and specifically racism to the narratives constructed by my research participants and my role as co- constructor of the research participants‟ realities using CRT. The work of Scheurich and Young (1997) helps me broadly connect the issue of racism and my research participants‟ narratives. My continuous goal was to render a co-constructed narrative that allowed my research
participants to name their own reality. However, my own biases were evident as I provided my co-construction and analysis of the research participants‟ narratives. I have to acknowledge my very own voice as a means to help interpret the experiences of my research participants. As a critical race theorist my viewpoints about race and racism become identifiable in this research investigation. In doing so, my viewpoints about race and racism as a critical race theorist become apparent.
Scheurich and Young (1997) offer five categories of racism that may or may not help position the narratives of my research participants within the first tenant of CRT. The forms of racism described by Scheurich and Young (1997) that Xavier experienced evaded LB and Jon who were not necessarily victimized by these forms of racism, but all three of their narratives offer a candid look into their racialized experiences in the graduate teacher education program. The categories of racism include overt and covert racism, institutional and societal racism, and civilizational racism (Scheurich and Young, 1997). If one were to reference the narratives of Xavier and LB concerning the first theme of CRT then instances of overt and covert racism are made clear. Scheurich and Young (1997) note that racism is,
A public, conscious, and intended act by a person or persons from one race with the intent of doing damage to a person or persons of another race chiefly because of the race of the second person or persons (p. 5).
Hidden from my initial investigation of racism and its impact on my research participants‟ experiences in the graduate teacher education program, covert racism was not as visibly clear as overt racism. Scheurich and Young define covert racism as, “The only real difference between overt and covert racism is that the latter is not explicitly public” (p. 5). Acts of covert racism are more readily apparent in the narrative of LB than Xavier. Conversely, the absence of Jon‟s narrative was apparent once again. I do believe Jon knows racism is part of the fabric of American life he just does not identify with racism, refuses to acknowledge racism, and reluctantly accepts racism was endemic to his experiences in the graduate teacher education program. In response, overt acts of racism are more readily attached to the narrative of Xavier and as whole each act of racism is seen more along the lines of microaggressions and stereotype threats.
2. Critical race theory expresses skepticism toward dominant legal claims of