Critical Race Theory and Social Studies Futures

Now more than ever, we need to teach the truth about history. This volume assembles a team of critical social studies Scholars of Color and co-conspirators who share both their nightmares and dreams for the future. The authors engage critical race theory (CRT) and its many branches and offshoots to better understand the permanence of racism in the teaching of social studies. The book’s first section, A Dream Deferred, outlines the endemic systemic issues and the ways in which the field and national organizations attempt to remain racially neutral in the face of the biases that permeate curriculum, disciplines, and the world. The second section, Racial Realities in Classroom Spaces, examines the various ways scholars and educators are applying CRT in PreK–12 spaces. In the third section, Possibilities of Praxis, chapter authors critically reflect on their own experiences and stories using CRT to work with young people and future teachers. In the final section, Dreaming of Social Studies Futures, contributors outline their dreams for the future of social studies, envisioning an unapologetically Indigenous field that centers Black futures and liberation and is free from the violence that has plagued the field and communities for centuries.

Book Features:

• Offers race-focused analyses from a wide range of perspectives and contexts of study related to social studies education.
• Highlights innovations, branches, and future directions of critical race theories and methods.
• Explores how race and racism have been situated within the field of social studies since the publication of Gloria Ladson-Billings’s 2003 edited volume, Critical Race Theory Perspectives on the Social Studies.

Amanda E. Vickery is an associate professor of social studies education and anti-racist education at the University of North Texas. Noreen Naseem Rodríguez is an assistant professor of teacher learning, research, and practice in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Efforts to erase race from what students should learn is precisely the recipe that leads to tragic events such as the one that occurred in Buffalo…. This work offers solutions, interventions, and important considerations about how to dismantle structural racism, and how to address and respond to racism in classrooms and in schools.”
—From the Foreword by Tyrone C. Howard, professor, UCLA

“Amanda Vickery and Noreen Naseem Rodríguez have, with great intentionality and urgency, engaged the collective wisdom and lived experiences of an array of scholars, educators, and activists. Together, this group of BIPOC authors and their co-conspirators challenges each of us individually—and the field of social studies writ large—to honestly confront what Critical Race Theory reveals and teaches us about our troubled past and present and to act, purposefully, for a more desired and inclusive future.”
—J.B. Mayo Jr., associate professor, social studies education, University of Minnesota

Contents

Foreword Tyrone C. Howard  ix

Introduction Amanda E. Vickery and Noreen Naseem Rodríguez  1

PART I: A Dream Deferred

1.  Beyond the Guise of Racial Neutrality: A CRT Analysis of Critical Moments and the Social Studies Profession  23
Christopher L. Busey

2.  What’s Left Unsaid: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of NCSS Position Statements  35
Kristen E. Duncan and Natasha Murray-Everett

3.  Steady at the Bottom of the Well: Anti-Blackness and Social Studies Historiographies  47
ArCasia D. James-Gallaway

Part II: Racial Realities in Classroom Spaces

4.  Unsettling Scenes and the Geographies of Racialized, Dis/abled Childhoods  59
Tran N. Templeton and Maggie Harvey

5.  Counterstorytelling and Racial Inquiry in Early Childhood Social Studies  69
Anna Falkner

6.  The Global Color-Line: Critical Race Theory and Global Citizenship Education in Conversation and in Classrooms  79
Hanadi Shatara and Esther June Kim

7.  Being in Difference, Together: Making the Classroom an Academic Home Through Critical Race Theory  89
Tadashi Dozono

Part III: Possibilities of Praxis

8.  Another Social Studies Is Possible: Challenging the Violence of Organized Forgetting Through Counternarratives  101
Ramon Vasquez

9.  Deconstructing Social Studies Classrooms: Youth Participatory Action Research as a Process of Radical Space-Making, Empowerment, and Imagination  111
Eva García, Amina Smaller, and Ryan Oto

10.  Enacting Cultural Citizenship Education for Black Liberation: A Dream for Social Studies Education  120
Denisha Jones

11.  Nurturing Seeds and Dreams of Freedom: Ethnic Studies as the Practice of Humanization, Solidarity, and Love  130
Christina Shiao-Mei Villarreal

12.  Soñando en/del Sur Latinx: Letting the Youth Disrupt Narratives of Division  140
Jesús A. Tirado and Timothy Monreal

Part IV: Dreaming of Social Studies Futures

13.  Indigenous Futurities and the Responsibilities of Social Studies  153
Turtle Island Social Studies Collective

14.  Teaching the Fullness of Black Women’s Lives in Social Studies Education  164
Tiffany Mitchell Patterson

15.  Who’s Afraid of Queer/Quare Social Studies?  174
Jon M. Wargo

16.  From a Curriculum of Violence to a Curriculum of Humanity: An AsianCrit Critique and Dream of Social Studies  182
Sohyun An

17.  On the Other Side of a Dream: Community, Love, Joy, and Freedom—Economics as It Could Be  192
Neil Shanks and Delandrea Hall

Conclusion Amanda E. Vickery and Noreen Naseem Rodríguez  202

Afterword Cinthia Salinas  210

Notes  212

About the Contributors  214

Index  219