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Cultural Intuition: Then, Now, and Into the Future

Dolores Delgado Bernal
University of Utah

Cultural intuition, deeply informed by Chicana feminist scholarship, was first introduced to the field of education in 1998 to reimagine the notion of theoretical sensitivity (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Working from a Chicana feminist episteme, Delgado Bernal (1998) proposed that cultural intuition, the unique viewpoint that many Chicanas bring to the research process, draws from personal experience, collective experience, professional experience, communal memory, existing literature, and the research process itself.

Micro in Name Only: Looking Back to Move Forward in Racial Microaggression Research

Kenjus T. Watson
University of California, Los Angeles

Lindsay Pérez Huber
California State University, Long Beach

Racial microaggressions are a form of systemic racism that (a) are verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color*, often carried out automatically or unconsciously; (b) are based on a Person of Color’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and (c) are cumulative, taking a physiological, psychological, and academic toll on those targeted by them (Pérez Huber & Solórzano, 2015a; 2015b). In 2014, college students across the US thrust the concept of racial microaggressions into public discourse with social media campaigns to call attention to the everyday racism Students of Color encountered on their college and university campuses. Racial microaggressions quickly became a term to explain experiences with racism in a “post-racial” era. Since then, numerous scholars and columnists have challenged racial microaggressions to argue that this concept attributes to the “coddling” and “hypersensitivity” of U.S. college students that can create a “vindictive protectiveness” that impedes student learning in higher education (Gitlin, 2015; Lukianoff and Haidt, 2015). The characterization of racial microaggressions as “vindictive” illustrates the lack of understanding about the theoretical origins of this concept, developed over 40 years ago by African American psychiatrist, Dr. Chester Pierce.

Internalized Racism: The Consequences and Impact of Racism on People of Color

Rita Kohli
University of California, Riverside

Although heightened by the current hate-filled platform of the 45th U.S. President, scholars of Critical Race Theory (CRT) have exposed racism as a permanent failure in the policies and practices that govern U.S and other settler colonial and colonial societies. As people of Color are subjected to racialized structures in their daily lives, racism can have material, physiological, and psychological consequences that negatively affect the matter by which they see themselves, their culture, and the world around them.

Like racism, internalized racism is real and pervasive, but because peoples’ self and worldviews are fluid and ever changing, it can be problematic to pathologize someone as embodying or “having” internalized racism. Instead, internalized racism must be understood as a learned or indoctrinated perspective, something complex and shifting in its manifestation. In addition, internalized racism is not a permanent state, as it can be mitigated by an access to critical history, a cultivation of self and community love, and a heightened understanding or analysis of racism.

Intersectionality: A Genealogy Of Black Feminist Freedom Visioning

Mary Senyonga
University of California, Los Angeles

Intersectionality as a methodological, analytical, and liberatory tool has sharpened our naming of multiple forms of marginalization. While Kimberle Crenshaw (1989, 1993) is rightfully credited with coining Intersectionality through addressing Black women’s employment experiences and other Women of Color’s experiences with domestic violence, it is imperative that we recognize the long history of this articulation of marginalization. Within the Black feminist tradition, Black women have named the liminal space of being called to action on behalf of racial or gender liberation while our liberation is relegated as adjunct to others’ (Combahee River Collective, 1977). My aim in this brief is to name and celebrate the genealogy of Black feminist resistance by highlighting activist Florynce Kennedy and Crenshaw’s use of a Black feminist framework to approach the law as well as meditate on futures that can be animated from articulating a simultaneity of marginality that provides a more nuanced understanding of experiences of interlocking domination.

Chicana M(other)work: A Conceptual and Collective Framework

Michelle Téllez
University of Arizona

Chicana M(other)work is both a conceptual framework and a call to collective action that responds to the gaps in the Chicanx’ educational pipeline? that begin in elementary school and continue to affect the life chances of Chicanx students. This brief focuses on Chicanas in higher education who are not adequately represented in the literature by paying particular attention to the inequities experienced by Chicana and Latina mothers who are both seeking advanced degrees and academic appointments after graduate school.

Finding Consuelo Rivera: Linking Critical Race Theory and History

LLuliana Alonso
University of California, Los Angeles

William Tate’s (1997) seminal article posed an important question to the field of education by asking “do we in education challenge ahistorical treatment of education, equity, and students of color?” (p.235). Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education (Solórzano, 1998) as a framework, this research brief illustrates innovative methodological approaches using primary sources to unearth and examine the historical educational experiences of Students of Color. Specifically, it highlights the educational trajectory of Consuelo Rivera, a Chicana student within UCLA’s Graduate School of Education in the first half of the twentieth century. Mexican children during this time period were perceived as intellectually handicapped, often attributed to their culture, language and heredity (González, 1990). This in turn led to educational programs for Mexican students that strictly emphasized vocational, non-academic training. Consuelo’s story helps us challenge deeply rooted assumptions of Mexican students’ intellectual inferiority and highlights the resiliency of this community over time.

Conceptualizing a Critical Race Educational History Methodology

Ryan E. Santos
University of California, Los Angeles

Michaela J. López Mares-Tamayo
University of California, Los Angeles

LLuliana Alonso
University of California, Los Angeles

In their foundational piece on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and education, Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate (1995) wrote, “Historically, storytelling has been a kind of medicine to heal the wounds of pain caused by racial oppression” (p. 57). As Critical Race theorists, we are especially invested in understanding how those actions relate to Students of Color and their educational histories. Powerful scholarship documents the persistence of unequal educational institutions, policies, and practices for Students of Color, along with the constant struggle by Communities of Color for more equitable learning opportunities (e.g. Anderson, 1988; García, Yosso, & Barajas, 2012; MacDonald, 2004; Pak, 2002; San Miguel, 1987/2001; Siddle Walker, 1994).* Such work underscores the importance of history in establishing generational links between People of Color who presently endeavor for justice and our predecessors with whom we share this journey. In this brief, we draw inspiration from the aforementioned scholarship and CRT in education literature (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano, 1998) to offer guiding principles for students, community members, practitioners, and scholars interested in telling the stories of People of Color in their own neighborhood schools over time. Those principles build a methodology for documenting the educational experiences of Communities of Color that we call Critical Race Educational History (CREH).

Revisiting BlackCrit in Education: Anti-Black Reality and Liberatory Fantasy

kihana miraya ross
Northwestern University

While Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a theory of race and racism more broadly, it enters the fields of both legal studies and education (at least implicitly) as a Black theorization of race. In other words, in its initial formulation, CRT specifically attempts to make sense of and respond to anti-Black racism’. In response to a perceived Black-white binary? in CRT, other “racecrits” emerge such as LatCrit, AsianCrit, and TribalCrit; these “crits” serve to address the specificity of racial oppressions faced by non-Black People of Color. The absence of a BlackCrit then, either meant that CRT was considered the same thing as a Black critical theory, or that a theory of race and racism was enough to encompass the experiences of Black folks in the United States. Although CRT may have privileged the experiences of African Americans at its inception, in conceptualizing BlackCrit, my colleague Michael Dumas and I, problematize the notion that CRT could (or should) suffice for theorizing blackness and antiblackness. In this brief, I explore BlackCrit as a Black critical theory within and in response to Critical Race Theory and offer insight into the utility of BlackCrit as a theory of (anti)blackness in education specifically.

Re-defining Counterspaces: New Directions and Implications for Research and Praxis

Socorro Morales
University of California, Los Angeles

I spent two years as a researcher and educator collaborating with elementary aged Brown youth in creating, developing, and sustaining a Critical Race Counterspace within their elementary school. Drawing from Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholars within the field of education, I initially understood counterspaces as “sites where deficit notions of People of Color can be challenged” (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000, p. 70). In thinking about this definition, I sought to co-create a counterspace with Brown youth that would allow them to reimagine what “schooling” or education could look like, given the dismal state of K-12 educational curriculum for youth of color (Valenzuela, 1999).

While CRT provided me with a basis to understand and develop counterspaces, I recognized in my work with youth that CRT scholars had not yet theorized what it meant to make sense of the tensions, contradictions, and growing pains of co-creating a counterspace. As a Chicana scholar with a Chicana feminist sensibility, I drew heavily from Chicana/Latina feminisms and in particular the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, to help me theorize these tensions. Thus, this brief highlights the theoretical and practical implications of braiding together (Delgado Bernal & Alemán, 2016; Gonzalez, 2001) CRT and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands’ to make sense of the challenges that are inherent within counterspaces.

Through my own research and praxis with young Brown youth, I was able to formulate a new definition of counterspaces as: dynamic sites where people on the margins engage with one another in critical discourse, bring their whole (and multiple) selves, challenge each other, and make sense of the multitude of contradictions they embody, which are always present, as a means of undergoing moments of transformation. Below, I outline how I conceptualized my braiding together of CRT and Anzalduan thought which informs my understanding of counterspaces, followed by what this conceptualization means for both theory and practice.

Holistic Critical Race Pedagogies: Embracing Wholeness Through Resiliency Circles

Heidi M. Coronado
California Lutheran University

Critical Race Pedagogies (CRPs) allow us to engage in liberatory pedagogies for students who have historically been at the margins (Lynn, 1999). As a formerly undocumented, first-generation, Guatemalan student and academic with Mayan roots, I have seen society’s assimilationists ideologies demand marginalized populations to adhere to specific norms based on colonial legacies that are often enforced through Euro-centric curriculum, policy, and pedagogical practices in schools (Lynn & Dixson, 2013). I argue that a CRP allows us to combat the continued trauma-inducing silencing of the voices and experiences of Students of Color (Smith-Maddox & Solórzano, 2002; Yosso, 2005). Transformative pedagogical practices are needed to provide students with the opportunity to engage in critical thinking development that provides them with the language and tools necessary to name their lived experiences. As a student of Mesoamerican and indigenous healing practices, I also argue that we must pay careful attention to the process in which students engage with critical material.’ It is not sufficient to provide students with theoretical tools and concepts, but we must address the whole self and being of the students. In this piece I offer a pedagogical framework, which I am naming Resiliency Circles, that is useful in fostering spaces that honor students’ experiences in becoming critically aware through a holistic lens.

Revisiting Latina/o Transfer Culture: Recent Trends and Implications for California

José Del Real Viramontes
University of California, Riverside

Patricia A. Pérez
California State University, Long Beach

Miguel Ceja
California State University, Northridge

Community college continues to be a central entry point for underrepresented and disadvantaged students into postsecondary education (Velasco, et al., 2024). For instance, Latinx¹ students may begin their postsecondary education at a community college because they are placed in a non-college track throughout their K-12 education career (Gaxiola Serrano, 2017), are uninformed about the college process due to the limited guidance they receive from school personnel (Vega, 2018), they cannot afford university tuition, and/or do not have the English language skills necessary to succeed at a four-year institution (Castro & Cortez, 2017).   For first-time college-going, Latinx college students, the community college serves as an important pipeline into higher education. Over 60% of first-time college-going Latinx students in the U.S. enrolled at a community college during the Spring of 2022 (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2022). Further, Latinx students who begin their postsecondary education at a community college report aspiring to earn a bachelor’s degree via transfer and recognize the community college as their only choice in this process (Salas et al., 2018).