21c7 Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » Court & Policy Issues

Court & Policy Issues

November 17, 2005

Williams, Patricia J. “On Being the Object of Property (a gift of intelligent rage).” The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. 216-236.

November 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Race, Gender and Sexuality, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, African American, Court & Policy Issues

Utilizing a combination of feminist personal narrative and legal discourse, Williams analyzes how contract law and the legal institution exercise a “deadening power” by creating in the individual “a passive relationship to the document: it is the contract that governs, that ‘does’ everything, that absorbs all responsibility and deflects all other recourse.” (224) She explores in particular how this quality of contract negatively affects those who have been institutionally (and thus legally) formulated as inferior: people of color and women. (Read the article)

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September 8, 2005

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

September 08th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, African American, Public School Initiatives, Court & Policy Issues 20be

In this widely-discussed book, Kozol examines the inequalities of the public school system by interviewing teachers, students, coaches and administrators in six of the nation’s poorest urban areas. Kozol compares the day-to-day experience of students in well-funded, predominately white suburban schools to the experience of students living in predominately black and Latino urban areas. Kozol notes that many problems facing urban schools (poor facilities, high dropout rates, large class sizes and underpaid teachers, to name a few) are largely the result of funding inequalities. He suggests that desegregation through school bussing programs combined with a nationwide effort to equalize funding could help narrow the gap between suburban and urban schools. (Read the article)

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September 3, 2005

The Affirmative Action and Diversity Project:
A Web Page for Research

September 03rd 2005 Posted to Court & Policy Issues

This web site presents diverse opinions regarding Affirmative Action topics; rather than taking a singular pro or con position, it is designed to help lend many different voices to the debates surrounding the issues of affirmative action. This site is an academic resource and it provides scholars, students, and the interested public with on-site articles and theoretical analyses, policy documents, current legislative updates, and an annotated bibliography of research and teaching materials. The site is a particularly valuable resource for information regarding particular legal cases involving race and educational policies.

AAD web site

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August 25, 2005

Donato, Rubén. The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans During the Civil Rights Era. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997.

August 25th 2005 Posted to Race, Literacy and Pedagogy, Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In this book Donato explains that while many scholars have focused on the African American struggle for equal education during the Civil Rights movement, few have focused on the Mexican American community during this period. Donato summarizes this “silent” history, using as his primary example Brownfield School District in northern California. Donato writes that in Brownfield, “The concern for respecting and preserving the cultural identity of Mexican Americans found itself at odds with the traditional values of the Brownfield school system and the larger white community…Despite the claim that Mexican children were being processed by a neutral school system, public schools across the Southwest were rife with ethnic, linguistic and class biases. If one of the prime values of the Brownfield schools was uniformity, then there was an inherent conflict between the organization of schools and the desires of the Mexican American community” (10). (Read the article)

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Rumberger, Russell W. and Gloria M. Rodríguez, “Chicano dropouts: an update of research and policy issues,” Chicano School Failure and Success. Ed. Richard R.Valencia. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002, 114-146.

August 25th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In Ch.4 of Valencia’s anthology, Rumberger and Rodríguez address the issue of Chicanos’ high dropout rate, citing the fact that “in 1999 the dropout rate for White, non-Latinos was 7.3 percent, compared to 12.6 percent for Black, non-Latinos and 28.6 percent for Latinos (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, 2001, Table 106)” (Rumberger and Rodríguez 114). Rumberger and Rodríguez examine the individual and institutional factors that contribute to this high dropout rate, identify the economic and social consequences of large numbers of Latino dropouts, and offer several programmatic and policy-based solutions to the dropout problem. (Read the article)

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August 17, 2005

Valencia, Richard R., Martha Menchaca and Rubén Donato, “Segregation, desegregation, and integration of Chicano students: old and new realities”, Chicano School Failure and Success. Ed. Richard R. Valencia. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002, 70-113.

August 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In the third chapter of Valencia’s book, Valencia, Menchaca and Donato explore the issue of the segregation of Chicanos in public schools. They begin by providing an overview of the history of Chicano segregation, beginning with the post-1848 decades following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In addition, they paint a picture of Chicano school segregation today and offer several practical solutions. (Read the article)

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July 24, 2005

Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Foreward: Toward A Race-Conscious Pedagogy in Legal Education.” National Black Law Journal v11 (1): 1-14.

July 24th 2005 Posted to Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, African American, The Academy, Court & Policy Issues

Focusing on “the substantive dynamics of the law school classroom and their particular impact on minority students,” Crenshaw argues that “dominant beliefs in the objectivity of legal discourse serve to suppress conflict by discounting the relevance of any particular perspective in legal analysis and by positing an analytical stance that has no specific cultural, political, or class characteristics.” Crenshaw calls this primary mode “perspectivelessness.” Noting that this mode is problematic for many reasons, Crenshaw focuses on the particular burden it places on minority students as they are expected to adopt a worldview that in fact fosters white middle-class values while claiming to carry no perspective. (Read the article)

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