Chapter 7: Power Negotiations and Race-Centric, Race-Avoidant, and Seemingly Race-Neutral Academic Tasks

A compelling racial and educative juxtaposition is presented by two trends: the predominance of researched people of color and the predominant white writers/teachers/and consumers of research in universities. In 2011, K–12 schools are re-segregating, black and brown students are under- and mis-educated, and most U.S. universities are still predominantly white. “Achievement gap” imagery is widely manufactured and often situates race on many research and teaching agendas. Some of these research inquiries implicitly ask, what about black- and brown-ness leads to underachievement (O’Connor, Horvat, and Lewis, 2006)? In my graduate school journey, the sentiment is similar. Deficit analyses of black and brown communities often dominate course syllabi and direct courses of discussion and debate. In these learning spaces, silence is familiar, and ironically, race-avoidance is prime.