Me and Bill: Connecting Black Curriculum Orientations to Critical Race Feminism

REMEMBERING

It was a long, long drive. I traveled through central and north Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri for 2 days before crossing the state line from Missouri to Illinois. The drive gave me a lot of time to think, to reflect, and to remember about my time in Illinois as a graduate student and an American Educational Research Association (AERA) postdoctoral research fellow. This strong, independent, outspoken woman from a large east coast city was attempting to fit into academic life while trying to fit into life in a large Midwestern city. As I drove, I reflected on the experiences I gained that laid the foundation of my identity as an academic and the ways in which this new identity converged with my existing identities as learner, educator, activist, and woman of color. I reflected on the ways in which my existing identities informed how I would understand this new identity. I remembered the three people who were instrumental in the development of this new identity while honoring who I am during these two important moments of my life: Drs. Vinita M. Ricks, William Ayers, and William H. Watkins.

Dr. Vinita M. Ricks and I met when she interviewed (and subsequently hired) me for a position as an ethnographer for the Center for Urban School Policy at Northwestern University. Dr. Ricks served as the Center's Associate Director under the directorship of (the late) Dr. G. Alfred Hess as the Center engaged in work investigating the culture of high school communities that underwent Reconstitution through Chicago Public Schools. Although I had lived in a number of places in my adult life, this Louisiana native taught me how to engage in life as a transplant in this particular Midwestern city while teaching me the fundamentals of research and the intricacies of ethnographic research. She helped me to balance my work as ethnographer with my work as a doctoral student. When I returned to Illinois for my postdoctoral experience, she reconnected me to the community and helped me to acquire and maintain a life-work balance.

Dr. William Ayers and I met when he came to university as a guest speaker for one of my classes in my doctoral program. He encouraged me to pursue my passion. More importantly, his was consistently accessible for advice and encouragement. He made me believe that what we do as educators, researchers, and scholars can make a difference in the world. Our relationship during my doctoral studies led to his role as my mentor during my postdoctoral research fellowship.

Dr. William H. Watkins and I met during my first year in my doctoral program. He was invited by one of my professors to be a guest speaker for the class she was teaching, where I was a student. He was the first Black professor I met whose research agenda focused on Black curriculum. So, while he didn't specifically articulate the notion of pursuing one's passion, he lived it. Born in Harlem, New York and raised in Los Angeles, his life experiences were more closely aligned to mine than anyone I had met at that point of my development as an academic. We shared church life as the foundation of our early years. We both graduated from state universities and studied fields outside of education as undergraduate students. Both of us came to education later in life, after pursuing other careers and interests. We shared a passion for activism and the necessity to be involved in the community. For both of us, community involvement influenced our scholarship. He made his work as an educator, researcher, and scholar significant and accessible. Our initial encounter led to subsequent multiple encounters and meaningful conversations. Subsequently, he became my postdoctoral research mentor in the third year of my fellowship.

I remember the overwhelming excitement I felt when I received the telephone call notifying me of my award as an AERA postdoctoral research fellow in February of 2002. I recall feeling excited and intimidated when I met the other postdoctoral fellows and their mentors in June 2002, but feeling relieved when I saw Bill Watkins in the room. For the first time, I felt insecure, unsure of the importance of the work upon which I was to embark. I was engaging in activist-scholarship. But seeing Bill in the room made me remember that I was not alone in this kind of work.

So, I was disappointed to learn that he was not a fan of critical race theory (CRT) or any of its outgrowths to include critical race feminism (CRF), the theoretical stance to which I subscribe and advocate. I learned that Watkins believed CRT to be unnecessary; he felt many scholars had engaged in meaningful conversations and scholarship that critiqued race and racism, liberalism, and capitalism in relationship to education:

Substantial accounts of Black education in America have been written in the twentieth century. Among them, the following stand out: James D. Anderson's The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988), Kenneth King's Pan Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (1971), Henry Bullock's A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to Present (1967), and Horace Mann Bond's The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (1934). Additionally, the exhaustive volumes on Booker T. Washington edited by Louis Harlan et.al. (1972) provide rich sources of information (Watkins, 2001, p.1).

Watkins might have also included scholarship from DuBois (1903/1993) and Woodson (1933/2000) among those who critically informed 20th-century scholars on critiquing race and racism, liberalism, and capitalism in the context of Black education.

As an activist-scholar whose lived experiences (to include teaching and research) merge with the concepts and tenets of CRF, I acknowledge and honor the work of my predecessors and elders within the fields of curriculum theory/curriculum studies (Berry, 2014), Black/African American studies (Berry, 2009), and critical race studies/CRF (Berry, 2010). Therefore, I agree that contemporary scholarship must acknowledge and respect its historical roots. As a scholar, I am obligated to recognize and know the seminal work of Black scholars whose research, concepts, and theories gave voice to Black life, particularly in the context of education long before I entered the field: “Critical race feminists often find themselves serving as bridges to the world” (Onwuachi-Willig, 2006, p. 735). Our work is interdisciplinary and, as such, it often connects us to the seminal work of many other Black scholars in various fields. Their work paved the way for my scholarly voice to be heard.

Both historical and contemporary scholars who critique race and education make sound and reasonable points regarding the viability of CRT in education. In his work Forging Community in Race and Class: Critical Race Theory and the Quest for Social Justice in Education (Stovall, 2006), David Stovall examines the ways in which critical race theorists and its detractors share common goals in the social justice project for education. In short, Stovall clearly articulates the places of convergence and spaces of divergence in both theory and praxis among these scholars. Stovall includes Watkins’ social critique of education for Blacks and specifically notes this critique as one connected to power and domination. In addressing the questions concerning what knowledge is most worth knowing and who determines what knowledge is most worth knowing (Schubert, 1986), Watkins (2001) might respond that the determination and acquisition of knowledge was, usually, one-dimensional and directly connected to those in power.

Black education and “Black curriculum theorizing … is inextricably tied to the Black experience in the United States” (Watkins, 1993, p. 322). As such, it is multidimensional. Contrary to what many students learn in schools, Black people in the United States do not share a singular experience or history. Black people do not share a singular educational experience or history. As such, “Black curriculum outlooks are the result of views evolving from within the Black experience” (Watkins, 1993, p. 322). In this article, I discuss the ways in which Watkins’ Black Curriculum Orientations: A Preliminary Inquiry (1993) intersects with notions of CRT and CRF, thus acknowledging the antiessentialist, intersectional, and multidimensional nature of the Black educational experience. The article begins with a summary of Watkins’ seminal work. A discussion of CRT and CRF follows. Next, the article discusses the places of convergence between the six Black curriculum orientations and the tenets/attributes of CRT and CRF. The article concludes with final thoughts about the scholarship of William H. Watkins.

BLACK CURRICULUM ORIENTATIONS

Watkins begins this seminal work with a brief discussion concerning the definitions of curriculum orientations. Most significant in this discussion is the conclusion that there is no unanimity among curriculum theorists regarding the definition. In this section, he cites the work of Eisner and Vallance (1974), Kliebard (1987), and Schubert (1986) as major contributors to this effort. Since then, Pinar (2007) articulated curriculum orientations in three moments:

Contemporary U.S. curriculum theory is structured in three historical moments: (1) the field's inauguration and paradigmatic stabilization as curriculum development (1918–1969); (2) the field's reconceptualization (1969–1980) from curriculum development to curriculum studies, an interdisciplinary academic field paradigmatically organized around understanding curriculum (1980–) and (3) most recently, the U.S. field's internationalization (2000–). (p. 1)

The first curriculum moment would include the work and scholarship of Ralph Tyler (1949), Franklin Bobbitt (1918/2009), and Jerome Bruner (1960). Curriculum, at this stage, was defined in scientific, procedural ways designed to focus on efficient teaching and learning. When doubt loomed over the US educational system as a result of the launching of the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, curriculum standardization was implemented and enforced. The second curriculum moment, reconceptualization, emerged as a result of curriculum theory scholars’ marginalization in the field. Scholars William Pinar (1975, 1978), Maxine Greene (1971), James B. Macdonald (1975), and Dwayne Huebner (1975a, 1975b) led the reconceptualist movement and “laid the theoretical groundwork for the intellectual events of the 1970s” (Pinar, 2007, p. 5).

Reconceptualist curriculum theory is a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962) and, according to Carson (2009, as cited in Berry, 2014):

shifted the ground of curriculum studies away from its institutional and instrumental roots in curriculum design and development, [it did so] in order to focus on understanding curriculum as an interdisciplinary text that enables an interpretation of our personal and collective lives. (p. 4)

For curriculum to be interdisciplinary, it must encompass various perspectives: historical, political, cultural, racial, gendered, social, theological, and aesthetic. For curriculum to engage with the personal and collective lives, it must encompass the autobiographical. Pinar (2012) engaged the autobiographical through a method of currere: “There are four steps or moments in the method of currere: the regressive, the progressive, the analytical, and the synthetical” (p. 45). The regressive is to reexperience past lived experience; the progressive looks toward the future; the analytical examines the past and the present, attempting to understand the ways in which the past influences the present; the synthetical places together what is experiences in the other moments in order to find meaning of the present.

Neal Gough (2003, as cited in Berry, 2014) states:

Internationalizing curriculum inquiry might best be understood as a process of creating transnational ‘spaces’ in which scholars from different localities collaborate in reframing and decentering their own knowledge traditions and negotiate trust in each other's contributions to their collective work. (p. 5)

Unfortunately, internationalization of curriculum has become more about global academic competition and less about collective knowledge creation and sharing: “These pressures have, often, led educators to succumb to the institutionally internalized conceptions of curriculum as standards, leaving behind reconceptualist notions of the autobiographical nature of curriculum” (Berry, 2014, p. 4).

Each of the six Black curriculum orientations in Watkins’ work can be aligned to one of the three historical moments. The six Black curriculum orientations, according to Watkins (1993) are as follows: functionalism, accommodationism, liberal education orientations, Black nationalist outlook, the Afrocentric curriculum, and social reconstructionism. Mirroring reconceptualist notions of curriculum theory, Black curriculum orientations are connected to the social, historical, theological, cultural, racial, gendered, and aesthetic lived experiences of Blacks in the United States.

Functionalism and accommodationism are orientations that emerged as a result of “discriminatory and colonial practices” (Watkins, 1993, p. 323). Watkins describes functionalism as a:

curriculum shaped by survival, and … took the form of basic education to prepare individuals for human interaction … typically basic, largely oral and frequently includes folklore as part of its curriculum. … A functionalist curriculum shuns abstractions. It is tied to the practical, the useful and the demonstrable. (p. 324)

Where functionalism was rudimentary, accommodationism was more robustly scripted and had a political agenda. Blacks were to be educated in ways that would promote citizenship without disturbing “Black subservience” (p. 325). The scripted/prescribed objectives and goals of these two orientations lend themselves to the first historical moment of curriculum.

Liberal education orientations were, chronologically, positioned during the era of the first curriculum moment but, philosophically and practically, positioned near the end of the first curriculum moment and the second curriculum moment. Although the curriculum of liberal education orientations moved from vocational, practical knowledge to the humanities and the sciences, many of the places designed to provide Black college education remained supported by largely White philanthropists and organizations. Yet, the fact that some of the places began to subscribe to Deweyan notion of education signaled a paradigm shift in philosophy. In this way, Black education moved ahead, philosophically, of the curriculum moments chronologically ascribed by Pinar (2007) for mainstream society.

The Black nationalist outlook, which included the voices of the Pan-Africanists, cultural nationalists, and separatists, began to emerge at the end of the 18th century. Although this perspective occurred during the first curriculum moment, Blacks’ perspective concerning education began to shift toward one that honored the historical, social, and political lived experience. Watkins (1993) described the three voices in this way:

Pan-Africanism, in general, seeks to raise Africa and promote the interest of African people regardless of location. … The cultural nationalist believe[s] culture is the binding force for a people's cohesion, stability, and progress. In general they view culture as the building block of civilization. … They argue for an education system around which Black people can unite in the present day. … The Black separatist call[s] for the building of a parallel society. The hope for the separatists is for African Americans to maintain a Black economic, political, educational, and cultural structure within the United States. (p. 330)

The Afrocentric curriculum places African ideals at the center of knowledge, content, and pedagogy. In doing so, it replaces the system that has failed the education of African American children for decades. The emergence of the Afrocentric curriculum appears near the end of the first curriculum moment and is dominant during the second curriculum moment. This orientation aligns well with reconceptualist notions of curriculum theory, particularly notions of the autobiographical as historical, social, political, and racial.

The Social reconstructionist orientation questions “the capitalist order as facilitator and generator of racism” and view “schools and the curriculum as the instrument to challenge … unjust economic, political, and social arrangements” (Watkins, 1993, p. 332). This orientation emerges near the end of the second curriculum moment and continues through the beginning of the third and current curriculum moment.

CRT/CRF

CRT, the source of CRF, connects race with power, oppression, and conflict (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). CRT has been identified as a movement of “a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power” (Delgado & Stefanic, 2001, p.2). In the mid-1970s Derrick Bell and Alan Freeman emerged as leaders of this significantly critical approach to legal, and therefore social, impact of race within the contexts of everyday experience (Delgado & Stefanic, 2001; Jennings & Lynn, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1999). Building upon foundations from critical legal studies, these perspectives held that the token integrationist advanced of the Civil Rights Movement cemented the racialist foundations of the effects of history on people of color on an international scale.

There are several tenets/elements of CRT: (a) addressing essentialism and antissentialism/intersectionality, (b) the normalization of race and racism, (c) addressing interest convergence, (d) dismantling color-blind notions of equality, (e) addressing race as a social construction, and (f) using storytelling/counter-storytelling for voices-of-color.

CRT has birthed several outgrowths, among them CRF. Delgado and Stefancic (2001) define CRF accordingly:

addresses issues of intersectionality. … It also examines relations between men and women of color, sterilization of Black, Latina, and Indian women, and the impact of changes in welfare, family policies, and child support laws. It also analyzes the way the “reasonable man” standard that operates in many areas of the law incorporates a white male bias. (p. 83)

This definition served as the genesis of my exploration into a theoretical framework that would become the center of my life's work. My understandings of this concept have grown and evolved with my identities and my scholarship.

CRF is an outgrowth of CRT that addresses the intersections of race and gender. Although feminist theory does specifically address issues of power, oppression, and conflict for women in American society, one of the inadequacies of this theory is its insufficient ability to meet the theoretical needs of women of color. “Much of feminist theory has presumed that White middle-class women's experiences can speak for all women” (Wing, 1997a, p. 4). “Critical race feminists expose how various factors, such as race, gender, and class, interact within a system of White male patriarchy and racist oppression to make the life experiences of women of color distinct from those of men of color and white women” (Owuachi-Willig, 2006, p. 736). I respectfully recognize and acknowledge other endarkened feminist epistemologies (Dillard, 2000). However, I choose to subscribe to, and advocate for, CRF, a feminist perspective of CRT.

CRF makes connections of power, oppression, and conflict at the intersections of race and gender for women of color (Wing, 1997b). In doing so, critical race feminists place women of color in the center, rather than the margins, of the discussion, debate, contemplation, reflection, theorizing, research, and praxis of the lived experience as we coexist in dominant culture. As an outgrowth of critical legal studies and CRT, it suits the sensibilities of those who acknowledge, address, and accept Black male experiences as different, as well as (CRT) womanhood experiences as different (feminist theory). In critical legal studies, many of the cases that address issues of race have indirectly presumed that the experiences of Black men apply to Black women as well as other minorities (Wing, 1997b).

CRF “examines the intersections of race, gender, and sometimes class within a legal or multidisciplinary context” (Wing, 1997b, p.2). CRT and CRF adherents utilize narrative or storytelling as counterstories to the master narrative, the dominant discourse. However, unlike CRT adherents, CRF is multidisciplinary as its draws from “writings of women and men who are not legal scholars” (Wing, 1997b, p.5), as evidenced in the social and political writings of Patricia Hill Collins (1990, 1998), bell hooks (1990) and Joy James (1999). As a critical race feminist educator, I have found strength in the works of these Black women, as well as such scholars as William Banks (1996), Louis Catsenell and William Pinar (1993), Angela Davis (1983), John Dewey (1933/1998), W. E. B. DuBois (1903/1993), Paulo Freire (1974), Nikki Giovanni (1994), and Audre Lorde (1984).

Antiessentialism/intersectionality, normalization and ordinariness of race and racism, and counter-torytelling are key elements in CRF. In addition, CRF addresses the complexities of race and gender with notions of intersectionality and multidimensionality (Wing, 1997a).

Intersectionality of identity occurs when individuals possess two or more social markers simultaneously (e.g. race, gender, ethnicity, class). Multidimensionality of identity occurs when individuals possess two or more individualities that function at the same time, informing one another in practice (e.g., teacher as parent, teacher as parent and community member, historian as traveler). (Berry & Stovall, 2013, p. 590)

In many cases, intersectionality and multidimensionality are inextricably tied. Adrien Wing (1997a) articulates this notion accordingly: “The experiences of Black women, whether in legal academia or elsewhere, might reflect the basic mathematical equation that one times one truly does equal one” (p. 27). In essence, Black women are not merely parts of a whole; we wholly and completely experience race, ethnicity, and womanhood, simultaneously.

Finally, CRF values both abstract theorizing and practice. Although advocates of CRF are concerned with theory, praxis is central to this theory; theory and praxis must be a collaboration. “As representatives of groups oppressed on the basis of both race and gender, they cannot afford to adopt the classic white male ivory tower approach to abstract theorizing, removed from the actual needs of their communities” (Wing, 1997a, p. 5). Critical race feminists believe what they know coexists with what they do and the ways they engage. We believe in what we do and we practice what we preach.

CRF AND BLACK CURRICULUM ORIENTATIONS

In this section, I discuss the six Black curriculum orientations in relationship to, at least, one of the following tenets/attributes of CRF: race and racism, Whiteness as property, interest convergence, anti-essentialism/intersectionality, uniqueness of voice/counterstory, and multidimensionality.

Table 1 annotates the ways in which Watkins’ Black curriculum orientations align with tenets/attributes of CRF. Notions on the normalness and ordinariness of race and racism in the education of Black people in the United States were (and continue to be) pervasive. As such, this tenet of CRF appears in each of the Black curriculum orientations articulated by Watkins. Additionally, both functionalism and accommodationism share attributes/tenets of Whiteness as property and interest convergence. Both of these orientations engaged in curriculums determined by White people in power. They determined what Black people would know and who would have access to education. These curriculums also were designed to serve the interest of White people in power. In both cases, the education was to promote productivity and citizenship while maintaining Black subservience and discouraging Black empowerment. What knowledge was most worth knowing was based on the needs of the people in power.

Table 1 Connecting Black Curriculum Orientations to CRF

			Liberal	Black
			Education	Nationalist	Afrocentric	Social
	Functionalism	Accommodationism	Orientations	Orientations	Curriculum	Reconstructionism
Race and racism	X	X	X	X	X	X
Whiteness as property	X	X	X
Interest convergence	X	X	X
Antiessentialism/ Intersectionality			X	X	X	X
Uniqueness of voice/Counterstory				X	X	X
Multidimensionality					X	X

The table also annotates four applicable tenets of CRF to liberal education: race and racism, Whiteness as property, interest convergence, and antiessentialism/intersectionality. The curriculums to which Black people had access remained those scripted/prescribed by the people in power. However, different factions of empowered people possessed different agendas concerning the education of Black people in the United States. Although some wanted to maintain the Hampton model instituted by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, others were encouraging and/or establishing a liberal arts education for Black people. In this way, interest convergence played a central role in the education of Black people. But although the people in power engaged in practices and advocacy toward their interest, Black people were gaining access to education that allowed their capabilities to become less essentialized. In this way, race alone was not a determining factor for what a Black person might be able to do. And, through these avenues for education, race alone would not be the sole way in which a Black person might be identified. Having access to more than one model for education meant that a Black person could be a Black scholar, Black writer, Black scientist, Black educator, etc.

The table indicates three tenets/attributes of CRF that apply to Black nationalism: race and racism, antiessentialism/intersectionality, and uniqueness of voice/counterstory. Black nationalism had within it three separate voices: Pan-Africanists, cultural nationalists, and Black separatists. Although the groups shared some commonalities (intersectionality), each group had different goals (antiessentialism). As a result, each group possessed a unique voice regarding the ways in which they would address success and Black life in the context of US education. The stories that each of these groups within Black nationalism could tell would highlight the antiessentialist nature of Black life and Black education.

Afrocentric curriculum and social reconstructionism share the same three tenets/attributes (excluding race and racism) of CRF: antiessentialism/intersectionality, uniqueness of voice/counterstory, and multidimensionality. Afrocentric curriculum clearly articulated that there is, at least, one other cultural perspective from which student can learn and learn about the world. This curriculum fought against essentialist notions of US curriculum as it claimed that such a curriculum had done irreparable harm to Black students in US schools. By creating an Afrocentric curriculum, a counterstory regarding what knowledge was of most importance was created. Such a curriculum can be viewed as multidimensional as students would learn about disciplines traditional and nontraditional to the U.S. curriculum but from the perspective of countries on the African continent.

Social reconstructionism is intersectional and multidimensional. First, it intersects race and capitalism, noting that the root of racism is capitalism. Second, it intersects schooling and power, noting that schools are the places and classrooms are the spaces where power can be challenged. In doing so, the school/classroom can be the place/space where counterstories/narratives are scripted, thus dismantling the normative/master narrative about race and power in schools. Questions and challenges to race/racism, education/schooling, capitalism, and power can, potentially, provide information/answers that will further inform other counter-narratives about race and power in schools.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Summer 2015, I taught a course entitled Theory of Curriculum and Instruction to 25 Master's-level students. Rather than teach the course solely based on the scholars featured in the assigned text, I framed the course with four Black curriculum scholars: W. E. B. DuBois (Alridge, 2007; DuBois, 1932), Carter G. Woodson (Strong-Leek, 2008), Anna Julia Cooper (Alridge, 2007; Giles, 2006), and William H. Watkins (1993). Students were assigned journal articles by and/or about each of these scholars and were to analyze the assigned chapters of the text and a curriculum document from the positionality of, at least, one of the four scholars. When discussing the assigned readings for Watkins, I found myself reminiscing about our conversations.

Bill Watkins and I had many conversations regarding the usefulness of CRT)/CRF in the context of education. He would say “there's nothing new under the sun. It's already been done.” I say that these Black curriculum orientations and the scholars who paved the way for this work have made it possible for us to developed, espouse, implement, and advocate for a new language and new ways of thinking.

I sincerely appreciate all of the work—the activism and the scholarship—of Dr. William H. Watkins. His work in curriculum theory, curriculum studies, and curriculum history has made an indelible mark not only within the discipline of education but, more specifically, within the field of curriculum.