Let’s be critically honest: towards a messier counterstory in critical race theory

Abstract

This paper utilizes tools of critical race theory to interrogate the racial politics of the everyday. The authors contend that this type of critical policy analysis can yield understandings of/about the world that are too often silenced or ignored altogether. This paper argues that critical race theory does not aim to tell a “truer” account of reality, but a more honest one. Therefore, critical race scholars need not ask permission – nor seek forgiveness – for their counterstories, but hold themselves accountable to communicate stories and narratives that are not only honestly critical, but critically honest.

Keywords:

• critical race theory
• critical policy analysis
• counterstories
• microaggressions

Notes

1. Similar to the first counterstory, we wanted to identify and highlight the “racism of the everyday” in this particular example. Towards this aim, we not only highlighted the overt forms of racism and animus that people expressed on Twitter toward Mr Quezada, but we also engaged in a more nuanced analysis of how these “tweets” demonstrated a collective concern over broader issues of immigration, citizenship, and belonging. In this regard, the tweets directly undermined the “stock stories” surrounding the American melting pot ideology and the long-held Horatio Alger-like trope that embraces hard work and rugged individualism as the primary vehicles to achieve the American dream. It is also important to note that our analysis is more iterative than it is sequential: we did not systematically gather data and analyze it using traditional qualitative approaches (e.g. coding, cross-case analysis, hypothesis testing, etc.). Rather, we let the tweets guide and inform our thinking as we read each successive “tweet.” We relied on televised and online news coverage of Pedro Quezada, in both English and Spanish, to compare and contrast the stories being represented in the media to those accounts posted by individuals on Twitter. The resulting counterstory is presented as a second example of CPA. It reveals the ideological tensions surrounding immigration, while highlighting the overt and hidden form of racism in direct response to this particular lottery winner.

2. This manuscript that was initially accepted and submitted for publication contained actual Twitter feeds posted by users. Despite the fact that the tweets are in the public domain, we were advised by the publisher’s legal counsel to remove all identifying information associated with the posts – as Twitter users could have altered, deleted, or changed their tweets after they were initially posted. Consequently, all tweets in this manuscript have been scrubbed of identifying information and appear as direct quotes, as opposed to how they would look on an actual computer screen. All quotes preserve the original writing and grammar of the initial post.