Fighting to Educate Our Own: Teachers of Color, Relational Accountability, and the Struggle for Racial Justice

Abstract

Research demonstrates that many teachers of Color enter schools committed to challenging injustice, yet often face barriers to accomplishing this goal. This article presents emergent themes from a qualitative study with 218 self-identified, racial justice-oriented teachers of Color. Using Wilson's (2008) indigenous cultural framework of relationality and relational accountability to analyze our data, we introduce the concept of community-oriented teachers of Color to describe the accountability these teachers have towards students of Color and their communities. We found that despite their connections, insights, and successes with students, hierarchies of ontology (ways of being) and epistemology (ways of knowing) within schools that promote individualism served to isolate and marginalize community-oriented teachers of Color and, thus, limited their ability to advance racial justice.

Notes

1. Throughout this paper we use the term “of Color” to collectively reference peoples of African, Asian American, indigenous, Latina/o, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander descent. We draw these broad racial parameters to synthesize our discussion of communities with racialized colonial histories and/or who experience racial marginalization in the United States today. Captializing “Color” is used to legitimize the collective identities of those within this grouping.

2. Although research shows that teachers of Color tend to have a more advanced racial literacy and commitment to justice; we are aware that there are many teachers of Color who, for a host of reasons, do not carry this commitment. We are in no way attempting to essentialize all teachers of Color, and acknowledge that “teachers of Color” is a broad category with a range of varied races, ethnicities, ideological commitments, and orientations.

3. All names included in this article are pseudonyms used to protect the anonymity of participants.

4. The model minority myth is the stereotypical belief that Asian Americans are passive, docile, hard-working, and successful. It was developed as a divisive tactic during the civil rights movement, but continues to be pervasive in U.S. race politics (Lee, Wong, & Alvarez, 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rita Kohli

Rita Kohli is an assistant professor in the Education, Society, and Culture Department in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside, and is a co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice. Having spent over 15 years in urban public schools as a teacher, teacher educator, and educational researcher, her research interests include race and educational inequality, critical race theory in education, teacher education, and teachers of color.

Marcos Pizarro

Marcos Pizarro is a professor in Mexican American Studies at San José State University. He coordinates MAESTR@S, a social justice organization that develops and implements a transformative education model with Latin@ communities, and works with schools on the development and implementation of Latina/o Studies curricula to enhance Latina/o student engagement. He also is the co-coordinator of the Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice.