Challenging systemic racism in school board meetings through intertextual co-optation

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we apply the concept of intertextuality – which entails a speaker or writer using language from another source – to better understand how a particular discursive strategy can be used to challenge systemic racism and white supremacy. Specifically we examine what we call intertextual co-optation – co-opting another’s words for one’s own purposes – and how this was harnessed by Black community advocates and their supporters in the case of a largely white suburban school district plagued by systemic racism and racist incidents. We employ Sandoval’s concept of meta-ideologizing to demonstrate how intertextual co-optation undermined the ideology of the district’s school board. We analyzed more than 13 hours of videos of school board meetings in this district, in which Black community members and their supporters critiqued the school board’s lack of substantive response to racist incidents. We found 20 instances of intertextual co-optation involving community members using a board member’s words against them. Specifically, this discursive strategy served to (a) expose board members’ hypocrisy and/or (b) discredit board members’ arguments by revealing and refuting unspoken assumptions and false premises. Ultimately, our analysis indicates the potential of intertextual co-optation as a discursive strategy of meta-ideologizing to disrupt dominant ideology and systemic racism.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• racism
• intertextuality
• meta-ideologizing
• school boards

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Yalda M. Kaveh, who provided invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this piece. In addition, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See, for example, Leonardo (2009) for discussions of how racism and white supremacy are structural forms of racial domination.

2. All participant names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melanie Bertrand

Melanie Bertrand is an associate professor at Arizona State University. Her research explores the potential of youth and community leadership to improve schools and challenge systemic racism and other forms of oppression in education.

Carrie Sampson

Carrie Sampson is an assistant professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Her research focuses on educational leadership, policy, and equity from three interrelated perspectives—democracy, community advocacy, and politics.