Reynolds, Eddie
ADE 7677
April 17, 2014
Summary of CRT in my field
There are two components for me in how I will apply CRT to my fields. I have two converging
interests that will impact how I will apply CRT as an historian and an adult educator. I was
looking at this in terms of divided loyalties last week, but realize that they are complimentary.
In essence, I will be an adult educator teaching history. I may have two identities, but really one
goal as an educator. This essay will look at dimension of each identity.
I will begin my dual identity exploration looking at the field of history. Historians and the field
of history are dominated by social histories. Over the course of the last several decades the
meta-narrative of great white men has given way to histories that tell the story from the
perspective of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. This may include great white men, but they are
pushed to the margins, and generally viewed in less than a kind light.
These social histories, sometimes regarded unfortunately as revisionist histories, have been
the site of intense culture wars, as a backlash to the hegemonic tales told prior to the 1960’s,
when historians began exploring history “from below”. As Michelle Jay and Paulo Friere point
out, education is where the hegemonic conditioning begins. Education is not so much about the
transmission of knowledge; it is secondary to the reproduction of cultural values and the
maintenance of unequal distributions of power. Social histories challenge the ideologies
embedded in the culture through the exposure of how issues of race, class, ethnicity, and
gender emerged historically. There is no entrenched teleology, no God, no progressive
evolution. On the other hand, economic elites prefer an ahistorical explanation of present
norms and express the teleological beliefs that present day norms were an inevitable result of a
divine guiding hand, an argument expressed well by the aristocracy in the Middle Ages as
“divine right”.
Really, it was Labor historians, who were the first in this field to systematically explore how
Whiteness and White privilege played a central role in distributions of power in America. In
dealing with the complex relationships between freed African American labor and immigrant
white labor became site of contested power relations. To what degree you could perform
Whiteness was the degree you exercised White privilege.
David Roedigers’ seminal work, written in the early 1990’s, on Whiteness racism and labor, The
Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, was the first
historical monograph to elaborate the hegemony of Whiteness and create a counter-narrative
to challenge the Majoritarian or Master narrative of race and racism, and its place in American
history. The issue for Roediger, as it was for the English Labor historian, E. P. Thompson (and
later feminist scholarship) was the issue of human agency. Black people, like English and
American working classes, were not considered agents of historical change, just victims of it.
This was true for women as well. African American voices could be marginalized and ignored in
the historical record, because they lacked the consciousness of agency to affect change.
Roediger was aware of CRT, citing two works by CRT scholars. As a grad student, I was
exposed to a myriad of theoretical models, but oddly CRT was not one of them. All of the
professors I took classes with were steeped in theory, and all were politically astute. But none
of the professors in the department, at that time, were African-American. This fact may explain
the lack of CRT as a methodology. This is curious now that I reflect back on that time period. I
believe that the field of history could benefit a great deal from employing CRT more directly
into their methodology and analysis of race and racism. Even though historical scholarship is
essentially a counter-story and historicizes the various contexts in which White privilege occurs,
historians could add a deeper understanding utilizing CRT. Using convergence theory and the
problems related to Liberalism would further problematize the complex and multilayered
dimensions of racism and White privilege.
As an adult educator, CRT will be an invaluable tool. Even with my background in antioppression work related to environmental and social justice activism, something key was
missing from my understanding of race, racism, and White privilege. I would have been
confused as to the deeply embedded nature and forms of racism in education. I would have
been under the assumption that racism should not exist here. This is an invaluable
understanding to have going into the field. I will not be surprised to find it, and can act more
effectively in dealing with it.
Historians examine the lives and contexts in which African Americans experienced oppression
as slaves, and later as emancipated people negotiating newly formed “racial projects” of
segregation. My intention is to teach history at the community college level when I graduate,
which means teaching introductory courses in Modern US History, which will place race as a
more central category for analysis. I cannot be a CRT scholar because of its transgressive
potential, nor can I be a person of color and the experience that entails, but I can be honest
ally. When I first heard Omar describe his experience daily as a black man judged by the color
of his skin; it broke my heart. Each day he is confronted by the fact he is a black male in a white
world.
Race and CRT will play a prominent role in how I teach history. This would not have been the
case without your course in CRT. My training as a grad history student was social history
focusing on labor, and in particular union and radical organizing in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. As Dubois work on racial labor relations in the early 20th century is a superb lens in
which to look not only at the racist underbelly of white labor, but also issues of class and
gender within that context. Race has played a critical role in the consciousness of the American
experience since its inception as a colony under British rule. So any aspect of American history I
teach will be marked by CRT. From the readings, contexts, and periods I choose, to the
institutional structures I work will be informed by a CRT framework.
I have an activist interest in not just pedagogy or andragogy but the implications of
knowledge and its ability to affect change. Whether it is a change of a personal nature or
change in a social context, education is about intellectual growth and a challenge to traditional
conventional beliefs. I want to challenge learners belief systems to foster critical thinking. I may
not be able to train a cadre of radical organizers, but I can create an environment where
questions drive the process. As I felt compelled to facilitate the cops in the head exercise
tonight, with the invaluable help of an ally of color (her words) Dr Agosto, I think experiential
work as well as story telling are a powerful means to challenge the dominant hegemonic
discourse. It is a back door to the heart bypassing the cops who guard the conditioned reactive
judgmental mind, which is too willing to dismiss the unfamiliar. My hopes may be naïve in some
ways, but I am pretty relentless in my desire to create enough cognitive dissonance to allow a
space for questioning.
I also hope to teach in settings other than as a history educator. Adult education is so broad a
field, I could see myself in settings that challenge me. HRD has a certain fascination for me
because of its very nature as a workplace education setting. I have decent analytic skills. HRD is
changing as a field and has moved more into the humanistic dimensions of workplace
indoctrination. I have been very critical of the de-humanizing effects of greater productivity and
cultural conformity generally associated with training programs, but I think there may be a
place for programs that strike at the core of issues such as race, class, and gender, and the
consequence to the operations of an institution. Again, this may be a naïve assumption, that
such a niche exists, and maybe Ill need to move to San Francisco or Silicon Valley where more
progressive ideas are embraced. Business people may be blinded by short term profit, but they
are not as stupid as they may appear. The Ritz-Carlton case study I found fascinating. They
demanded excellence from their employees, but gave them room to grow and a sense of place
and an interesting notion of respect based on, Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and
Gentlemen. They placed quality of excellence above simple bottom line thinking. With this said
I would still have serious reservations about working in the belly of the corporate beast.
I will see, as this journey continues and unfolds what opportunities exist for a radical educator
who does not fit neatly into any particular category or niche. I had no idea a year ago, I would
be in an adult education program, and wish to see where it takes me. Either way, it may be a
wild ride.