Abolition Science & Black Feminist Futurity (Episode 6)
Welcome back to the Coloniality, Western Science, and Critical Ethnic Studies in STEM Education dissertation!
In this episode, I explain how Abolition Science and Black Feminist Futurity were the bridges that allowed me to transition from the theoretical aspect of my dissertation to research and action. I also revisit the Critical Ethnic Studies in STEM ItAG and discuss the differences between ethnic studies and critical ethnic studies.
TRANSCRIPT
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A grammar of possibility that moves beyond a simple definition of the future tense as what will be in the future. It moves beyond the future perfect tense of that which will have happened prior to a reference point in the future. It strives for the tense of possibility grammarians refer to as, "the future real conditional," or, "that which will have had to happen for the future to be realized." The grammar of Black feminist futurity is a performance of a future that hasn't yet happened, but must. It's an attachment to a belief in what should be true, which, in turn, realizes that aspiration. It's the power to imagine beyond current fact, to envision that which is not, but must be. Put another way, It's a form of pre-figuration that involves living the future, now, as imperative rather than subjunctive, as a striving for the future you want to see (Campt, 2014).
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Throughout this dissertation I have been grounded by Tina Campt’s definition of a Black Feminist Futurity.
We started with an explanation of the research setting then we went to Western Science to get an understanding of what was needed in order for the Western Science that we use today to grow into what it is.
I used a critical transdisciplinary approach weaving together settler colonialism, Black geographies, and decolonial theory. We then applied that to science education to highlight the coloniality embedded within.
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Hey listeners!
I'm LaToya Strong and I'm a doctoral candidate at The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.
You are listening to my dissertation!
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A Black Feminist Future imagines the life/world we want to see combined with a move to live that life presently. Instead of the historical present in which the past is brought to the present, a Black Feminist Future brings the future to the present.
Looking back and looking at each instance in context, but also recognizing that we are a part of the building of that history. And so to think of the past, present, and future happening all at once is so important. But you can't think of the present and the future without being grounded in the past, they have to be concurrent processes. (Robinson, 2022)
That was Dr. Robert P. Robinson. If we are using the past to understand the present, and living the future in the present we are essentially doing the past, present, and future simultaneously. The past, present, and future all at once requires imagination and collaboration and community.
How do we imagine beyond what we know?" And for me, the truest and earliest answer was always books, and then later it was experiences, and they both kind of lead to the same thought process. Community, right? And so you're either in community with other people who have imagined or you're in community and you're imagining together. And so for books, you know, I think of things like Nnedi Okorafor, um, Zahrah the Windseeker which imagines a world that can be urban but where, um, technological growth exists with nature, right? You don't have to pave paradise to put up a parking lot. (Lavan, 2022)
That was Dr. Makeba Lavan, Bronx born and raised but currently out in Grinnell, Iowa as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Grinnell College
I love that Makeba mentioned books. She mentioned lots of things, but I’mma latch onto books. I was reading a lot of fiction during the time that I was developing all of this stuff. I was devouring books. I love getting lost in someone else’s imagination; it is such a gift.
I’m the person that has a backup book in the bag just in case I finish the book I have if I”m close to the end. Not that nobody asked, but I’mma tell yall anyway. I love multi-book series. Some of the things I read was N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed trilogy, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson, The African Immortal Series by Tananarive Due and so many others. I really could go on, but I’ll spare yall. The imagination and brilliance and insight of these authors is just unreal.
So I was tapping into the energy of these authors I was reading, combined with the concept of Black Feminist Futurity to think about what it all means for science education. And what would science research look like with those things in mind? Like, how could this disrupt the coloniality inherent in science education? So these questions and everything that came before this was the impetus for development of the concept of Abolition Science.
The concept of Abolition Science grew out of , not just this dissertation, but a combination of my organizing work, teaching experience, the things I was reading, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so abolition science is part of this dissertation, but also not.
My current working definition of abolition science is the critiquing and dismantling of systems and institutions of Western knowledge systems that cause or have caused harm; that disconnects us from ourselves, our community, land, and cultural practices and systems of knowledge production. And at the same time remembering, imagining, building, and creating, in community, sustainable technologies and practices that center the health and well-being of the environment, people, and other living organisms. Earth if you will.
I guess I need to include outer space in this now too huh?
Okay, wait. Why I’m telling yall all this. I’m telling y'all this because the behind the scene, back of the house stuff, for me, is just as important as the front of the house stuff— what other folks will see— because it's part of the process and the process is just as important as what you create or what you produce. And for written dissertations, because they’re supposed to flow in a very specific way. The process just gets like 86’ed. uh what? Okay, I have no idea why I'm using restaurant lingo, um, yeah, the process is important and the audio format just allows more space to talk about this and the process for me is just as important as the products. Like how did you do what you did and how did you get where you were going? Okay I don’t know if I’mma leave this in. This was off the cuff. Okay here’s what I’mma do. I’mma leave it in for now. I’mma make myself a note to, like, rethink whether this needs to be in. Or not. And if I leave it in I’mma leave all of it in because we’re talking about process so I don’t know I guess it just fits.
I got excited about abolition science and at this time me and Atasi were really talking a lot about science and math and capitalism and racism. Many of our conversations were essentially “what are we doing here?” and the here being academia. Based on these conversations we created the project that is Abolition Science.
Abolition Science consists of a podcast called Abolition Science Radio, reading groups, and workshops. We’ve expanded and it now includes Aderinsola Gilbert and Matshoshi Matsafu. The core of the project is the podcast. We get to talk to some really amazing people doing really amazing work. The podcast is a medium to get theory, ideas, practice, etc. etc. to a broader audience. For us, it was the idea that change is not just about theory, or practice, or praxis, or action, but all those elements interwoven.
Abolition science is inspired by W.E.B Du Bois’ concept of abolition democracy. After the Civil War, Du Bois said that there were two paths that the United States could have taken to solidify its future. One is abolition democracy, and the second is industry for private profit (Du Bois, 1998).
Abolition-democracy demands for Negroes physical freedom, civil rights, economic opportunity, and education and the right to vote, as a matter of sheer human justice and right. Industry demands profits and is willing to use for this end Negro freedom or Negro slavery, votes for Negroes or Black Codes. (Du bois, 1998, p. 325)
Abolition-democracy was not about ending slavery alone because, y’all, ending slavery wasn’t enough. All the institutions and structures that enabled the institution of racial chattel slavery to exist also needed to get gone. Western Science was one of these institutions as it provided ways to justify slavery, which we discussed. As we’ve seen those tenets of Western Science that propped up slavery, still exist in various fields and has been codified in science education.
And more than just abolishing slavery and its cosigning institutions, abolition democracy was also about imagining, building, and creating new institutions (Davis, 2005).
For Western Science and science education this abolition is not just about critiquing, dismantling, and deconstructing but also building and imagining something else, “living otherwise” to return to Tina Campt.
But how do we build? What frameworks allow us to push past what we currently know, or think we know in regards to science? We did the critiquing part in the previous episodes. Now let’s talk about building and creating.
There are works that we can draw from that either focus on the critiquing or the building or maybe both.
Daniel Morales-Doyle (2017) has theorized justice-centered science pedagogy as a framework which “builds on the related traditions of critical and culturally relevant pedagogy along with applicable work in science education to consider the potential roles of science education in broader struggles for social justice” (p. 27).
Danny asks us to contend with the ways that Science can be used to make change as opposed to cause damage. He has created an opening for how oppressed communities might envision the use of science in a different way that leads to positive outcomes for the community.
What I love about Danny’s work is that it’s not focused on getting students to fit into that STEM box, it’s not focused on just representation, it is about the community and students’ role in their community. Abolition Science Radio has an episode with Danny. You should definitely check out what he has to say.
Atasi Das (2022) uses critical numeracy situated in historical materialism. Atasi’s approach takes into account numbers in relation to material and lived experiences. Number and mathematics aren’t just about abstraction but also about understanding human relations as they have been shaped historically and also looking forward to what could lie ahead. Abolition Science Radio also has an episode with Atasi. You should definitely check that out.
Me and my peers, which includes the aforementioned Atasi Das (2016) and also Jennifer Adams, Eun-Ji Amy Kim, Jennifer Stoops, Pieranna Pieroni, and Marissa Bellion, put forth a critical transdisciplinary approach to science education.
We proposed six parameters to approach science education: contextualize and historicize knowledge, challenge assumptions of neutrality and objectivity through critical inquiry, decenter hegemonic notions of knowledge production, situate place and space, privilege process over product, and promote participatory teaching, learning, and research. The goal of this approach was to unenclose the neoliberal practices that have pushed science education deeper into the coloniality of Western Science (Strong et al., 2016).
This is the part in academia where I am supposed to add a but. The above examples do w well, and are good for x, but they don’t consider y. Which is why we should discard all of them and use my approach z. And then the approach that I name will be similar enough so that’s familiar, but different enough so that y'all know it’s new and fresh, fresh and clean.
Let’s take it from the top.
Justice-centered science pedagogy taps into the knowledge of students well, and is good for community empowerment, but Danny doesn’t consider the fact that academia is full of haters. This is why I am proposing that we get rid of justice-centered science pedagogy and start using this approach that I created called justice focused-science pedagogy.
We’re not going to do that here because all of these things can exist at the same time. Here’s how we should think about it. There are 572 million books, movies, and TV shows about zombies. And we know there is going to be 572 million plus one.
There are elements or tropes that are consistent throughout like they must eat flesh and how they can be killed. But there is always going to be a new take or new element or something that doesn’t necessarily make it better than the others, it just makes it different. You might love Night of the Living Dead, but hate 28 Days Later. I do not love the idea of a zombie being able to run a 4.2 40, but some people do. The zombie genre isn’t going to transition to having all Olympic sprinting zombies. But will there more be made? Yes? Am I gonna love it? No! But I am gonna watch it? Yes!
All that to say, to add to the tools that are available for us STEM folk to use, I want to try and add an additional one and take up critical ethnic studies as a potential approach to addressing the coloniality in STEM.
Let’s talk a bit more about Ethnic Studies and Critical Ethnic Studies. The Ethnic Studies movement was inspired by and that grew out of the civil rights movement. College students wanted diverse faculty and classes that spoke to them, their histories, and their experience. For example, courses like African-American Studies, Asian-American Studies, Native-American Studies, all originated during this movement. These students were demanding fundamental changes in higher education (Hu-DeHart, 1993).
Ethnic studies centers the lives, experiences, and histories of people of color in relation to institutions of power and privilege (Reyes-McGovern & Buenavista, 2016). Ethnic studies has been shown to be beneficial to students of color, yet is considered controversial by government officials in states such as Arizona. Arizona banned ethnic studies programs in 2012 after the Arizona Department of Education lobbied that ethnic studies produced radicals who wanted to overthrow the government (Cammarota, 2016). That ban by the way has since been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Here are some documented benefits of ethnic studies:
It increases literacy skills
Increases academic achievemenT
It fuels young peoples’ transformative praxiS
Increases student attendance
And it supports the growth of critical thinking skills (de los Ríos, 2017).
And it helps to raise the critical consciousness of youth and teachers (Acosta & Mir, 2012).
That critical consciousness piece is why governments be so scary about it.
But how does all that translate into actually teaching Ethnic Studies?
To teach ethnic studies is to understand this is a political project grounded on the belief that we teach for liberation. That knowing oneself, knowing our roots, knowing our histories is a radical act of self love. That is then transferred to change in our communities. That what we learn is then shared with our mothers, aunties and our broader family, that what we learn does not stay within these four classroom walls to teach ethnic studies means to acknowledge, celebrate, and learn from Black, Indigenous and other feminist scholars of Color. It means that we value and acknowledge the small moments and the folks who are typically invisibilized. That we not only learn about people from our community who were historically significant, but rather we also reclaim archival and historical narratives to include the experiences of everyday folks, many of them, women and matriarchs in our communities who continue to be the catalyst for change. And that by doing so we center feminist pedagogies inspired by the work of bell hooks, Audre Lord and Gloria Anzaldúla.
And to teach ethnic studies is to remember that the process is just as important, if not more important than the product, that our pedagogy and classrooms as ethnic studies teachers take lessons from a transformative growth cycle of plants that as ethnic studies teachers. We curate a space and envision the possibilities for growth.We anticipate the environment and weather, but need to pivot constantly with whatever is in the forecast. And more importantly, we acknowledge that the majority of our work is actually telling the soil and planting the seeds. To teach ethnic studies means that we deeply understand that we don't always get to see the harvest, but that, that groundwork, the tilling, the seeds we planted were instrumental to the transformative blooming we see in the future. (Barrales, 2022)
That was Wendy Barrales, former ELA and ethnic studies teacher. Ethnic studies provides a useful and effective model for science education teaching, learning, and research if we are approaching science education from the perspective of undoing coloniality and moving somewhere otherwise. And here is my friend Nicole, an elementary school teacher out in Cali and one of Sac Town’s finest.
What it means to me is to be systemically and critically—critical of systemic and individual relationships of power and privilege, um, working my best to be de-colonial and anti-racist, to value native culture and linguistic diversity, but also recognizing the need for access and ability to navigate and negotiate the dominant cultural language and systems.
It’s spiritually healing. It incorporates balance, so mind, body, spirit, soul, has to be a part of it. It's intergenerational. It should be connecting to the community and cultural ways of knowing, being, and doing. It raises critical consciousness by asking questions. It applies theory to action, so praxis. It's self-reflective. It's working for transformative change whether that's individually, but also, you know, hopefully systemic change. But as I continue in this work, you know, just trying to keep my own front porch clean, so those things happen slowly, I'm learning. It should be student-centered, um, interdisciplinary, and, acknowledge intersectional identities, and challenge dominant hegemony and ideology, and should definitely promote leadership and solidarity amongst people as, uh, a few examples. (Novela, 2022)
Despite the benefits and critical work being done around ethnic studies as outlined by Wendy and Nicole, the institutionalization of ethnic studies has caused it to falter from its original critique of the institutions and of education. This is where critical ethnic studies comes in. But before we dive into critical ethnic studies there are two things that need to be said.
Thing one. There is a difference between how institutions take up ethnic studies, and how ethnic studies exist in some classrooms and art centers, and after school programs, and so on.
Thing two. Critical ethnic studies is not a critique of ethnic studies itself. It is a critique of the institutionalization of ethnic studies and the consequences that followed.
So critical ethnic studies isn’t taking a path of just say no to ethnic studies. DARE. A critical ethnic studies approach is ethnic studies, but also these other things that I’m about to name.
Here’s what critical ethnic studies rejects:
multiculturalism
the institutionalization that has come to plague ethnic studies.
the appropriating logics of liberal multicultural education
Here’s what critical ethnic studies centers:
Critique
Critique of themselves
Critique of the academy
And critique of disciplines
And historical processes such as slavery in understanding issues in education and the world (Mitchell, 2015).
How do the histories of colonialism and conquest, racial chattel slavery, and white supremacist patriarchies and heteronormativities affect, inspire, and unsettle scholarship and activism in the present? (Márquez & Rana, 2015).
This is a question posed by The Critical Ethnic Studies Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association as a core logic of critical ethnic studies.
This question directs our attention to the historical context as an important facet of understanding the present. This is why I landed on this because it fits with that past, present, and future all at the same time thing that I been talking about. And so, it allows us to probe the ways that Western Science and science education have been shaped by the colonial history which birthed these disciplines in the first place.
This is why I look at critical ethnic studies as an approach or a framework as opposed to a discipline. A critical ethnic studies approach can be applied to anything, but in this case y'all, we’re looking at Western Science and science education.
And so based on the ethos of critical ethnic studies I thought it could potentially help science education do several things:
Understand the racial capitalist thinking inherent in Western Science and science education.
It forces us to move beyond the rhetoric of diversity, inclusion, and representation so that those do not become the end goal.
And it reverses the gaze from learners onto the institutions of Western Science and science education.
A critical ethnic studies approach, when applied to science education, can help to both interrogate and elucidate—sidebar, elucidate is such a pretty word— the coloniality embedded in science education.
That guiding question of critical ethnic studies also forces us to understand historical context but in a more entangled way. For example, the classes I mentioned above, such as African American Studies and Indigenous Studies, do get taught. And they are wonderful when done right and needed. But by and large these are taught separately as if the histories within colonialism are insular. Critical ethnic studies approaches these histories as relational while understanding the differences between them (Márquez & Rana, 2015). And again, such an important concept for understanding Western Science because it required subjugation of so many different people and cultures in various parts of the world.
The picture that I painted of Western Science included the Caribbean, North and South America, and also parts of Asia. And this is just one piece of the puzzle. If we focus on a different science discipline, or a different plant, or a different region of the world we could get an even fuller picture.
All that to say, for my dissertation, I wanted to explore how this idea of a critical ethnic studies approach could be used by STEM educators actively working to make changes in their practice.
In episode 2, I talked about NYCoRE and ItAGS because the research was done in an ItAG. The title of the ItAG was Critical Ethnic Studies: Disrupting the Histories of Colonialism in STEM.
This was the blurb.
How do the sciences contribute to social injustices? How are we as science educatorscomplicit? How can we unpack the problems to make changes in the sciences and in our teaching practices? This ItAG will use critical ethnic studies to interrogate the STEM fields. We will use the guiding question of critical ethnic studies, “how do the histories of colonialism and conquest, racial chattel slavery, and white supremacist patriarchies and heteronormativities affect, inspire, and unsettle scholarship and activism in the present?” (CESA, n.d.), to help us delve into these questions in order to make changes in our practice. We welcome all teaching levels, from pre-kindergarten to higher education, and all science and math disciplines to join us as we explore these issues.
Again, the paragraph that I just read is what potential participants see before signing up.
As you know from episode two, we did not focus on that question. As a reminder the article that we focused on was the introduction essay to the Critical ethnic studies journal titled On Our Genesis and Future (Marquez & Rana, 2015).
When we discussed the article, what stuck out were the points of departure. So the points of departure became our focus. In the essay, the points of the departure are responses to the question “what distinguishes critical ethnic studies from other publications?”
The language of this article is quite dense so we made it a bit more friendly in language.. We went through three rounds of analysis to understand it in our own contexts. Episode three gives a play by play of our process.
Based on how we were taking up the text we named each point of departure. Then for each category we developed questions. While our focus was STEM, any educator could use these questions to help think about or reflect on your curriculum and classroom practices.The tool that we created is more of a guide and can be used in a multitude of ways.
Here’s how we broke down each point of departure. And I will also give an example of a question for that category.
Point of Departure One we titled, The Academic Institution.
An example question from that category is, What assumptions do I have about what practicing science looks and sounds like?
Point of Departure Two we titled, Undoing Systems of Oppression - Place, Race, Identity & Power-Understanding Positions of Power and Hierarchy.
An example question from this category is, How might my examples perpetuate racism and other power structures?
Point of Departure Three, Indigeneity and Undoing Settler Colonialism
Example Question: Who gets credit? Who claimed it when it already existed?
Point of Departure Four: White Supremacy as Foundational: Avoiding Therapeutic Reform
Example Question: How is white supremacy foundational to this topic? In terms of: determining what is valued, how the topic is defined, the history of the topic, how it's been deployed?
Point of Departure Five: Intersectionality - Race within Gender, Queerness, and Sexuality
Example Question: How does my lesson challenge, complicate, problematize gender binaries?
A few of us tried the tool. It was used in two ways. One to help think about and plan a lesson. And also to reflect on a lesson to think about what needs to change. It can be a before or after thing depending on how you want to use it.
We created this tool and then shared it at that year’s NYCoRE conference. For the conference we created a document that allowed educators to star or check questions that they were already thinking about and circle questions they haven’t thought about yet, but would like to. We also walked them through our six week process, obviously a truncated form.
Although we created that tool, there were other things we wanted to do such as creating a summary for each category. And also create a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing document. The group had plans to continue meeting beyond the six weeks, but because of schedules we couldn’t lock down a day and time to get that first meeting going so it fell through.
For any ItAG the ability to keep meeting is there if the group wants to. For me and the ItAGs that I have co-facilitated I always let folks know that the group can continue if that is the desire, but I always sunset and hand over the role of facilitator to whoever wants to sunrise into that role. Sunrise and sunset are phrases I learned to use in that way from Color <Coded> Collective and it is my favorite. We also have an episode with them on Abolition Science Radio so you should check that out too.
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But wait, where's the data?
If we are committed to anticolonial thought, our starting point must be one of disobedient relationality that always questions, and thus is not beholden to, normative academic logics. (McKittrick, 2020, p. 45)
And so we find ourselves at another refusal. There was no data analysis in the way that academia expects it to happen. Because this was a qualitative project, that would entail me coding and looking for themes and making claims about what happened. Essentially it’s breaking down participant voices into smaller pieces and then putting it back together through a specific lens to tell a story (Viruru & Rios, 2021) In this way, researchers often mimic the colonial history of their field by invading spaces and making claims about people and social settings (Adjepong, 2019). In academia we trade data for capital, often at the expense of others (McKittrick, 2020).
For this project the data analysis was a collaborative process that happened in real time within each session between all the participants.
For me to analyze what we already analyzed would be akin to the botanists that were discussed in episode three. I would essentially be doing what European botanists did; named plants and ascribed them to categories effectively erasing the history of that plant and devaluing the way it was previously used. For me to analyze this data would be erasing work that has already been done, and establishing myself as the expert on a project that was collaborative. And I simply refuse to do that.
Refusing coding or data analysis, or approaching data analysis from a decolonial lens has been done by others. Here’s what Atasi Das has to say about data analysis and coding in reference to her dissertation process.
So I was sifting through my transcripts and memos with educators and trying to figure out how to make sense of what happened. How do I talk about that? I realized that methodologically coding and thematic coding was incongruent with my theoretical intervention, which was opposing ways that living entities are statically objectified, and instead to acknowledge a changing process. Live methods and an analytic practice of refusal, specifically by Tuck and Yang, offer a space to carry this forward tuck and yang position that codes our ways to manage and order something constructed to be meaningful. The person who is coding is the one who crafts and decides what is meaningful; after this codes are taken as is and unquestioned. And I drew inspiration from their provocations. (Das, 2022)
Having said that, I do think it’s worth it for y'all to hear two things. First, why did educators take this ItAG?
I was looking for a community of like-minded educators, a community of social justice-oriented educators that I could learn from that would push me, um, and inspire me, um, to shift my practice, shift my curriculum to be a little more radical, um, and a little less, like, regents prep-oriented.
I don’t teach at the school that I was when I was at the ItAG anymore. But in retrospect, that school was very, very test focused. And even though like in conversations, in theory, I felt like my coworkers like came into teaching, you know, because they wanted to teach for social justice or teach against the system. In practice, the school was very test focused and everybody's teaching reflected that. So I was really looking for a different perspective.
Similarly, I guess, I had been teaching Living Environment for a few years at that point, but my training was in Special Ed. I was also looking for just a different way to think about the content, a different way to think about the curriculum. Um, and because my background is not in science, I think I was, you know, open to various ideas.
I think it's rare to have an opportunity to read something and actually talk to other folks about it, um, and we would love to—you guys are all STEM people, we would love to have more of this kind what's happening in STEM, so if there's like two of us thinking about it, you know it can help the masses.
I had found a real strong community and inspiration in NYCoRE, one that I wasn't really getting from, um, the place that I was working and so, or any of the places, I guess, that I had worked. And so I really wanted to, um, continue to, to lean on that space as a community for me and, and as a bucket-filling space, um, and to hang out with like-minded folks who, you know, are dealing with similar struggles and, and have the same hopes.
But then there was another layer with this one where I was trying to get some of my straight white male science co-teachers, um, and friends to, to do work as well so wasn't always, you know, coming to me in the hallways with their questions. Or, worse, me having to go find them in the hallways (laughs) with my feedback if there was a moment of cultural insensitivity or, um, you know, trying to not carry the, the burden of translating science to be more culturally-relevant for our student population, um, 'cause I haven't found myself in a position where it was like, as co-teacher, as a special education teacher, they were the science teacher, they knew science really well and somehow I just knew the kids really well. And so I had to try to bridge that gap to, to take their brains and, and make them more, I don't know, accessible, relevant, engaging, um, so yeah, I was hoping that the space would also offer, um, other voices in that discussion as well of how to decolonize them a- with our curricular choices, with our pedagogy.
In the episode with Nati, episode two, she mentioned the community building that happens in ItAGs because teachers often feel isolated. And people want to be with like-minded folks, learning from peers, and making changes in their practice. And I think the clips you just heard speak to this function that ItAGS serve.
And the second thing I think is important to share is parts of our conversation.
I said the analysis was a collective and collaborative process that happened in real time, but what did those conversations sound like? I am going to play some excerpts from our actual sessions. Please note that I have altered the participants' voices using several different techniques. Both in what follows and in the clips I shared about why folks took the ItAG. This is to keep their identities anonymous. I am going to share a few exchanges now. But if you continue to listen after the episode closes, then there will be more audio that you can listen to.
Excerpt 1
Scott What strikes me actually about, the very bottom one strikes me as very strong. I don't think students understand how the money flows now in science and it cuts across all sciences in terms of who gets it, what's the priority, et cetera, and if there would be a unifying idea perhaps of all sciences, is, how does it work now?Uh, there's a political piece to it, um, and it's not just science for science's sake up in the ivory tower, but actually is, you know, boots on the ground, decisions are being made. And if that was understood, they start to see science as a power structure, um, good and bad. So particularly the last comment at the very bottom struck me as a way of playing it across all sciences.
Dylan Um, one way of, uh, of framing it would be like science industrial complex—
Scott Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dylan —in a way because I mean, part one for me was it, it mentioned, you know, unsettling nationalist and capitalist imperatives, and thinking about liberal multiculturalism. I see all of these as, liberal multiculturalism , as an industry because it is an industry. It's a way to sell things, it's a way to sell media, to sell products. And um, so, it's, it's almost like science is a weapon, and we need to figure out how to make this weapon kill the right people to put it bluntly.
Group (laughs)
Lydia Um, so like, so if I'm thinking about what you two just said, in practice, so not just teaching the discipline, or teaching the content but teaching how that discipline actually works. So, I'm going to teach you biology, but I'm also going to teach you how does biology in the real world work.
Participant Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Scott: Right, specifically from where I come from, is the idea of follow the money. It's really big, and it's very different from how, certain, I think many of us were taught it, and it's, it's very relevant if you will, and cuts across different lines.
Excerpt 2
Allison I mean, I think that like synthesizing thing we did was, I mean, just looking at the checks, there's like more checks on those like black ink lists—
Participant Oh Yeah. Right!
Allison — where we kind of, like, talked it out.
Participant Right.
Kira Something I noticed about three, four, and five is like each of them was like make this visible, but I personally feel like three, four, and five, like they are visible, as more like making them apparent, and like realizing that they're, like, problematic, and that, they're not, like, kind of like not, like acknowledging their existence more than like making them visible, because like they're there. Like, we know that they're there, but we don't always, like, you're not always taught that they're bad, you know?
Participant Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kira Yeah, so what I was trying to say earlier is like, so I went to an engineering school and for a while I was thinking about doing engineering, like electrical engineering, and so my counselor was always like, you know that like, there would be a lot of scholarships for you as like, as a woman, and as a woman of color. But I was like, oh, cool, that's great, but I didn't realize, like, why, you know? I didn't realize why women don't go into that field, and why, like, people of color weren't going into that field and stuff like that.
So it's like you could tell me that like it's, it's white male dominated but I don't know why. And if like, you don't like, show me the question, or like tell me the question, or like show me that it's something to question, then, then I won't. I was kind of, like, blind to it, you know? Like, it didn't seem like something that was problematic to me, it just was.
So again, those were a few excerpts from conversations that we had trying to make sense of the text. You hear us talking through concepts, agreeing, disagreeing, asking questions, pushing each other’s thinking. We were actively analyzing the text in real time. From that analysis we created the document that science educators, well, I mean any educator really, could use as their planning or reflecting on their units, lessons, classroom practices, and so on.Reminder that if you continue to listen after the episode closes out, then there will be more audio that you can listen to.
Because ItAGs are dependent on who is in the room I think it’s important to share the process of what we did and to invite you and yours to go through that process so you can experience it and develop what makes sense for y'all.
I will share more about our specific ItAG in the next episode. The episode will be structured somewhat like a tutorial but adapt as you fit.
So. Gather some friends and pick a day to meet for 6 weeks. I’ve included the opening and closing that we did for each session and how we spent our time. This is just an offering, you can choose to move through the six weeks however you like or not at all.
For those that are interested, the readings you will need to for your sessions are Editors Introduction: On Our Genesis and Future (Marquez & Rana, 2015) which is the text we focused on.This article is the intro to the first publishing of the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal. And the second reading is the Introduction to the book “White” Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies Volume 1: K-12 Education. The intro is titled The Making of a Movement, Ethnic Studies in a K-12 Context. This we used to establish some baseline understanding of ethnic studies.
Some supplies that will be useful for you if you go on this journey are markers, poster paper, chart paper if you are doing this in person, post-its, pens, pencils, a notebook.
Thank you again for tuning in!
hank you to my friends for their contributions to this episode; to Robert and Makeba for sharing their theoretical insights, to Crystal and Jo for reading quotes, to Wendy and Nicole for their insights on teaching Ethnic Studies, and to Atasi for her insights on refusing data analysis/coding. And thank you to everyone who participated in the ItAG!
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Thank you for tuning in to this episode.
For coherency and flow of narrative, I did not always name who I was citing or drawing from so please visit the transcript to see all citations and references.
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Excerpt 3
Allison I like reading aloud.
Kira
Allison The fourth point of departure is that critical ethnic studies is invested in critical theorizations of race beyond its conventional deployment as a mere descriptive sociological category of conflict. More specifically critical ethnic studies look to create a space for a) critical theorizations of race, racism, and white supremacy as foundational elements of modern social formations rather than mere conditions that have been socially constructed so as to justify exclusion or marginalization and b) trenchant critiques of how and why race and racism persist beyond questions about the racialized distri- distribution of rights and resources. And despite rhetorics of inclusion and therapeutic reform associated with the advent of neoliberalism and the postcolonial turn.
Thank you!
It's a heavy one.
Kira Seems, like, to me three was, like, uh, this is what's being covered and four is like—
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