Applying CRT, finally.

After last week's reading of CRT history, I was glad to see that the book finally moved to a discussion of how these theories might be used. Chapter four provided many interesting examples, such as the Trainor's work on "white talk" in the English classroom. This portion of the book really helped answer some of the questions we brought up in class last time, including how white privilege can be invisible yet always present. From my own experience, I have seen this type of "white talk" and it was interesting to see how these experiences I have had might be studied in depth using a larger framework. The book then moves on to a few key methods that might be used, including critical policy analysis where a researcher might look at government policies. Interestingly, chapter four also brought up several problems or critiques of CRT, which I think helped me in determining what constitutes CRT; specifically, I was really interested in this concept of the
"inside/out" relationship, where a person from a dominant group might erroneously consider themselves outsiders "within" a marginalized group. This is another phenomena that I have seen play out in many courses I have taken, where students have difficulties dealing with books written by people of color. In our attempts to relate to historically "minority" groups, it's extremely easy to fall into this trap where our supposed celebration of diversity instead becomes a way to point out differences. One thing that comes to mind for me is how teachers tend to use African-American history month to focus on issues that should really be dealt with year-round. I have no problem with the concept, but I do agree with the book that emphasizing the importance of African-American authors might also be inadvertently "exoticizing' these works. 

Chapters five and six also helped me better understand these concepts, because they gave concrete examples of how CRT might be applied both properly and improperly. For example, as a teacher and tutor, I can see how CRT is the perfect lens to adopt to look at language and literacy in marginalized groups. There is definitely an undercurrent of racism in these policies, and CRT would allow for a much more robust discussion than most of the other approaches we have studied. The use of the term "other children" in literacy policy seems like a perfect example of how we can use a CRT lens to identify systemic racism. By contract, the book showed us how CRT might be improperly applied within gender and queer studies. On a personal note, I've always found Queer studies extremely insightful because these critiques lay out ideas that surprise me. That being said, the book's discussion of the problems in equating the queer experience with the African-American experience seemed to me a perfect example of an improper use of CRT. It concerns me that some researchers try to adopt the same methodology of dealing with queer studies as is used in studies of race or ethnicity. These populations are different for many reasons, and it did make me uncomfortable when the book detailed writers who have in the past conflated these concepts. This was glad to see the book get into these kinds of specific examples, because it really helped me conceptualize what CRT does and does not encompass.