Literacy Matters - Vol 21 - Winter 2021

and Van Sluys (2002) reviewed 30 years of professional literature that focused on critical literacy and found several common dimensions suggesting critical literacy can do the following: • Disrupt a common situation or understanding—where students can gain perspective by understanding the text or situation in a different way. • Examine multiple viewpoints—where students are encouraged to think about texts from the perspectives of different characters or from those not represented in the text. • Take action and promote social justice— invite students to determine a course of action to bring about change in an inappropriate, unequal power relationship between people. (Lewison, et al., 2002, p.8). Moreover, Wilson and Laman (2012) believe critical literacy is about creating opportunities for critical conversations that allow students to learn about the stereotypes, prejudices, beliefs, or deficit thoughts about marginalized populations of people. Park (2012) suggests critical reading involves much more than just reading the text for a literal comprehension, but reading and understanding the world. Critical reading can be most relevant and powerful if individuals unpack the texts and explore the words they are reading as the text relates to the world they live in. Hence, critical literacy’s transformative potential in the classroom can serve as an essential catalyst in students’ developing their own use of language to challenge injustice in the world. Through discursive practices and challenging the norm, critical literacy equips students with the language and knowledge they need to make personal responses and to assume the social responsibility to resist injustices in their lives (Christensen, 2000). The next paragraph will explore critical literacy at the intersection of race and address what racial literacy is and why it is vital for helping students understand texts on a critical level. Critical Literacy and Race Critical literacy with a focus on race is essential to incorporate in the classroom. Epstein and Gist (2016) believe a critical focus on race provides opportunities to understand how power and privilege are situated within a racialized lens. Students who can unpack can promote empowerment and social justice in the classroom. Social justice in the classroom minimizes the acts of racism. Social justice promoted in the classroom could eventually lead to social justice outside of the school, including, but not limited to, the neighborhood, the community, and even the world. Students come to the classroom with preconceived prejudices and biases about culturally and linguistically diverse people. Davilla (2011) emphasizes that when teachers skip over, avoid, or omit critical discussion around certain aspects that are brought up in texts, they may be inadvertently reinforcing prejudices and certain values. Suppose a teacher stops a conversation around race or does not engage in a conversation out of avoiding the issues. In • Focus on sociopolitical issues—where students examine power relationships between and among individuals.

that case, students may think that their prejudices or biases are okay (even if it is unintentional). Therefore, promoting critical conversations around race in the classroom helps all students become critically conscious and broaden their knowledge base. When discussions are held about different populations of diverse members of society and students are exposed to counter-narratives told by people of different races, it affords students to see diverse people painted in a positive light and see them as assets instead of deficits. This allows students to begin to form their own opinions of a population unknown to them. There appears to be limited opportunities for students to engage in these conversations on such a deep level and begin to understand things critically. Some students may also not even know that their own beliefs are hurtful because that is how they were raised or what they were socialized to believe. Furthermore, Flynn (2012) states engaging in texts from a critical perspective allows for power structures to be analyzed from various perspectives. Students who begin to notice the power differentials and the systemic and oppressive structures at play can decide to be a part of the solution and make a difference due to being transformed by what he or she has read. Teachers who engage in becoming racially literate and incorporating racial literacy in their classrooms can help students think critically about various texts. What exactly is racial literacy, and what role does it play in potentially transforming teaching and developing critical consciousness among students from all backgrounds and beliefs? Racial Illiteracy vs. Racial Literacy According to DiAngelo (2012), racial illiteracy includes discomfort that stems from engaging in authentic dialogue with people of color and denial of both racial inequalities and how individuals benefit from systemic White dominance in society. Being racially illiterate prevents us from building and sustaining authentic relationships across racial lines. Addressing this work in classrooms is an essential task because prior research has revealed that teachers’ implicit biases negatively affect instruction (Hollingworth, 2009). The most notable study that showed students’ preference for certain races was the Doll Test conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark. During this test, the majority of the Black students preferred the White doll with yellow hair, assigning positive traits to it. Meanwhile, most discarded the brown doll with black hair, assigning it negative traits. The researchers concluded that Black children formed a racial identity by the age of three and attached negative traits to their own identity, which were perpetuated by segregation and prejudice, which proved that children as young as preschool exhibit racial bias and a preference for Whites (Shutts, 2015), yet attitudes toward race evolve when students are engaged in racial literacy lessons (Lazar & Offenberg, 2011; Sealey-Ruiz, 2013). Thus, addressing racial illiteracy through literacy instruction is critical (Boutte, Lopez-Robertson, & Powers Costello, 2011; Sealey-Ruiz, 2013). Teachers of all races and ethnicities, especially White teachers, must be willing to be vocal allies and advocates for students and families of color, actively addressing racial illiteracy through anti-racist education while promoting

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