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Background/Context: Over the last 60 years, U.S. Latinxs have become the largest minoritized ethnic groups in the United States and U.S. schools, and despite progress and investments attained through activism in the streets, in the courtroom, in policy, and in research, schools chronically underserve Latinx youth, and they are as undereducated and underprepared today as they were in the 1960s. Findings like low rates of participation in early childhood programs, low graduation rates, and underpreparation for college success have led policymakers and scholars to declare that we are in the midst of a "Latinx education crisis." Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this article, I think through the late Jean Anyon's political economic "mode of study" as part of working toward a race radical approach to understanding and addressing the complexities of U.S. Latinx urban education. Setting/Population: The study takes place in the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem (El Barrio) and focuses on individuals and institutions involved in neighborhood politics and education. Research Design: The first half of this article is a theoretical analysis and discussion of Jean Anyon's mode of study. The second half is drawn from a participatory historical ethnography I conducted with the Barrio Education Participatory Action Research (PAR) collaborative (#BarrioEdProject), which was comprised of myself and two college-aged youth co-researchers from El Barrio at the time of the study (2013-2014). The research collaborative designed and implemented the study, which included a series of multigenerational interviews, archival research, and observations of public events. Conclusions/Recommendations: If we are to robustly understand and address these issues, we must engage in a mode of study that attends to the ways the combined forces of capitalism and structural racism, or racial capitalism, give shape to the urban and educational ecosystems. We need to employ ways of knowing that are historical, holistic, and justice oriented.

Still one of the fasting growing minoritized groups in the U.S., Latinxs [we are using the term Latinx rather than Latino/a or Hispanic, unless a term is used by cited resources. See Scharrón-de Río and Aja (The case For "Latinx"--And why this term matters for intersectionality--everyday feminism [magazine], 2016)], historically, have endured major socio-economic and educational crises that have produced challenges to mental health and wellness. Unfortunately, the challenges many Latinxs face are often overlooked, misunderstood and underserved. This paper is a study of high school youth who were part of the Education in our Barrios Project, #BarrioEdProject, a Philadelphia-based participatory action research (PAR) collaborative, where high school-aged and undergraduate youth work together to conduct research on issues that affect their local communities and schools. Using an ecological-feminist-Latinx framework (Heiman and Artiga in Beyond health care: the role of social determinants in promoting health and health equity, 2015; Nelson and Prilleltensky in Pursuit of Liberation and Well-being, 2nd ed. Palgrave, New York, 2010; Smith and Romero in AJOP Am J Orthopsychiatr 80(1):12-25, 2010) the authors consider how #BarrioEdProject, as a form of PAR Entremundos, function as a space to support youth mental health and address oppressive social determinants of mental health. Drawing on observations, interviews, and written responses from participants, the authors assert that #BarrioEdProject and its curriculum of conocimiento can help participants identify the kinds of trauma that young people face, and create an experience where participants are humanized, share power and develop the skills to take social action.

As the academic year of 2014–2015 began, the killing of Mike Brown, the failure to indict Darren Wilson, and the protests and contentious dialogue surrounding these events again exposed fissures that exist in society as a result of (but not limited to) the dynamics of race, class, and gender. In response to these events, and in an effort to engage in dialogue with the educators, students, protestors, and academics who were participating in these movements, the Berkeley Review of Education issued its first “Call for Conversations” (CFC). This is an edited selection of the short works first published on our website in January and March of 2014.

In the era of Black Lives Matter (#BLM), urban teacher education does not exist in isolation. The White supremacist, neoliberal context that impacts all aspects of Black lives also serves to support antiblackness within the structures of teacher education. In this article, the authors, who are grounded in a race radical analytical and political framework, share a vision of what it means to be an urban teacher who actively understands and teaches in solidarity with #BLM. The authors unpack their theoretical framework and the vision of #BLM while examining the state of teacher education in this era of neoliberal multiculturalism. The authors contemplate what a race radical, #BLM-aligned, approach to urban teacher education might look like. The article concludes by addressing ways that teacher educators must be in active solidarity with the #BLM movement to better prepare teachers who understand that the lives of their students matter within and outside of their classrooms.

What does it mean for individuals to intentionally see themselves as scholar-activists? Moreover, what does navigating a scholar-activist life mean for scholars in the early phases of their academic careers? As emerging scholar-activists the authors of this article are continuing to grapple with these questions, and in this article they present their distinct but overlapping stories of working through and overcoming the false separation of scholarship and activism. By sharing their stories the authors want to both provide readers an opportunity to find resonance in their experiences, and present some points to consider as we all define and live scholar-activism. Scholar-activism is historically situated with sights on the future. The authors have chosen to join the struggle of their predecessors in their scholar-activist work, exploring new possibilities sparked by the confluence of different generations.

The authors examined the effects of a culturally responsive teacher's pedagogy on urban low-income African American and Latino high school students' interpretations of racial diversity, racism, and individual and collective agency in U. S. history. The authors found that students incorporated instruction about the diversity and agency of people of color and the changing forms and complexity of racism in U. S. history. Students were less responsive to instruction about the diversity of white people's historical experiences and particularly their roles as an oppressed group or as members of anti-racist movements. They also had difficulty conceptualizing the difficulty or "long arm" of change in history. The authors conclude by speculating on the potential and constraints of culturally responsive teaching, as well as areas for further research. (Contains 1 note.)

In 2021, like far too many states around the U.S., educators in Pennsylvania have been forced to wade through a myriad of attacks against educating students for liberation and justice under the guise of combating Critical Race Theory (CRT). There is a fair amount of "racial policy whiplash" in educators, as many states are simultaneously incorporating culturally sustaining and antiracist pedagogies into their teacher certification requirements. We explore this racial context as teacher educators organizing in a racially and ethnically diverse department at a small liberal arts college (SLAC). We begin by naming our theoretical North Star, guided by CRT, abolition, and Yamamoto's (1997) Critical Race Praxis (CRP) approach. We then argue that a societal "possessive investment in whiteness" (Lipsitz, 1995) continues to dominate teacher education at all levels (including our own), and highlight ways our teacher education community experienced the psychological, material and curricular violence of racial policy whiplash. The second half of this paper details the self-study of our departmental effort to center antiracism and abolition in all aspects of community and concludes by advocating for a 'doubling down' on both abolition and critical race theory as ways to sustain our own work and the field of teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antiracist educators believe that education exists within a racial hierarchy and that students have a right to have their full, intersectional, pluralistic humanity affirmed. Antiracism is an ongoing collective process of learning about and working to eradicate persistent structural barriers. Likewise, teaching ethically involves a commitment to ensure learning creates equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. Antiracist education, then, is profoundly ethical for it is rooted in increasing understanding of all people's experiences and confronting social inequities that exclude individuals and groups of people from participating to their full ability. The syllabus is an entry point for a relationship between students, content, and instructor, providing a guide to action for instructors and students. Any antiracist analysis of the syllabus must consider curricular, pedagogical, and assessment choices to cultivate an antiracist ethic in the classroom. The authors provide questions and examples to raise awareness of the complexity of creating antiracist classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction to the special issue, the editors argue that struggles over the meaning(s) of race inform and are informed by educational policy deliberation and implementation. Educational policy, then, contributes to the “common sense” about race. At the same time, educational policy reflects, and is an instantiation of, that “common sense.” The editors explain how the analyses offered in this special issue serve to expand what it means to do critical policy research, and more specifically, enhance our understanding of how race acts as a powerful force in determining educational opportunities, experiences, and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the contradictory dimensions of decades of state-driven education reforms with reference to the case of Brandeis High School in Manhattan, New York City. Topics include state-driven education reforms and urban renewal programs that moved through Brandeis and through the Upper West Side over the course of several decades, and examination of how the education reforms that claimed to fix Brandeis only allowed for a continued dispossession.