publications

The Center for Critical Race Studies in Education (CCRSE) at UCLA's inaugural Research Briefs Series was released in June 2016 with a total of five issues.  In June 2017 the second CCRSE Research Briefs Series was published with an additional six issues. As of 2022, a total of 20 Research Briefs have been published, they explore: cultural intuition, racial battle fatigue, racial microaggressions, critical race history methodology, community cultural wealth, internalized racism, muxerista portraiture, critical race counterspaces, Asian American Critical Race Theory, critical race educational history, critical race spatial analysis, Chicana/o student activism in Los Angeles, intersectionality, holistic critical race pedagogies, and racial microaffirmations. Please click on the learn more button under each brief to download.

Dolores Delgado Bernal

University of Utah

Cultural intuition, deeply informed by Chicana feminist scholarship, was first introduced to the field of education in 1998 to reimagine the notion of theoretical sensitivity (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Working from a Chicana feminist episteme, Delgado Bernal (1998) proposed that cultural intuition, the unique viewpoint that many Chicanas bring to the research process, draws from personal experience, collective experience, professional experience, communal memory, existing literature, and the research process itself.

William A. Smith

University of Utah

One of the most significant and persistent concerns for Communities of Color is the effect of racism. People of Color are constantly stressed from the burdens of defending their humanity and existence. Rarely are the diversities and intersectionalities of their humanness considered, as they are forced to respond to how dominant White society sees and treats them: as a racial group only. For example, a socially identified Puerto Rican woman might see herself not only at the intersections of race and gender but also at intersections of class, physical impairment, sexuality, phenotype, ethnicity, and languages.

Kenjus T. Watson                                  &                            Lindsay Pérez Huber 

University of California, Los Angeles                     California State University, Long Beach

Racial microaggressions are a form of systemic racism that (a) are verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color, often carried out automatically or unconsciously; (b) are based on a Person of Color’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and (c) are cumulative, taking a physiological, psychological, and academic toll on those targeted by them (Pérez Huber & Solórzano, 2015a; 2015b).  

Lluliana Alonso

University of California, Los Angeles

William Tate’s (1997) seminal article posed an important question to the field of education by asking “do we in education challenge ahistorical treatment of education, equity, and students of color?” (p. 235). Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education (Solórzano, 1998) as a framework, this research brief illustrates innovative methodological approaches using primary sources to unearth and examine the historical educational experiences of Students of Color. Specifically, it highlights the educational trajectory of Consuelo Rivera, a Chicana student within UCLA’s Graduate School of Education in the first half of the twentieth century.

              Tara J. Yosso                                    &                                     Rebeca Burciaga

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor                                               San José State University

Critical race theory (CRT) is a dynamic interdisciplinary framework used to identify, analyze, and challenge the ways race and racism intersect with multiple forms of subordination to shape the experiences of People of Color (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Informed by critical community and academic traditions naming race as a social construction, scholars have applied CRT to the field of education to closely examine and change the very real social consequences of racism within and beyond schools (e.g. Zamudio, et al., 2011; Parker & Stovall, 2004). 

      José M. Aguilar-Hernández                         &                     Dolores Delgado Bernal

California State polytechnic university, pomona       California state university, los angeles

In the spring of 2018, two anniversaries were commemorated in the history of Chicana/o/x student activism in Los Angeles, California: the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Blowouts and the 25th anniversary of the 1993 hunger strike for a Chicana/o Studies department at UCLA. Although separated by time and space (the blowouts were in Eastern Los Angeles and UCLA is in Westwood) both events are part of a broader history of resistance, demonstrating that Students of Color are historically committed to resisting racial inequality in educational institutions.

Mary Senyonga

University of California, Los Angeles

Intersectionality as a methodological, analytical, and liberatory tool has sharpened our naming of multiple forms of marginalization. While Kimberle Crenshaw (1989, 1993) is rightfully credited with coining Intersectionality through addressing Black women’s employment experiences and other Women of Color’s experiences with domestic violence, it is imperative that we recognize the long history of this articulation of marginalization. Within the Black feminist tradition, Black women have named the liminal space of being called to action on behalf of racial or gender liberation while our liberation is relegated as adjunct to others’ (Combahee River Collective, 1977).

Heidi M. Coronado

California Lutheran University

Critical Race Pedagogies (CRPs) allow us to engage in liberatory pedagogies for students who have historically been at the margins (Lynn, 1999). As a formerly undocumented, first-generation, Guatemalan student and academic with Mayan roots, I have seen society’s assimilationists ideologies demand marginalized populations to adhere to specific norms based on colonial legacies that are often enforced through Euro-centric curriculum, policy, and pedagogical practices in schools (Lynn & Dixson, 2013). I argue that a CRP allows us to combat the continued trauma-inducing silencing of the voices and experiences of Students of Color (Smith-Maddox & Solórzano, 2002; Yosso, 2005).

Lindsay Pérez Huber

California State University, Long Beach

Critical race researchers have theorized and documented the varied ways that racial microaggressions are used to keep those at the racial margins in their place (Pierce, 1970). Racial microaggressions are (1) verbal and/or non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color, often carried out in subtle, automatic or unconscious forms, (2) layered, based on race and its intersections with other subordinated social identities and, (3) cumulative, taking a psychological and physiological toll on People of Color when experienced over a lifetime (Pérez Huber & Solórzano, 2015). Naming racial microaggressions disrupts the normalized existence of racism and white supremacy, and recognizes the structural inequities and collective pain they cause (Freire, 1970). Equally important, is theorizing and creating a language for the everyday strategies of affirmation and validation that Communities of Color engage as a response to racial microaggressions. This brief seeks to begin this theorizing.

Michelle Téllez

University of Arizona

Chicana M(other)work is both a conceptual framework and a call to collective action that responds to the gaps in the Chicanx educational pipeline that begin in elementary school and continue to affect the life chances of Chicanx students. This brief focuses on Chicanas in higher education who are not adequately represented in the literature by paying particular attention to the inequities experienced by Chicana and Latina mothers who are both seeking advanced degrees and academic appointments after graduate school.

kihana miraya ross

Northwestern University

While Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a theory of race and racism more broadly, it enters the fields of both legal studies and education (at least implicitly) as a Black theorization of race. In other words, in its initial formulation, CRT specifically attempts to make sense of and respond to anti-Black racism. In response to a perceived Black-white binary in CRT, other “racecrits” emerge such as LatCrit, AsianCrit, and TribalCrit; these “crits” serve to address the specificity of racial oppressions faced by non-Black People of Color. The absence of a BlackCrit then, either meant that CRT was considered the same thing as a Black critical theory, or that a theory of race and racism was enough to encompass the experiences of Black folks in the United States. Although CRT may have privileged the experiences of African Americans at its inception, in conceptualizing BlackCrit, my colleague Michael Dumas and I, problematize the notion that CRT could (or should) suffice for theorizing blackness and antiblackness.

Yadira Valencia, German Aguilar-Tinajero, Eva Amarillas, Joel Calixto, Katy Maldonado & Julio Reyes

University of California, Los Angeles

This research brief hopes to reach institutional agents and advocates who wish to implement research programs and resources for undocumented, first-generation, low-income undergraduate students—through the critical and intersectional lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT). By intentionally creating programs through CRT, we can see how students’ multiple identities and lived realities impact the research they develop, and the processes needed to support students through their research and graduate school endeavors. Yadira Valencia, was fortunate to be the coordinator for the UndocuBruins Research Program at UCLA from 2014 to 2018. It is critical to support the trajectories of undocumented scholars; especially when they are still barred from federal and state resources. This brief discusses UndocuBruins and the ways in which using CRT has and will continue to center the lived experiences of undocumented students.

Dolores Calderón

Western Washington University

Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit) was developed by Bryan Brayboy as a framework to understand the complex experiences of Indigenous peoples in education. Influenced by Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the law and the subsequent application of CRT in educational work, TribalCrit addresses both the racialized and unique political status of Indigenous peoples as members of sovereign nations. TribalCrit is guided by 9, inter-related tenets:

Janay M. Garrett

University of Pennsylvania

In this research brief I outline what I call the Critical Race Socialization (CRS) of Black Children, inspired by my master’s thesis, a qualitative project exploring how Black activist mothers aligned with the #BlackLivesMatter movement resist racism through childrearing (Watts, 2018). This theorizing of Black motherhood through CRS is fashioned from key threads of Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), Pedagogies of the Home (Delgado Bernal, 2001), Oppressed Family Pedagogy (Hughes, 2005) and the Cycles of Socialization/Liberation (Harro, 2000).