This paper argues that implicit racial bias regarding black males is a manifestation of a long trajectory of Western racial memory and anti-blackness where black males have been considered subhuman or as human kinds. The author draws from theological, scientific, and social science literature to illustrate how racial discourses have historically…

Since the 1990s numerous scholars have highlighted a variety of diverse and complex issues impacting the education of Black males. Interestingly however, the public discourse about Black males in the news media and educational discourse tend to still report the experiences of Black males in one dimensional ways, not accounting for the complexity…

The field of curriculum studies has a history of looking at its own past, summarizing and synthesizing the trends and patterns across its foundations. Whether through synoptic texts, historical analyses, or edited collections, the field's foundational retrospection typically traces a lineage of curriculum studies that runs through various…

Drawing from the lenses of critical race theory (CRT) and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus, this article compares the Jackie Robinson story with the Brown versus Board of Education narrative. This juxtaposition illustrates the similarities of these narratives and how interests converged racially. By comparing these historical narratives, we…

Drawing from the work of "cultural memory" and "racial formation theory" (Omi and Winant 1994) we explore the ascension of Barack Obama as an illustration of how "race" is understood and remembered. This article focuses on the public media discourse of the 2012 Obama re-election to illustrate how the narrative morphed…

Drawing from the theories of racial formation theory and race marking, this chapter explores the durability of racial discourses in school curriculum over time in the United States. The authors' inquiry focuses on racial discourses located in two sources of curricula knowledge: children's literature and U.S. history textbooks.

This paper proposes that as a way to broaden the theoretical and historical context of social studies foundational literature and curriculum history, attention must be given to issues of race and racism related the experiences of African Americans. First, race and racism should be used as an analytical tool to examine longstanding foundations…

Drawing from Michel Foucault's notion of "useful" and "dangerous" discourse coupled with the theory of racial knowledge, this article examines how two common counter-discourses about African-American students operate and create racial knowledge in education practice. By "counter-discourse", the authors refer to knowledge, theories, and histories…

This article examines the Black male crisis thesis promulgated by the social science literature, public policy, and mainstream discourse, respectively. The authors contend that the stock-story that the majority of African American males are "at-risk" for engaging in self-destructive behavior or on the verge of extinction perpetuates a discourse of…

In the United States, race--perhaps more than any other sociocultural factor--is the most challenging and complex to understand (Omi & Winant, 1994). Much of this difficulty stems from the powerful yet often unacknowledged role that race has and continues to play in the U.S. context. Race is without a doubt a complicated, contentious, and highly…

In this article the authors interrogate the historical meaning of the African American soldier in order to widen the discussion of race and citizenship in the field of social studies education. The article has two overarching purposes. First, the authors attend to the recent call in the field of social studies for a more rigorous analysis of…

Background/Context: Recent racial incidents on college and high school campuses throughout the United States have catalyzed a growing conversation around issues of race and racism. These conversations exist alongside ongoing concerns about the lack of attention given to race and racism in the official school curriculum. Given that the field of…

This article examines how African American scholars during the early twentieth century employed the genre of curriculum writing to challenge existing discourses of race. Drawing from the findings of a qualitative document analysis of textbooks created by Carter G. Woodson and Charles H. Wesley, this article illustrates how these authors used texts…

Drawing from the theoretical lenses of cultural memory and critical race theory, we examined how elementary level and middle school level social studies textbooks represent the history of racial violence directed toward African Americans and resistance to this violence in the U.S. Using a literary analysis method, we found that textbooks often…