In recent years, under the guise of anti-CRT legislation, politicians nationwide have attempted, and at times succeeded, in prohibiting the teaching of race and racism in PK-12 public schools. Although these laws target a theory not taught in elementary and secondary schools, too often the voices and feelings of caregivers from marginalized…

America has been multicultural from the beginning of the country's inception. Blacks and whites have lived together throughout this history. The movies have also evolved during their history to include relations between subcultural groups, especially between Blacks and whites. Depictions of racial relations have evolved through different stages in…

Using Sealey-Ruiz racial literacy development model, this article argues that all children deserve to see their identities, experiences, and languages reflected in text. We pair this model with award-winning children's literature to deepen preservice teachers' racial literacy. Scholars have long recognized the power of children's literature in the…

Teachers regularly plan and implement lessons to facilitate student learning using a traditional lesson model where the content often progresses in a linear manner. Through our work of preparing pre-service elementary teachers to teach about race and racial injustice, we wondered if some content might be better developed using a specialized or…

Two movies about events in 1963 and 1972 are discussed. They are Rustin and Shirley. The movies concern the actions of Bayard Rustin in organizing the March on Washington for Peace and Jobs and the actions of Shirley Chisholm in organizing her campaign for the Presidency of the United States. The events took place more than half a century ago.…

Children's books play an important role in providing windows and mirrors to young people on a variety of academic content, social issues, and personal experiences. Numerous books introduce young people to the art museum. The text and illustrations of these books send messages about who belongs in museums as a visitor and what kinds of art are…

This study examined the impact of the racial justice movement that emerged in the United States after the murder of George Floyd and during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic on the discussion around equity and diversity initiatives in a predominantly White school district. We conducted thematic analyses of public communications of school…

The authors explore their use of critical race media literacy in an elective elementary teacher education course. Analysis of course work and reflexive conversations (between the authors) indicate the necessity to support preservice teachers' embodiments of critical race media literacy, racial pedagogical content knowledge, and racial pedagogical…

Dominant discourses in U.S. History are typically engaged through a settler-colonial framework. Informed by the ubiquity of commercial presentations, cultural tropes, and caricatures--movies, consumer products, and names--the "presentation" of Native Americans tend to focus on incomplete representations that are cast in the past. This…

In this article we argue that latent and explicit theories of Black insufficiency shape how achievement gaps are defined and assessed in civic education research. We engage the substantive historical and conceptual precedent for rejecting the gap framing. Our call to action demands that radical points of departure are needed to produce loving and…

In this article, the authors present a qualitative study focused on preservice teachers employing a framework using tenets of critical race theory (CRT)--permanence of racism, experiential knowledge and counter-storytelling, interest convergence, and critique of liberalism--in literature study. Drawing on critical English education, critical race…

This article reports on a content analysis of human demographics represented across the picture book collection in one university's teacher education laboratory. Drawing from an established history of the representation of marginalized groups in children's literature and prior scholarship on content analyses of similar collections, this study aims…

This conceptual article explores the use of threshold concepts to help pre-service teachers develop antiracist dispositions. Threshold concepts are "troublesome knowledge" within a discipline that serve as gateways to expanded modes of thinking about subject matter. Grappling with threshold concepts places learners in a liminal space as…

The lagging behind of underrepresented minority (URM) students in higher education, and particularly in the STEM fields, is well documented. In this paper we draw on critical race theory in education to frame and present counter-narratives of URM students in STEM fields, to explicate the function of the interactions that occur between these…

This article uses W. E. B. Du Bois's work as an education and community activist to discuss race, oppression, and speaking-back to power in this time of racialized policies enacted by the Trump administration. This article centers a comparative discussion of the racialization of democracy by presidents Wilson and Trump to show the ways Du Bois was…