Toward a Critical Race Curriculum

This article addresses critical race theory as a framework to analyze and challenge racism in curricular structures, processes, and discourses. Racism and its intersections with discrimination based on gender, class, language, and immigration status informs curriculum in both macro and micro ways. Critical race theory can be a guide for educators to expose and challenge contemporary forms of racial inequality, which are disguised as “neutral” and “objective” structures, processes, and discourses of school curriculum. For my purposes here, I focus on the multiple layers of school curriculum. School curriculum is not merely the information included or excluded from a textbook or in a class discussion, but it also includes the structure of the class and the processes by which students are placed in the class. Understanding that curriculum includes both formal and informal methods of presenting knowledge means that we also understand decisions are made about what knowledge is presented and who will have access to that knowledge. Thus, it is important to broaden understandings of curriculum beyond the visible materials teachers present in their classrooms to include less visible curricular structures, processes, and discourses. Indeed, this essay begins to reveal the need for educators to utilize critical race theory as a tool to analyze and challenge racism and other forms of subordination that pervade U.S. school curriculum structures, processes, and discourses. Curriculum includes what structures are in place so that specific classes are designated to present specific knowledge. Curriculum also encompasses the processes designed to place students in certain classes, wherein they are presented with specific knowledge. Furthermore, curriculum is supported by discourses that justify why some students have access to certain knowledge while others are presented with different school curriculum. Traditional curricular discourses distort, omit, and stereotype Chicana/o, Latina/o, African American, Asian American/Asian Pacific Islander, and Native