Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education

Does the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States prove that critical race theory is not true, or at least has overstated its contrarian claims that racism is permanent?" This is the question that co-editors Ladson-Billings, Gillborn and Taylor (2009) pose in their foreword to Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education (p. ix). In a recent New York Times article, Westen (2011) has suggested that Obama failed expectations because he has not told the right story. Westen (a professor of psychology) explained that we come to expect certain stories, usually centered around heroes and villains, and that that the kind of story that Americans were hoping to hear from Obama would have provided a clear alternative to the dominant narrative of the right. With Obama, "there was no story-and there has been none since" (p. SR, 6). Meanwhile, here in Canada, Stephen Harper is said to be systematically spinning a revisionist Canadian story, one that undermines the long-held Liberal narrative of Charter, flag, peacekeeping and multiculturalism and that revolves instead around conservative symbols of: the Arctic, military, national sports and, especially, monarchy (Taber, 2011, p. A3). Foundational to critical race theory (CRT) is stories. The truth about stories, Indigenous writer and scholar Thomas King (2003) says, is that they are all we are. Stories convey what we believe; what we imagine and experience, as well as insulate us from what we don't want to think about. Writing about the Canadian treatment of Indigenous peoples, Thomas King is not a card-carrying critical race theorist, but his method of counter-story telling, by combining critical analysis with personal storytelling, is in keeping with CRT, the foundational tenets of which are addressed in this edited volume. One of its key tenets is storytelling.