Tribal Critical Race Theory Summary

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Benedict’s book addresses race and racism from different angles. Considering that she wrote during the 40’s, amidst World War II and prior to the Civil Rights movement, her book was progressive, since she challenged the social and scientific racist paradigm. She starts by defining the concept of race and explaining the meaning of race. By focusing on the Aryan and Semitic denominations, she argues that equating linguistic families to phenotypical traits is a mistaken way to aim to classify human populations since it falls short in capturing both of these characteristics. She continues by stating that race is an attempt of classifying human populations through physical and visible differences (hair type, skin color, nose shape, etc.). In this …show more content…

He defines TriCriT as position that helps resist the colonial oppression perpetuated by White Euro-Americans. He explains the 9 tenets of TriCriT, which state that indigenous knowledge is a different epistemological approach that Native Americans can use as an emancipatory tool for an education perspective that can lead to self-determination. He focuses on the education aspects of TriCriT; arguing that Native youth should be educated with emancipatory methodologies that allow them to overcome the racist constrains that colonization has imposed on them. He challenges the assumption that schooling should bolster competition and individualism, stating that as community-based cultures, teaching through methodologies that emphasize the importance of solidarity linkages can strengthen the community and support the concepts of sovereignty. In Brayboy’s et. al. piece, TriCriT is used to analyze the use of education policies to exacerbate racial inequality. In this article, the authors defend that colorblindness, because of promoting equality instead of equity, is a circular reasoning to justify white supremacy, since it reinforces the dynamics of a racial group performing better than other in school settings. They argue, that despite race being socially constructed, inequalities do not disappear by ignoring the category and propose to address it a shift in education policy, by recognizing students’’ different capacities and using cultural backgrounds and practices to reinforce the students’ abilities. They argue that these dynamics can lead to gain representation in political spheres which in turn would lead to

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