Race, Law, and Speculative Fiction

RésuméCet article étudie les problèmes liés au régime international encadrant le mouvement transfrontière de déchets dangereux. Il est souligné que d'importantes brèches existent dans ce régime car, historiquement, les intérêts des pays industrialisés ont prédominé les politiques au détriment des pays en développement qui sont le plus souvent destinataires des déchets. Afin de mieux comprendre pourquoi, ce régime est examiné sous l'angle de la théorie critique sur les races (Critical Race Theory – CRT), une théorie qui défend notamment la nécessité de tenir compte du contexte dans lequel le problème se situe, au-delà du cadre du juridique qui n'est guère défini et modifié par les affranchis. Une première partie du texte expose l'importance du problème ainsi que les principes deCRTqui serviront comme outils d'analyse. La deuxième partie aborde les mesures internationales, régionales et bilatérales et vise à identifier certaines brèches du régime dans la perspective deCRT.Enfin, trois sujets sont suggérés à considérer lors de futures négociations: l'amélioration du régime de consentement informé préalable; l'établissement d'un mécanisme pour créer un fonds international; et des instances judiciaires envisageables pour régler les litiges.

Teaching (Cooperative) Business: The “Bluefield Experiment” and the Future of Black Business Schools

The term “speculative fiction” has three historically located meanings: a subgenre of science fiction that deals with human rather than technological problems, a genre distinct from and opposite to science fiction in its exclusive focus on possible futures, and a super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating “consensus reality” of everyday experience. In this latter sense, speculative fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but also their derivatives, hybrids, and cognate genres like the gothic, dystopia, weird fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, ghost stories, superhero tales, alternate history, steampunk, slipstream, magic realism, fractured fairy tales, and more. Rather than seeking a rigorous definition, a better approach is to theorize “speculative fiction” as a term whose semantic register has continued to expand. While “speculative fiction” was initially proposed as a name of a subgenre of science fiction, the term has recently been used in reference to a meta-generic fuzzy set supercategory—one defined not by clear boundaries but by resemblance to prototypical examples—and a field of cultural production. Like other cultural fields, speculative fiction is a domain of activity that exists not merely through texts but through their production and reception in multiple contexts. The field of speculative fiction groups together extremely diverse forms of non-mimetic fiction operating across different media for the purpose of reflecting on their cultural role, especially as opposed to the work performed by mimetic, or realist narratives. The fuzzy set field understanding of speculative fiction arose in response to the need for a blanket term for a broad range of narrative forms that subvert the post-Enlightenment mindset: one that had long excluded from “Literature” stories that departed from consensus reality or embraced a different version of reality than the empirical-materialist one. Situated against the claims of this paradigm, speculative fiction emerges as a tool to dismantle the traditional Western cultural bias in favor of literature imitating reality, and as a quest for the recovery of the sense of awe and wonder. Some of the forces that contributed to the rise of speculative fiction include accelerating genre hybridization that balkanized the field previously mapped with a few large generic categories; the expansion of the global literary landscape brought about by mainstream culture’s increasing acceptance of non-mimetic genres; the proliferation of indigenous, minority, and postcolonial narrative forms that subvert dominant Western notions of the real; and the need for new conceptual categories to accommodate diverse and hybridic types of storytelling that oppose a stifling vision of reality imposed by exploitative global capitalism. An inherently plural category, speculative fiction is a mode of thought-experimenting that includes narratives addressed to young people and adults and operates in a variety of formats. The term accommodates the non-mimetic genres of Western but also non-Western and indigenous literatures—especially stories narrated from the minority or alternative perspective. In all these ways, speculative fiction represents a global reaction of human creative imagination struggling to envision a possible future at the time of a major transition from local to global humanity.

[A four volume collection of canonical and cutting-edge writing in the field of critical race theory.] Critical Race Theory (CRT) offers an account of society based on systemic, deep-rooted racist oppression that saturates our commonsensical judgements to such an extent that all but the most extreme racism appears normal and unexceptional, simply ‘business as usual’. CRT is one of the fastest growing and most controversial fields of contemporary social theory, and education is the discipline where its most dynamic and challenging work is taking place. Now, answering the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of this sometimes shocking and often contentious body of thought, Routledge announces a new title in its Major Themes in Education series. In four volumes, Critical Race Theory in Education provides a unique ‘mini library’ that encompasses the very best CRT scholarship in education. As with other titles in the series, the collection’s hallmark is its combination of the canonical and the cutting edge: every selection is either an established ‘classic’ or significantly challenges and advances thinking on current issues. The first volume (‘Tenets of Critical Race Theory in Education’) sets out the core themes that distinguish the CRT approach. Volume II (‘Whiteness and White Supremacy’), meanwhile, explores the construction and maintenance of assumptions and practices that take for granted the elevated status of white people’s interests and perspectives. The third volume (‘Global and Specific: CRT Off-shoot Movements’) focuses on the development of CRT as an approach with an international reach, while simultaneously retaining space for distinctive developments that prioritize individual social groups within their particular historic, cultural, and economic contexts. The collection’s final volume (‘Doing CRT in Education’) is dedicated to questions of method, ethics, and praxis in the everyday struggle to advance research and effect genuine anti-racist change amid systems that normalize racism and deny the legitimacy of race-conscious scholarship. David Gillborn, the editor of the collection, is recognized internationally as a leading scholar of race inequity in education. He was one of the first writers to apply CRT outside North America.

While critical race theory is a framework employed by activists and scholars within and outside the confines of education, there are limited resources for leadership practitioners that provide insight into critical race theory and the possibilities of implementing a critical race praxis approach to leadership. With a continued top-down approach to educational policy and practice, it is imperative that higher education leaders understand how critical race theory and praxis can assist them in utilizing their agency and roles as leaders to identify and challenge institutional and systemic racism and other forms/manifestations of oppression (Stovall, 2004). In the tradition of critical race theory, we are charged with the task of operationalizing theory into practice in the struggle for, and commitment to, social justice. Though higher education leaders and leadership programs are often absent in this process, given their influence and power, higher education leaders need to be engaged in this endeavor.The objective of this edited volume is to draw upon critical race counter-stories and praxis for the purpose of providing higher education leaders-in-training and practicing higher education leaders with tangible narratives that demonstrate how racism and its intersectionality with other forms of oppression manifest within higher education. An additional aim of this book is to provide leaders with a working knowledge of the central tenets of critical race theory and the tools that are required in recognizing how they might be complicit in the reproduction of institutional and systemic racism and other forms of oppression. More precisely, this edited volume intends to draw upon and center the lived experiences and voices of contributors that have experienced racism in higher education. Through the use of critical race methodology and counter-storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), contributors will share and interrogate their experiences while offering current and future higher education leaders insight in recognizing how racism functions within their respective institutions, and how they can address it. The intended goal of this edited volume is to translate critical race theory into practice while emphasizing the need for higher education leaders to develop a critical race praxis and anti-racist approach to leadership.

In this paper, I explore how American Buddhist and Catholic religious communities are dealing with racism both within and outside of their communities by analyzing two projects through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). The Buddhist project is Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities, which aims to promote racial diversity in American Buddhist sanghas. The Catholic project is Open Wide Our Hearts, The Enduring Call to Love: A Pastoral Letter Against Racism, which aims toward spiritual conversion and social activism. I analyze how each project defines racism, how they approach the problem, and how they envision the role of tradition and the community in perpetuating and ameliorating racism. By analyzing these two projects, I demonstrate how religious communities could benefit from CRT as a critical theoretical framework for their racial projects.

is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, and inflame them to think straight, if possible.--Robert M. Hutchens I signed up for Dr. Lisa Merriweather Hunn's Critical Race Theory course, expecting just another summer class with an enormous amount of reading crammed into five short weeks. I had no idea that this course, more than any other I have ever taken, would change my view of society, the world, and myself. The subject matter required a trip deep below the surface layers of my conscience, character, and worldview, to a place in my mind that even I am only vaguely aware. The course almost did not happen because only four people signed up for it. After some discussion within the department and insistence on the part of Dr. Merriweather Hunn, Critical Race Theory was allowed to continue on its maiden voyage, and I doubt if anyone realized how important it would be for the instructor and the students. In fact, by the end of the five-week course, we all agreed that it should become a requirement for graduate students in the Adult, Higher, and Community Education program. There Are No Innocents The first class hit the ground running with a racial autobiography assignment due the first week. I knew I had a lot to say about how race and racism affected my life, so I approached this assignment with interest and confidence. However, I soon realized that the experience of writing about my life and race was an emotional journey that would prepare me for the rest of the course. As I wrote, I began to remember experiences regarding race and racism that I had forgotten. These memories included racism I have experienced from individuals as well as instances of societal racism. I also remembered instances of my own racism. My memories raised questions for me about my life and how I formed my own views on race. This assignment should always be the first assignment in a course focused on Critical Race Theory because it gives students a place to start thinking about racism and oppression, both in society and in their personal lives. As many of the Baby-Boomer generation have done, I marched on Washington, DC for equal rights, participated in many protest demonstrations, and tried to live my life in a way that denounced racism and oppression. However, as I wrote about my encounters with racism, I remembered some of my own racism as well as that of my family. I began to realize that I was responsible for some of the racism in our society. This realization made me very uncomfortable and the discomfort led to some defensiveness and disappointment in myself. Later, as the class members read about and discussed whiteness, I began to feel anger more than any other emotion. For a white person, thinking about whiteness is something like thinking about breathing. It most certainly exists, but it is such a part of the fabric of everyday life in America that it is difficult to describe or analyze. Many times as I read the assigned articles, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief when I could say, That is awful, but I don't do Then, usually only a few paragraphs further, I read about a racist or an example of privileged behavior that I am guilty of doing or thinking. I had to put the readings down and walk away from my anger many times during this part of the course. We kept our thoughts in journals and this excerpt illustrates my pain and anger when confronting white privilege and oppression: I am still a member of the dominant race; I can't change that. I still get some privilege; therefore, I need to think seriously about what whiteness is. Some of the readings make me very uncomfortable and leave me feeling that it is hopeless. No matter what I do, it is wrong. Other readings made me feel like I was being put in a category; I am not a member just because I have that fish-belly white skin. …

How do we challenge anti-Black racism within the social work curriculum? As a requirement of all BSW and MSW programs, Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) coursework provides students with foundational knowledge about human development that is essential to theory-driven social work practice. Traditionally, conceptions of human development center the experiences of white, heterosexual, cis-gender young people and label other identities as “divergent” or “diverse,” thereby devaluing the lived experiences of marginalized populations and reducing disparities to a misjudged application of “equal opportunity.” Centering the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) within HBSE course curricula enables us to examine the impact of race and racism upon human development and to challenge anti-Black racism. This article will expand commonly used frameworks (e.g., ecological systems theory, life course theory) to consider how CRT helps us understand the impact of race and racism on human development, and specifically on the development of Black youth. We explore recent frameworks that center Black youth’s experiences and highlight the impact of racial stress and trauma on development from infancy to adolescence. Five social work educators of an MSW HBSE course offer examples of class activities and assignments that enabled students to apply CRT to HBSE topics.

Critical race theory (CRT) was developed to examine the persistence of racism. This literature review attempts to understand CRT as it has been applied in related fields such as higher education and possible reasons for its limited application in adult education theorizing about race and racism. This analysis of CRT is framed against a backdrop of the evolution of an adult education discourse on race and racism over several decades and distinguishes CRT from other racial theories that have been used in the field. CRT tenets are discussed using examples that demonstrate how CRT reveals areas of racism left untouched by other forms of theorizing. The author provides a critique of CRT, caveats for those adult educators who might choose to use it, and examples of areas within the field of adult education that might benefit from a CRT lens.

I will outnumber you. I will outbillion you. I am the spectacle in the forest. I am the inventor of rubber. I will outrubber you. Sir, the reality of your world is nothing more than a rotten caricature of great opera. --Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo In 1927, Henry Ford bought approximately 2.5 million acres of Amazon rainforest in the northern state of Para, Brazil, where he established a sizeable rubber plantation. (1) strived to be an all-inclusive, neocolonial system, extending the plantation infrastructure beyond sawmills and processing plants to include US-style hospitals, schools, white clapboard houses, and even recreational facilities such as a motion-picture theater and an eighteen-hole golf course. As documented in the company's archives, the Ford rubber plantations in Brazil worked to fulfill a Fordist fantasy of bringing modernity and to the almost impenetrable tropical jungle. (2) In her speculative fiction Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), Asian American writer Karen Tei Yamashita excavates this largely forgotten scene of US imperialism in Brazil and extrapolates from such imperial legacies what might happen to the Amazon when a valuable, rubbery, and possibly alien resource is unearthed during an age of global restructuring. In Through the Arc, disavowed imperial legacies such as Fordlandia resurface in mutated forms that haunt Yamashita's near-future speculations. By unearthing these buried histories, I place Through the Arc's historical extrapolations in critical dialogue with a long line of science that have worked on behalf of European and US empire-building to render the resource-rich jungle available for imperial conquest and expansion. Through the Arc intervenes in and disrupts imperialist fantasies of an uninhabited and virginal jungle, unruly, in need of outside regulation, and ripe and available for development. While speculative narratives about the tropics have often served projects that capitalize on the alienation and exoticization of indigenous peoples, I suggest that Yamashita offers her own speculations on the Brazilian Amazon to quite different ends. At once a cautionary tale of deforestation, exploitative labor practices, and abusive extraction of natural resources on the part of an avaricious first-world capitalist machine, Through the Arc critiques the historical amnesia that often accompanies progress narratives and what Maria-Josefina Saldana-Portillo has called fictions of development (752). Set in the rainforests of Brazil and featuring a Japanese Brazilian protagonist, Through the Arc recently garnered attention from Asian American scholars looking to complicate the US national formation of Asian American Studies. (3) In her reading of Through the Arc, Rachel Lee highlights how Yamashita's work broadens definitions of Asian to include Asian diasporas to Latin America (Americas 121). Lamenting the book's characterization by reviewers as magical realist, satirical, and futuristic, but never a work of Asian American literature, Lee asserts that Through the Arc is in fact an Asian American text, future-fitted for a post-nationalist conceptualization of Asian (113). In this essay, I emphasize the importance of reading Yamashita's work not only as Asian American literature, but also as science fiction--or, more accurately, as what writer and critic Nalo Hopkinson has termed science fiction. (4) Distinguishing their own work from science fiction's frequent fascination with exploration, conquest, and strange encounters, Hopkinson and Yamashita both take interest in telling stories that take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it (Hopkinson 9). Extrapolated from lived experiences of alienation, abduction, and space and time travel, postcolonial science fiction such as Yamashita's Through the Arc formulates near-futures that call attention to imperial legacies of exclusion, exploitation, and displacement. …

One of the major focuses of European Union law is combating discrimination in order to ensure equal participation in society for all Union citizens. Coming to grips with racism through the law, and the use of the term «race», is problematic for many societies and within the EU, has been left to the member states to resolve in a manner consistent with the traditions and legal systems of the member states. This article examines the Swedish approach to the use of the term «race» through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This legal theory explains many of the inconsistencies in the Swedish legal approach to racial discrimination. The most dramatic of these inconsistencies as examined here are those with respect to the intent of the Swedish (and EU) legislator and the case law in which the Swedish Labour Court has consistently not found racial or ethnic discrimination in working life.

Background/Context There is a growing body of literature about the educational experiences of students who are African immigrants in U.S. schools. This study looks closely at a Ugandan immigrant's educational experiences in the U.S. as well as the laws and policies that preempted her education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this study is to examine the disconnect between the rhetoric and practice of second language/bilingual laws in one school district in a Midwestern state, with regard to the experiences of an African immigrant whose has a diverse linguistic background. Research Design This study is crafted through a critical race theory lens and applies critical policy analysis to understand current practices. Using autoethnography, we provide a first-person reflection on the lived experiences of a young African immigrant student and her family. Then, drawing on critical race theory in concert with critical policy analysis, we examine the implementation and practice of second language/bilingual laws and policies in the state of Illinois. Findings/Results We find that the discourse and rhetoric surrounding second language/ bilingual laws and policies on federal, state, and local levels do not align with actual practices in school districts and classrooms. We describe how the lack of coherence between discourse and practice has contributed to delimiting an African immigrant student's access to mainstream language and linguistic education and other academic opportunities. Conclusions/Recommendations We conclude with recommendations to improve bilingual services to speakers of African languages: acknowledge that some African immigrant students possess a diverse linguistic background; address and challenge the dominant attitudes that deprive African immigrant students of a quality educational experience. We call upon administrators and policymakers to evaluate and correct the disconnect between second language/bilingual laws and policies. We recommend that cultural competence be central to second language/bilingual laws and policies throughout the planning and implementation processes.

The Racial Horizon of Utopia: Unthinking the Future of Race in Late Twentieth-Century American Utopian Novels

Acknowledgments Foreword Preface I A. What Is Critical Race Theory? B. Early Origins C. Relationship to Previous Movements D. Principal Figures E. Spin-off Movements F. Basic Tenets of Critical Race Theory G. How Much Racism Is There in the World? H. Organization of This Book II A. Interest Convergence, Material Determinism, and Racial Realism B. Revisionist History C. Critique of Liberalism D. Structural Determinism III A. Opening a Window onto Ignored or Alternative Realities B. Counterstorytelling C. Cure for Silencing D. Storytelling in Court E. Storytelling on the Defensive IV A. Intersectionality B. Essentialism and Antiessentialism C. Nationalism versus Assimilation V A. The Black-White Binary B. Critical White Studies C. Other Developments: Latino and Asian VI VII A. Right-Wing Offensive B. Postracialism and a Politics of Triangulation C. Power D. Identity VIII A. The Future B. A Critical Race Agenda for the New Century C. Likely Responses to the Critical Race Theory Movement Glossary of Terms Index About the Authors

This article examines how “Black names” have become a trope for deficit beliefs about Black people in the United States and about Blackness more broadly. In data from two qualitative studies conducted with one group of African American secondary students and second group of African American alumni from a historically black college, participants’ narratives of everyday life reflect the impact of racialization and the extent to which members of both groups attempt to circumvent racialization in their personal and professional lives. The authors identify naming as a cultural right that is threatened within the Black community. They use the principle tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) alongside discussions of “race” in a sociolinguistic analysis of participants’ discussions of race and naming. The authors take up CRT’s call for narrative as a critical component for revealing and analyzing the significance and impact of race. Findings from the study illustrate that African Americans struggle with naming and the implications for Black names that influence personal choices they make regardless of their age, education level, and socioeconomic status. There is a consequential aspect to Black names that imposes challenges in refracting the deficit constructions of Blackness that are attached to them.