This article focuses on some languaging that occurred during a race event within a literacy lesson involving a racially White, female adult and a racially Black, male child. I analyze an excerpt from this race event, illustrating an approach to race analysis which might be useful to the field of urban education. I ask, “What is the racial significance of this teacher’s language during literacy instruction?” In other words, I am pursuing what a practice theory of race might allow us to know when this alternative account of race is used to examine an observed episode of teaching. Accordingly, I introduce practice of race theory (PRT) and report my race critical discourse analysis of one teacher’s observed instructional language. Findings are relevant to literacy instruction, and future literacy research is recommended, especially in urban education.

When I look back before 2020, before the murder of Mr. George Floyd in particular, and think about this special issue, “Black Lives Matter in Literacy Research,” a question comes to my mind: Are we, the field of literacy research, sure that we want to include literacy research among the incalculable responses (already in progress) to racist killings, anti-Blackness, Black living and dying, and ongoing injustices in the United States of America? In other words, will Black human beings matter to our field? With the hope that our field of literacy research is finally taking this racial turn as an institution, I introduce the post-White orientation as well as practice of race theory (PRT) and argue for the lifelong development of racial literacies among fellow literacy researchers. In short, this article is designed to support the development of racial literacies in the field of literacy research with the aim of affecting research, practice, and policy.

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