This article will provide the theoretical and conceptual grounding for forthcoming discussions regarding how critical race theory (CRT), as a discourse of liberation, can be used as a methodological and epistemological tool to expose the ways race and racism affect the education and lives of racial minorities in the United States. To that extent, the goal is threefold. First, the authors seek to adequately define CRT by situating it within a specific socio-historical context. Second, they seek to present an argument for why there is a need for CRT in educational and qualitative research. In doing so, they discuss the ways concerns regarding race and racism have or have not been addressed previously in educational research. Finally, they speculate about what lies ahead. In doing so, they fully assess the possible points of agreement and conflicts between CRT and qualitative research in education.

Black men have remained largely absent from the educational discourse on teachers and teaching. Even more important, their perspectives have not been fully considered in the debates over what constitutes culturally relevant classroom practice. In this article, portraits of the teaching lives of three Black men who worked as full-time teachers in urban schools in California are drawn. The portraits outline the teachers’ entree into teaching, their views on pedagogy, and their culturally and racially sensitive pedagogical practice.

In this article, the authors critically synthesize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an emerging field of inquiry has been used as a tool of critique and analysis in K-12 education research. The authors point out that CRT has been used as a framework for examining: persistent racial inequities in education, qualitative research methods, pedagogy and practice, the schooling experiences of marginalized students of color, and the efficacy of race-conscious education policy. The authors explore how these studies have changed the nature of education research and stress the need for further research that critically interrogates race and racism in education.

In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. (Blackmun, 1978, cited in Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, 438 U.S. 265, 407) Without Affirmative Action it's segregation all over again. What's next, a Jim Crow Law? (African American female high school student, in letter to Judge Friedman,

This article explores the connectivity of research and theories of African American emancipatory pedagogy to Critical Race Theory (CRT). In doing so, the guiding principles and maxims of CRT as an emergent ethical and moralistic discourse on race and racism in the law will be briefly outlined. Next, the premises of CRT will be used to analyze ethnographic interviews conducted with eight African American teachers. The interview data will then be used as a manner in which to articulate a Critical Race Pedagogy.