The authors provide a collective counter-narrative of the movement at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) to resist educational policies that have negative implications for students, particularly students of color, and threaten Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies. The authors contextualize the movement that erupted in the fall of 2017 at CSUN within the struggles of the 1960s to transform higher education by establishing Ethnic Studies. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Critical Race Theory in education, the authors maintain that, in its best iterations, Ethnic Studies is praxis that empowers communities to create transformative social change.

This article examines Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun by exploring the conflict between a traditionally Southern, Afro-Christian, communitarian worldview and certain more destabilizing elements of the worldview of modernity. In addition to examining the socio-economic problems confronted by some African Americans in the play, this article investigates the worldviews by which these Black people frame their problems as well as the dynamics within the relationships of a Black family that lives at the intersection of racial, class, and gender inequality in Chicago during the latter 1950s.

This article explores case examples of two graduate students who endure microaggressions from their math professor at a predominantly White university. The role that parental socialization plays in how these students developed their racial identities and the coping strategies they employed, is analyzed through the lens of Triple Quandary theory (Boykin and Toms 1985). Findings from this investigation suggest that parental socialization is critical in preparing these students to cope with and respond to microaggressions in protective and adaptive ways. This paper illuminates coping styles, although divergent, that served these graduate students' needs and protected their individual racial identities. Further, the support these students received from their faculty advisor who is also Black, exemplifies the importance of mentorship and advocacy from faculty of color to Black college students' success. Direction for continuity in parental teachings for K-12 and university level educators are discussed.

This paper evaluates students' arguments for a color-blind society to avoid discussions related to the continued existence of racism in USA culture. Relatedly, this writer finds that as an black woman her status as facilitator in the classroom is directly challenged, on occasion, and that race and gender play a primary role in students' perception of classroom material and how she is perceived. Classroom discussions related to historical texts reveal that structures of domination have slanted perception of black and white people in U.S. culture. Finally, a key to open dialogue about race and racism, primarily for white students, is to explain and demonstrate the invisibility of whiteness or white privilege in American society.

Skin-tone has always played a role in the socioeconomic lives of African-Americans, and while there are always successes, there are also those who are not as fortunate. A major success for African Americans has come in the shape of the election of the nation's first AfricanAmerican President, Barack Obama, and, by extension, the first African-American First Lady, Michelle Obama. Among the cries of happiness and hope after the election, there lingers a feeling among many Americans whether Barack Obama would have been elected if he were darker rather than lighter skinned. Though the question is rhetorical at this point the question is nevertheless one asked in many American households. Even after the election and inauguration of the first Black President and the subsequent entrance of the first Black Family into the White House, many critics wonder whether the United States is still a nation absorbed in skin-tone prejudices or has, in the words of the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., truly “overcome” them. With such a question in mind, the position of the First Lady becomes a precarious one. While she is not principally responsible for guiding the fate of the nation, her role is a visible one, which makes her presence in the public eye an important one nonetheless. Historically, the First Lady is expected to embody ideals of womanhood such as virtue, beauty, grace, and honor to the nation at large. Up until this point, these ideals have been expressed to young women in this nation as coterminous with the concept of “whiteness.” More pointedly, will images of beauty shift away from narrow Eurocentric standards because a Black First Family resides in the White House?

It is not just that the limits of our language limit our thoughts; the world we find ourselves in is one we have helped to create, and this places constraints upon how we think the world anew.

I grew up in an all white suburb, well, almost all white. There were two black families that literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks. Two large run-down old houses sat within five feet of the rumbling trains. Sometimes my family drove past those houses in our old station wagon. On days that our drive was interrupted by a crossing train, I would watch the barefoot black children playing by the street. I never thought of our suburb as being segregated, at least not until I was in high school.

Much of the activity in the 1960s revolving about civil rights reflected the belief that racism was a personal flaw which could be corrected by the proper adjustment of federal laws to give substance to the promises of citizenship. George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and Bull Connor all personified racism with their determined efforts to prevent blacks from achieving full citizenship rights and their excesses spurred them to action when it was believed that with the power of the federal government curbing the activities of a few die-hard racists discrimination would finally be conquered. The emphasis on personal attitudes obscured the deeply ingrained institutional views of race which had systematically discriminated against minority groups for decades. Correcting individual patterns of behavior, people believed, would also cure institutional practices since it was apparent to everyone that institutions were ultimately composed of people.

The issues addressed in this paper relate to racism within the helping process. We will base our discussion on the premise that racism is an illness and should be regarded as such wherever it emerges in the helping process, whether or not this relates directly to the client's reasons for seeking help. The discussion will also be based on the converse, i.e. that concerns of clients about race relations, their interest in establishing positive interracial relationships or in effecting change on some level, should be regarded as healthy and positive, not as “symptomatic” of hidden pathology.