Critical Race English Education

Book excerpt: Johnson’s visionary and much-needed book is a call for the transformation of English education to embrace rather than reject Blackness. Confronting the context of heightened racial violence against Black youth that continues to sweep across the United States, Johnson illuminates the interconnection between the physical and symbolic violence that unfolds in and outside the classroom and demonstrates the harm this causes to Black youth. Employing an original framework, Critical Race English Education, Johnson reveals how English education and ELA classrooms are dominated by eurocentric language and literacy practices, and provides a justice-oriented framework that combats anti-Black racism. Throughout the book, Johnson disperses love letters to Blackness, Black culture, and Black people, which serve as actions and practices for positive thinking and self-awareness about Blackness. Critical Race English Education is a movement for Black lives. A crucial resource for pre-service ELA teachers, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, and sociology of education, this book offers classroom lessons, thematic units, sample activities, and other pedagogical and curricula practices that reconceptualize ELA pedagogies in humanizing ways and cater to the needs of students who come from racially and linguistically diverse backgrounds.