Perm do both – an analysis of the Model Minority and the 1AC is key to unferstand racist ideologies and language – and how they get constructed

Critical race theory emphasizes the social, political and historical implications and contexts of race and racism in the USA, centralizing the perspectives of people of color (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). This approach has made useful interventions into public discourses, originally appropriated from the field of legal research. Since 1995, this theoretical framework has provided much needed insight into the lived experience of race and racism through the use of ‘counter-narratives’. These first hand accounts of racialized experiences subvert mainstream knowledge because the latter has rarely acknowledged institutional investments in race and racism. Counter-narratives by racial minorities not only help subjects to ‘name one’s own reality’ but they provide alternative, sometimes contradictory perspectives to Eurocentric or White American views. In addition to centralizing marginalized accounts of the effects of race and racism, critical race theorists recognize the larger social and historical landscape that informs these experiences. Social policies, however, have increasingly incorporated these narratives about disenfranchisement and inequality to further educational reform agendas that extend, rather than challenge, the logic of racism in the US educational system. For instance, data on racial disparities in schools have been used to support NCLB, which researchers have argued does not rectify but, instead, exacerbates inequalities. Although stressing the importance of counter-narratives from marginalized students is a critical challenge to the history of racial subjugation in education, the fact that these narratives can be incorporated institutionally, or worse co-opted, may be a red herring, necessitating critical discussions.3 Perhaps in lieu of narrating from the position of the racialized subject to demonstrate the effects of racism, an approach that centers on the formative role of the state and its policy mandates in shaping these racial identities may be more helpful.4 More directly, I advocate for an analysis of the constitutive relationship between racial fantasies, state policies and racial formations. Fantasies, Verhaeghe (1999) explains, are the means by which reality——including our perceptions and relationships——is constructed. That is, they do not merely operate as escape mechanisms from difficult worlds. On the contrary, they shape worlds. In this sense, it is important for policy pundits and scholars not only to evaluate the effects of policy on racial groups per se, but also to critically analyze the racializing effects and racial motivations behind educational policy. Scholars should analyze not only the material effects of racism and race, but also the effects of racial ideology. Leonardo (2005) writes about the pervasive role that ‘racial ideology’ plays in shaping subjectivities and social relationships (p. 406). Every subject is informed and constituted through the inescapable ideology of racism. Emphasizing the role of racial ideologies challenges race-conscious scholars to examine race as part and parcel of racial ideology, beyond reason, unconsciously adopted and performed. This type of emphasis does not discount the empirical data on racial inequalities in education, but explores how race is not only a social or historical construct, but one inscribed by language and projections. Traditional discourses on race and schooling draw from concepts of race that are often based upon fossilized conceptions of race, what David Marriott (2007) calls, ‘racial imagos’ (p. 208). When one looks at the ideological machinations of critical race theory in education, racial subjects are presumed to pre-date racist acts. However, Marriott’s attention to ‘racial imagos’ challenges this approach to move beyond materiality and to analyze the centrality of racial fantasies, particularly the anti-Black fantasies which he argues are inextricably haunted by the history of slavery. Adding Lacanian psychoanalysis to theories of race and educational policy may help to elucidate how racial fantasies and legal mandates inform one another and their effects.