**Working Title: It's About Race: A Dialogue**

**Among Adult educators**

Vanessa Sheared, Stephen Brookfield, Scipio Colin, III, Juanita
Johnson-Bailey, & Elizabeth Peterson (editors)

**Introductions \-- Kitchen Table Dialogue**

The purpose of this book is to provide the field of Adult and Continuing
Education with a dialogical model regarding: the discussion of race and
racism (socio-cultural, socio-historical and intellectual) from social,
educational, political and psychological perspectives and to articulate
a conceptual challenge to the ethnocentric focus of the discussion. As
early as 1897, DuBois noted that our histories are interconnected by how
we see ourselves as groups through the lens of race. And while we might
attempt to ignore race as being a factor, it inevitably has served to
define how we operate and communicate with each other as individuals and
within groups. He stated "...the history of the world is the history,
not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he
who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores
and overrides the central thought of all history."

Over the course of the last 15 years, discussions on college and
university campuses and at national and international conferences in
adult education have been undertaken about the importance of including
multiple and varied perspectives, ideologies, and racial groups in our
research, courses and publications. Throughout many of these activities,
adult and continuing education as a field of academic study has been
characterized as a field committed to addressing the educational needs
of the underserved and those that have been economically, socially, or
politically disenfranchised. While there has been a commitment to
addressing these issues, there has been limited attention given to how
race and racism plays a role in how and why individuals are in these
situations. And while some would argue that race and racism are not
mitigating factors, we believe that race and racism as DuBois noted in
1897 is a factor and must be examined if we are to change how we
interact and communicate with one another. Moreover, we think that
engaging in discourse about this, might lead to changing structures and
systems of oppression and marginalization as experienced by those whose
realities and possibilities may be determined by the color of their
skin.

So while much attention has been given to inclusion, diversity, and
multiculturalism within adult education, we believe that, we have yet to
engage in a dialogue specifically about race or racism and the impending
effect these factors have on the marginalization or oppression of groups
and individuals within the multiple educational, political or corporate
settings that they find themselves needing to navigate. Given the
relative invisibility of race and racism in the field of adult education
and the impact of these factors upon the teaching-learning context, the
Adult Education literature and the field has yet to problematize these
factors. For the most part, these factors are to often ignored or
relegated to the dialogical sidelines. The field has tended to engage in
what we would describe as being an act of intellectual ethnocentrism.

So as Outlaw in general and Brookfield (2002) specifically have noted,
the field of adult education is racialized in favor of predominant
Eurocentric perspectives, and as such has heretofore has been unwilling
to create a dialogical context and to seriously consider how and in what
ways other culturally grounded intellectual racializations could
positively influence theory, practice and research (Colin, 1988). To
take a racialized view of something is to view the intellectual world
through the distinctive lens of a racial group's lived experiences
(Sheared, 2000) and to assess the educational value relative to the
expansion of the field's knowledge base and the impact on practice.
(Brookfield 2002).

Clearly, adult educators must be challenged to "practice what they
preach" and engage in a critically reflective process in examining their
own racial identity and how it shapes their worldview. To that end the
purpose of this book will be to offer adult education scholars, as well
as those engaged in research and teaching about race with an opportunity
to engage in a discourse about race and racism and: 1) how these factors
have been examined through multiple theoretical frameworks; 2) how it
has effected one's lived experiences at work, home and within
educational settings; 3) how it has served to privilege some and not
others and; 4) to offer an exploration into how these factors need to be
centered in a discourse and perspective that can provide those in the
margins as well as in the center with ways to think about creating
changes in their classrooms, communities and homes. In fulfilling this
purpose, this book is divided into the following five sections:

CONTENTS

I.  **Theoretical Responses to Race and Racism**

This section offers a discussion on the diffusive nature of power and
positionality and how systems of oppression have produced and structured
the inequalities in our society and our educational system. This section
will focus on how a particular theoretical perspective like critical
race, latino/a critical theory, postmodernist or structuralist,
constructivist theory or theories, have attempted to assess and reflect
on race and racism within the field of adult education. This chapter
will focus on how these multiple and /or varied theoretical perspectives
have been used to analyze and assess how race and racism effect the ways
in which we live, communicate and operate within our learning, work and
personal spaces within adult education.

**III. Problematizing "Whiteness," Supremacy, and Privilege: It's Impact
on Race**

This section offers a critical examination about how "whiteness,"
supremacy and privilege intersect and effect how race and racism are
addressed and experienced within their personal, professional and social
lives. A discussion about how their silence or potential silence or
their critiques about race and racism have either served to control or
perpetuate the silence of the "other" will be undertaken. In addition to
this a discussion about how one's group membership effects the way one
thinks and talks about race and racism. Finally this chapter will
address why it is imperative for this discussion to occur in order to
aid the field of adult education develop a better understanding about
how these factors have effected or will effect the field of practice.

**IV. Reframing the Field Through the Lens of Race**

This section focuses on the paradigmatic perspectives on race and racism
and how paradigms that specifically focus on centering race and racism
can help change or reframe the ways in which we teach, learn and work
within adult education. It offers an analytic and interpretive framework
on race and racism that can be utilized in research, scholarship and
practice.