# Tara J. Yosso

Tara J. Yosso is a professor at the University of California, Riverside. Her research and teaching focus on critical race theory and critical media literacy, with an emphasis on educational access and opportunity.
Yosso has contributed to numerous interdisciplinary and collaborative chapters and articles, published in academic journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities.
She received the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Diversity and Excellence in University Teaching and was recognized with the Derrick Bell Legacy Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association.

## Biography

Yosso is a first-generation college student who grew up in San Jose, California. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in an individual major she designed, Social Psychology of Education with an emphasis in Chicana/o Studies from the University of California–Los Angeles in 1995. Yosso earned her Ph.D. in Education: Urban Schooling with a specialization in Chicana/o Studies with an emphasis in Visual Sociology in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California–Los Angeles in 2000.
Professor Yosso joined the Graduate School of Education as a recruit from the University of California, Riverside, hired to focus on scholars working with diverse U.S. populations who are part of the "Américo Paredes," meaning those from “Greater Mexico”. Before this appointment, she was a professor at the School of Education and a faculty affiliate in Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan.
Before her time at the University of Michigan, she was an assistant and then associate professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

## Selected publications

Yosso's dissertation, A Critical Race and LatCrit Approach to Media Literacy: Chicana/o Resistance to Visual Microaggressions, linked racial microaggressions, stereotype threats, and the intersectionality of racialization for Latina/o students in film portrayals. Her 2009 Harvard Educational Review article continued this analysis of microaggressions in a critique of the assimilationist models used in higher education student affairs and Latina/o educational experiences.
Her co-authored publications describe how a counter-storytelling methodology can illuminate individual and shared educational experiences. Her 2006 book, Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, applied this method to examine Chicana/o experiences from elementary through graduate school, embedding critical conceptual and theoretical content within an accessible counter-narrative format. She criticized interpretations of dismal academic statistics with composite characters who personified data themes and patterns. In 2008, the American Educational Studies Association awarded Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline the Critic's Choice Award.
Her article, “Whose Culture has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth” questions deficit interpretations of Pierre Bourdieu and cultural capital theory. Yosso's article mentions that through shifting our lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color and considering their experiences in a critical historical light, we can document various forms of capital nurtured through cultural wealth including aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital. These forms of capital draw on the knowledge students of color bring with them from their homes and communities into the classroom.

## Legacy

In 2022, the Color of Change organization named the Award for Excellence in Counter-storytelling in Education award after her.

## Selected work

* Solórzano, D.G. & T.J. Yosso. (2002). “Critical Race Methodology: Counter storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Educational Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 8(1), 23–44
* Solórzano, D.G., M. Ceja, & T.J. Yosso. (2000, Winter/Spring). “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 69(1/2), 60–73
* Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. (2007). “‘This is No Slum!’: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Community Cultural Wealth in Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32(1), 145–179
* García, D.G., & T.J. Yosso. (2013). “‘Strictly in the Capacity of Servant’: The Interconnection Between Residential and School Segregation in Oxnard, California, 1934-1954.” History of Education Quarterly 53(1), 64–89
* Yosso, T.J., W.A. Smith, M. Ceja, & D.G. Solórzano. (2009, Winter). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates. Harvard Educational Review 79(4), 659–690
* Yosso, T.J. (2002). “Critical Race Media Literacy: Challenging Deficit Discourse about Chicanas/os.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 30(1), 52–62
* Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. (2010). “From Ms. J. to Ms. G.: Analyzing Racial Microaggressions in Hollywood’s Urban School Genre.” In, B. Frymer, T. Kashani, A.J. Nocella II, & R. Van Heertum (eds.). Hollywood’s Exploited: Public Pedagogy, Corporate Movies, and Cultural Crisis (pp. 85–103). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
* Yosso, T.J. & C. Benavides Lopez. (2010). “Counter spaces in a Hostile Place: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Campus Culture Centers.” In, L.D. Patton (Ed.). Culture Centers in Higher Education: Perspectives on Identity, Theory, and Practice (pp. 83–104) Sterling, VA: Stylus.
* Smith, W.A., T.J. Yosso, & D.G. Solórzano. (2006). “Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses: A Critical Race Examination of Race-Related Stress.” In, C.A. Stanley (Ed.). Faculty of Color: Teaching in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities (pp. 299–327). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing, Inc.
* Yosso, T.J. & D.G. Solórzano. (2005). “Conceptualizing a Critical Race Theory in Sociology.” In, M. Romero & E. Margolis (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities (pp. 117–146). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.
* García, D.G., T.J. Yosso, & F.P. Barajas. (2012). “‘A Few of the Brightest, Cleanest Mexican Children’: School Segregation as a Form of Mundane Racism in Oxnard, CA, 1900-1940,” Harvard Educational Review 82(1), 1–25.
* Yosso, Tara J. (2005). "Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth" (PDF). Race Ethnicity and Education. 8 (1): 69–91. doi:10.1080/1361332052000341006. S2CID 34658106.