Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowships and Supporting Activities: Racial/Ethnic Subjectivity and Grassroots Community Organizing

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The purpose of this post-doctoral fellowship research project is to conduct a comparative analysis of how African American and Mexican American grassroots organizations in Austin, Texas struggle against institutional racism manifested in various levels of the education system. Through an ethnographic approach, the fellow will conduct a series of interviews with community activists to outline the political tactics and strategies created by working-class people of color in order to secure equal access to education. The fellow will also carry out participant-observation in particular school settings and interview school officials. He will work within a theoretical framework that illuminates the impetus for transformative social change to be rooted in social movements that overtime induce policy responses by the State and institutional change. The fellow will benefit from further training in policy analysis and institutional practices, and, for this reason has planned the research project in close collaboration with several interdisciplinary senior scholars working at the School of Social Work and the Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The project can increase minority representation in the social sciences by enhancing understanding of the mutually productive relationship that can develop between researchers and activists of color who share similar concerns and objectives. This project will hopefully not only draw researchers into minority communities in a collaborative role, but also draw minority activists towards the university and the important contributions that formal education can make to community-based struggles.