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

这一博士后研究项目的目的是对德克萨斯州奥斯汀的非裔美国人和墨西哥裔美国人基层组织如何与教育系统各个层面上的制度性种族主义作斗争进行比较分析。通过人种学的方法，这位研究员将对社区活动家进行一系列采访，概述有色人种工人阶级为确保平等接受教育而创造的政治策略和战略。该研究员还将在特定的学校环境中进行参与者观察，并采访学校官员。他将在一个理论框架内工作，阐明变革性社会变革的动力植根于社会运动，这些运动长期引发国家的政策反应和体制变革。这位研究员将受益于政策分析和机构实践方面的进一步培训，为此，他与德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校社会工作学院和达纳中心的几名跨学科资深学者密切合作，规划了这一研究项目。该项目可以通过加强对研究人员和有着相似关切和目标的有色人种活动家之间可以发展的互惠关系的理解，增加少数群体在社会科学中的代表性。这一项目有望不仅将研究人员吸引到少数群体社区中发挥合作作用，还将吸引少数群体活动家来到大学，并了解正规教育可以为社区斗争做出的重要贡献。

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.