Critical Race Talk in Teacher Education through Movie Analysis From Stand and Deliver to Freedom Writers

In an attempt to enact equitable practices in U.S. public schools, many critical multicultural and anti-racist theorists, researchers, and practitioners strongly suggest that teacher educators move beyond diversity approaches to multicultural education in their teacher preparation programs to address the more uncomfortable issues of power and equity—namely, racism (Banks & McGee-Banks, 2006; Lee, Menkart, & Okazawa-Rey, 2006; Nieto & Bode, 2008; Sleeter & Grant, 2007). Banks and McGee-Banks (2006), for example, argue that multicultural education must go beyond the “contributions approach,” wherein educators merely insert discrete ethnic heroes, holidays, and cultural artifacts into the already existing curriculum. Nieto and Bode (2008) similarly argue that while it is important to sensitize students to one another by teaching about their diverse cultural and linguistic knowledge, this approach alone fails to examine underlying asymmetrical relations of power that produce inequitable outcomes in our schools and society. At the same time that discussions about racial inequities are essential to have with teacher education students,