Tara J. Yosso

Tara J. Yosso is professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. Her research and teaching draw on the frameworks of critical race theory and LatCrit Theory, a discipline focused on examining the intersections of race, law and power. Yosso’s research focuses more specifically on how the intersections of race, class, gender, language, phenotype, accent and immigrant status affect access to educational equity. (https://ccrec.ucsc.edu/profile/tara-yosso-phd). Her current research on critical race media literacy analyzes racial microaggressions evidenced in film portrayals of Latinas/os in school. Her research has been published in journals such as History of Education Quarterly, Radical History Review, Race Ethnicity and Education, Qualitative Inquiry and the Harvard Educational Review.

Biography

Yosso received her Bachelor of Arts in an individual major, Social Psychology of Education with an emphasis in Chicana/o Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995. Yosso proceeded to receive her Ph.D. in Education: Urban Schooling Specialization in Chicana/o Studies with an emphasis in Visual Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000.

Shortly after earning her Ph.D., Yosso was hired as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of Chicana and Chiacano Studies in 2001. In 2003 Yosso was also appointed as an adjunct assistant professor to the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education in the Department of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Yosso became an associate professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and an adjunct associate professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education’s Department of Education in 2007. In 2015, Yosso accepted a professor position in the School of Education at the University of Michigan.

Selected publications

In 2006 Yosso published her first book, Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. Through this work Tara Yosso rejects the racialized myth that the low educational outcomes at every schooling level are related to issues of race and ethnicity for Chicana and Chicano students. Using a ‘counterstorytelling’ methodology, Yosso changes the discourse of Chicana/o student achievement by emphasizing the historical patterns of institutional structures that neglect non-traditional student narratives. Yosso cites empirical data, theoretical arguments and personal narratives to support her argument of the effect racial biases in the United States education system have on the construction of access and opportunity for Chicana/o students. Her book offers alternative methods of conceptualizing challenges and possibilities along the Chicana/o educational pipeline. Her book has been cited over 500 times including books such as Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (2011) by Victor M. Rios; Race, Whiteness and Education (2009) by Zeus Leonardo; and Chicano Students and the Courts: The Mexican American Legal Struggle for Educational Equality (2008) by Richard R. Valencia. In 2008 the American Educational Studies Association awarded Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline the Critics Choice Award.

Her article, “Whose Culture has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth” published in 2005 has been cited over 1900 times. According to the abstract to the publication, the article “conceptualizes community cultural wealth as a critical race theory (CRT) challenge to traditional interpretations of cultural capital. CRT shifts the research lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color as places full of cultural poverty disadvantages, and instead focuses on and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged. Various forms of capital nurtured through cultural wealth include aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital. These forms of capital draw on the knowledges Students of Color bring with them from their homes and communities into the classroom. This CRT approach to education involves a commitment to develop schools that acknowledge the multiple strengths of Communities of Color in order to serve a larger purpose of struggle toward social and racial justice.”