“Critical media literacy utilizes media as a pedagogical tool to facilitate students’ becoming critically conscious of themselves in relation to the structures of power and domination in their world. These structures create and perpetuate multiple macro- and microforms of racism, sexism, and other forms of subordination. It is crucial to focus on the intersections of oppression, because the images are racialized, gendered, and classed, and they effect racialized, gendered, and classed communities.”

Yosso, T.J. (2002). Critical race media literacy: Challenging defecit discourse about Chicanas/os. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30(1), 52-62.

I think that anybody can agree that it feels really crummy to be labeled, judged, or committed to conform to a predetermined stereotype, especially one chosen so arbitrarily as that which is determined by skin color, class, gender, or ethnicity. As adolescent educators, it is our responsibility to respect our students enough to keep them in the know regarding the realities of the world; this unfortunately involves racism, sexism, classism, and all other forms of oppression.

We must never silence our students, especially at such a crucial stage in their development when they are struggling to establish an identity (particularly students who are facing double and triple jeopardies in that they must also form racial identities), therefore we must inform our students in order to empower them. I think that media literacy and the Critical Race Theory (CRT), if properly presented, are perfect means of educating and empowering students, while also allowing them to become cognizant and aware of their own beliefs, thus prompting action to challenge an unjust American system of oppression. Critical Race Theory was presented by Yosso as a curriculum that incorporated media clips, lecture, discourse, and dialogue, all so that students could apply theory and inquiry toward the end of challenging entertainment media’s depiction of African Americans and Chicanas/os in films (and how it negatively affects the perceptions of and opportunities for these groups of people). Rather than just blandly lecturing on the topic, or having the issue remain unspoken, Critical Race Theory and the respected curriculum engages students and immerses them within the media, having them learn theory and then apply hard-hitting questions of inequity to films of which they may actually be familiar. The results were stunning, according to Yosso’s article, for students were incensed by the depiction of their people, engendering a desire to act toward change. By exposing students to the inequality in a way in which they themselves discover it, ponder it, and become aware of it, prompting a desire to act and challenge the perception of themselves, students become empowered and realize that they possess the power to change stereotypes. This curriculum, in my opinion, is vital not only for the knowledge of which it instills, but more importantly, for the emboldening effect that it has on its marginalized students; it gives them a consciousness, a social awareness, and the realization that they have a voice (while also providing them with the tangible material to make a change).