Critical Race Media Projects: Counterstories and Praxis (Re)Claim Chicana/o Experiences

This article maps out two critical race media projects – a documentary and a Chicana/o-centric student newspaper – developed by Chicana/o scholars seeking to fulfilll the promise of praxis hailed by critical race theorists. Fortified and guided by the quintessential tenets of critical race theory and Latino critical race theory, these critical race media projects not only apply, but also extend these principles to seek educational and community transformation. As such, the production process for both documentary and student newspaper merge research and activism in order to cultivate figurative and literal spaces that encourage and allow for the recuperation of memory, archiving forgotten history, and the self-determination of contemporary identities and belonging. By harnessing critical race theory’s counter story-telling focus, these projects cultivate the voices of resistance and reclamation in Latina/o communities, transcending the Black/White paradigm that bounds a majority of critical race scholarship. In addition, both the film and quarterly newspaper uniquely sharpen the theoretical framework’s analytic critique of language, discourse and representation, exemplifying the inimitable power of words to both heal and wound.