Teaching Solidarity: Critical Race Reading

Malini Johar Schueller, University of California Press 2026

Critical race theory has been targeted for bans in forty-nine states and subjected to a flurry of legislative acts surveilling its teaching at all educational levels. I argue that this censorship is fueled by a fear of racial solidarity. Against promulgators of Stop Woke legislation who want students to “sleep” rather than wrestle with uncomfortable questions of responsibility, this book offers a discomforting methodology called critical race reading—as both theory and practice—while putting the current moral panics in historical context. It shows how critical race reading which challenges readers to awaken to questions of racial privilege and hierarchy not through comfortable racial identification but racial reckoning fosters solidarity with social justice movements. High School and university instructors will find this book useful because it demonstrates how teaching literature can be connected to racial and social justice. The book includes a syllabus as well as examples of critical race reading.