From deliberation to counter-narration: Toward a critical pedagogy for democratic citizenship

Best practices in civic education emphasize deliberative pedagogies as one of the most powerful ways to educate enlightened democratic citizens. Yet deliberative pedagogies are rooted in a white normative ideal of discursive democracy that, in the service of "civility" and "reasoned discourse," fails to account for the social and political inequalities-the logic of white supremacy-that structures our political context. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and Charles Mills's notion of the racial contract, I propose a pedagogy of counternarration that privileges voices from the margins, imagines the world as it could be, and talks back to dominant narratives in order to cultivate justice-oriented citizens in the democratic classroom.