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"We Were Being Undermined": Resistance to Teachers' Racial Justice Work in a Suburban High School

Tue, April 9, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Floor: 800 Level, Hall F

Abstract

Megan was in her fifth year of teaching at Oak Meadows High School (OMHS) – a suburban district in the Midwest. After reading Despite the Best Intentions (Lewis & Diamond, 2015) she and her colleague, Angela, organized a year-long book study on race and education with the tacit support school administrators. Midway through the book study sessions, the two organizers began to experience resistance from administrators who were concerned about the discussions in the meetings. Disillusioned by the lack of administrator response, both teachers left to work in other school districts the following school year.

In this paper, we use this case as a window into issues of race, leadership and equity. As schools are changing, teachers and administrators are forced to grapple with a complex mix of challenges and opportunities. Just as the teachers in the book study were dealing with race, class, and inequality, these issues were playing out in the very processes in which they were engaged.

Theoretical Perspectives
The paper is framed by two constructs that help us understand how racial inequality is perpetuated in education – opportunity hoarding and white fragility. Opportunity hoarding (Tilly, 1998) is the process through which groups (e.g., whites) seek to maintain control over the distribution of educational resources. This process has been shown to have a chilling effect on efforts to challenge white supremacy in schools (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Lewis-McCoy, 2014). Opportunity hoarding helps us frame efforts by teachers and administrators to undermine the critical examination of racial inequality at OMHS.

We also frame this resistance to the explicit discussion of race outcomes in the high school as a form of white fragility – the process through which emotions of anger, guilt, frustration and behaviors of avoidance and argumentation undermine racial discourse and maintain white comfort (DiAngelo, 2018). While the school was changing demographically, it is still a majority white space with nearly 70% white students and over 90% white teachers. Such contexts are breeding grounds for various manifestations of white fragility.

Data Sources & Methods
Believing that this was a potentially generative context for examination, the research team collected documents from the school, observed and generated fieldnotes from all eight teacher-led book study sessions, reviewed teachers’ online reflections on the book and the sessions, and interviewed 20 teachers who participated in the meetings (including the group facilitators).

Results
Over the course of the year, participants built trusting relationships, engaged in meaningful conversation, and generated a set of recommendations for racial equity at OMHS. As time passed, however, school administrators began to withdraw their support, questioned teachers’ intentions, and undermined their work. As a result of these negative experiences, Megan and Angela left the school for new jobs at the end of the school year.

Significance
During the past thirty plus years, we have seen major demographic shifts in suburbs (Frankenberg & Orfield, 2012). This paper extends the ongoing effort to understand how issues of race and educational outcomes are addressed in the context of this demographic transformation of suburban schools.

Authors