Naming Whiteness and Examining Everyday Routines to Support School-Based Antiracist Efforts (Poster 9)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: Organizational Theory: Emergent Research (San Diego)

Abstract

As K12 practitioners and scholars fight for antiracist education, a variety of approaches are needed to address the many ways racism is manifested across the field of education. State and national resistance of antiracist education, like recent state policies banning critical race theory in schools, reinforces the need for individual school-based antiracist efforts. This paper offers Victor Ray’s theory of racialized organizations as a framework for school-based efforts, emphasizing how organizations are comprised of racialized processes. While the theory offers a few strategies to resist those processes, I argue for an elaboration of his theory. Specifically, to more successfully challenge racialization, school-based antiracist efforts should 1) explicitly identify whiteness and white norms and 2) critically examine their everyday routines.

Author

• Dominique Tunzi, Vanderbilt University