“If I Can Toot My Own Horn”: Promoting Racial Spatial Justice in White Supremacist Schools

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Transforming Social Spaces Toward Equity and Justice (Table 23)

Abstract

This paper uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) and racial spatial analysis to highlight how educators can seek racial spatial justice, where students of color not only have equal access to educational resources but also more power in the construction of classroom space. Using the example of a 10-year critical race ethnography at a public school in the southeast US, I show how taken-for-granted practices maintain schools as racial spaces, where students of color are restricted from the most valuable aspects of schooling. I also show how a collaborative approach to CRT and racial spatial analysis can help teachers disrupt the racialization of space and construct classrooms that more fully center the lives, experiences, and knowledge of students of color.

Author

• Benjamin Blaisdell, East Carolina University