“No Space for Race”: Advanced Placement as a Racialized Organization and a Culture Trap

• In Event: Racialized Tracking: Interrogating the Structures, Culture, and Policies That Produce Inequality

Abstract

Scholars of education and race have long considered the Advanced Placement (AP) program for its capacity to invite more racially minoritized students into college preparatory coursework. How these courses shape ideologies of race has received less attention. This study leverages the theory of racialized organizations and interviews of AP students and teachers at a school serving working-class Filipinx, Latinx, and Black students to understand how being in AP shapes students’ understandings of race. The AP program was a racialized organization that manifested as a culture trap for students. Devoid of substantive conversations about systemic racism in AP curricula, the students believed that cultural differences between Filipinx and non-Filipinx students explained racial disparities in AP.
 

Author

• Suneal H. Kolluri, University of California - Riverside