The Racial Reckoning of Elite Education: The Ghostly Entanglement of Race, Class, and Privilege Haunting in Private Elite Independent Schools (PEIS)

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Opportunities and Challenges for DEI in Education (Table 13)

Abstract

"The racial reckoning following the atrocious murder of George Floyd knocked on the door of the most selective institutions in the United States. Private Elite Independents Schools (PEIS)
engaged in their own racial reckoning after social media postings from black students and alumni of color censured the traumatic racial experiences in these elite schools from white students and teachers. Administrators and Board of directors of these institutions promise to take measures and reconcile their school community by furthering their work on diversity, equity, and inclusion. How can the hiring of Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) contribute to the processes of racial healing, for the silencing of violent histories and a refusal to mourn the trauma of slavery and its aftermath continue to haunt the country. Therefore, the processes of racial healing and reconciliation requires an engagement with legacies of violence that led to
historical and transgenerational trauma haunting perpetrators and victims in PEIS as an entity of the nation."

Author

• Bara Mbengue, University of Massachusetts - Amherst