Critical Race Coaching: Centering Racial Realism to Sustain Antiracism in Schools

• In Event: Resisting Oppression and Navigating Policy in Education

Abstract

This paper shares an initiative to train teachers and other school personnel to be equity coaches across a school district in a small city in the southeastern U.S. It examines how critical race theory (CRT) was used to help school personnel craft and pursue equity goals that better accounted for the embedded nature of racism in U.S. schools. It argues that CRT, when used collaboratively with teachers, administrators, and other school personnel, can help promote antiracist efforts that avoid the pitfalls of liberalism. It also argues that a CRT approach that centers racial realism is particularly useful in helping educators develop their agency as racial equity leaders.

Author

• Benjamin Blaisdell, East Carolina University