“We just want space to be”: District Institutionalization of Racial Affinity Spaces for Teachers of Color

• In Event: Racially Just Leadership: Coaching, Caring, & Cultivating Space for Equity

Abstract

As efforts to diversify the U.S. teaching force grow, school districts have utilized racial affinity spaces, which have grassroots origins, to retain teachers of Color. This article explores how structural racism shapes how racial affinity spaces operate within district institutionalization. Drawing from Critical Race Theory (CRT), I analyzed data from interviews with teachers of Color in predominantly white-staffed schools who facilitate or are involved in district affinity spaces. Their counterstories highlight how this district adoption, initially seen as progress, commodifies their labor so that they are unable to serve teachers’ of Color critical needs. I argue that the racial affinity space was attained through interest convergence — a CRT concept used to argue how seeming advancements in racial justice occur only when marginalized and dominant groups’ interests converge — and thus was susceptible to cooptation, which led teachers of Color to feel used and disinvest from the space.

Author

• Emily Dech, University of California, Riverside