Critical Race Coaching to Promote Racial Realist Leadership

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

Abstract

This paper shares an initiative to train 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 coaches craft and pursue equity goals that better accounted for the embedded nature of racism in U.S. schools. It argues that CRT can help school-based equity leaders promote antiracist efforts that avoid the pitfalls of liberalism. It also argues that a CRT approach that centers racial realism is particularly useful to help school personnel develop their agency as racial equity leaders.

Author

• Benjamin Blaisdell, East Carolina University