The Long Shadow of Racial Inequality in American Schooling

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

American schools have long been central sites where racial inequality is both produced and contested. This panel brings together scholars whose work examines these histories to show how educational inequality has been forged, sustained, and resisted across time. Panelists will consider how foundational structures and policies have disproportionately shaped the experiences of Black students and other students of color—from segregation and underfunding to tracking, discipline, and reform agendas that promised equity but often delivered new forms of exclusion. At the same time, they highlight the ways families, youth, and communities have resisted marginalization and imagined liberatory alternatives. By tracing the long shadow of racial inequality, the panel illuminates how past battles over education reverberate in today’s debates and how sociological scholarship can contribute to charting more just futures.

Sub Unit

• Sociology of Education Section / The Long Shadow of Racial Inequality in American Schooling

Presider

• Freeden Blume Oeur, Tufts University

Panelists

• Aaron Kupchik, University of Delaware

• Eve L. Ewing, University of Chicago

• Ranita Ray, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque

Discussant

• Nadirah Farah Foley, Washington University in St. Louis

Session Organizer

• Brittany Nicole Fox-Williams, CUNY-Lehman College