“The Onus is on Us”: How White Suburban Teachers Learn about Racial Inequities in a Critical Book Study

ABSTRACT

Racial disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes continue to plague public schools in the United States (U.S.) and are becoming increasingly salient in suburban schools where major shifts in racial demographics have occurred in recent decades. An emerging body of research and practice-based interventions seek to build the capacities of white educators, who make up the vast majority of teachers in U.S. schools, to respond productively to these changes through engagement in meaningful conversations about race and racial inequities. Based on a qualitative case study in a suburban high school in the Midwestern U.S., this article contributes to this area of scholarship by documenting how white educators experience the evolution of their thinking over the arc of their participation in a year-long critical book study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We are using Bonilla-Silva’s scholarship on colorblind racism. However, to avoid ableist language we will use color-evasive as we describe this process in our findings and discussion sections.

2. An equity audit is a collection of publicly available data that that details how educational opportunities in a school are distributed across students with different demographic characteristics (Capper & Young, 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Van T. Lac

Van T. Lac is an assistant professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio in the department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. She earned her doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Her research interests include how educational leaders leverage participatory action research working alongside minoritized youth and how K-12 teachers, school leaders, and students develop or strengthen their racial consciousness.

John B. Diamond

John B. Diamond is the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and faculty affiliate in Afro-American Studies and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A sociologist of race and education, he examines how educational leadership, policies, and practices shape students’ educational opportunities and outcomes. He is co-author of Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools.

Maria Velazquez

Maria Velazquez is a PhD student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Broadly speaking, her work examines the structures, policies, and politics that shape inequities in schools, and the ways in which educators and organizing communities may work to disrupt them.