“I had to call them out on a very tight rope:” exercising voice with k-12 education colleagues to confront racial injustice

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how educators in the U.S. public education system speak to their colleagues about racially oppressive beliefs and practices. Limited research exists that examines the experiences of educators who exercise voice to challenge and engage co-workers and supervisors around issues of racism in their schools. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 25 educators and a flexible coding approach, the authors found that participants described using cautious, covert, and indirect approaches with their White colleagues to increase the likelihood that their messages would be received and to decrease the personal and professional consequences they might face for openly challenging their colleagues’ racist beliefs or actions. This cautious approach serves to reinforce the dominance of Whiteness and White fragility in the context of anti-oppressive practice. Examples of an alternative to a cautious approach are presented and recommendations are made for future research and teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racist discourse
• anti-oppressive practice
• discourse in education
• exercising voice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erin Sugrue

Erin Sugrue, PhD, LICSW is an assistant professor of social work at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her research explores sources of social, racial, and economic injustice within the public education and child welfare systems, with the goal of developing policy and practice changes that lead to system-level transformation.

Ashley-Marie Hanna Daftary

Ashley-Marie Hanna Daftary, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Social Work. Her research focuses on structural inequities and anti-oppressive practices across systems, including immigration, education, and policy-making.