Introduction to Beyond Interest Convergence: Envisioning Transformation for Racial Equity in Education

We have reached a critical moment in our nation when deep injustices and stark educational inequities for historically marginalized students, including students of color, threaten our fundamental democratic values. Racial equity in education has often been pursued through multiple avenues, including legal remedies such as desegregation and affirmative action (Orfield, 2014), the enactment of national educational standards and accountability policies (Darling-Hammond, 2010), and market-based reforms (Berends, 2015). But these efforts have not significantly disrupted P-16 racial inequities (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 2006), in part, we argue, because they fail to address the dynamic and structurally embedded nature of racism in our country. Though emerging social and political justice movements challenge centuries of violence and oppression against African-Americans (for example, #blacklivesmatter), fight for legal status and citizenship for immigrants, and protect LGBTQ rights, education has only begun to emerge as a key issue in these struggles.

In light of this current reality, educational scholars have begun to reconceptualize pathways toward advancing racial equity in education. This issue of the Peabody Journal of Education seeks to learn from and extend beyond the lessons of Bell's (1980) “interest convergence” theory to open new possibilities for theorizing, legislating, and fostering racial equity in education. We bring together leading scholars of K–12 and postsecondary educational policy who draw upon multiple lenses, such as critical race theory, transnational studies, neo-institutional theory, sociocultural theory, critical perspectives on place, and community-engaged scholarship, to propose strategic paths toward racial equity.

Collectively, the articles in this issue acknowledge the theory of interest convergence as an important and useful tool for understanding historical progress toward racial and educational equity, yet they argue for new principles and theoretical tools to fundamentally transform systems of power in education and in society more broadly. The articles challenge a static notion of “interest” based on deterministic black and white racial interests. Some offer ways forward in addressing the fluid, emergent, and contextual nature of interests, identities, and communities that extend beyond traditionally drawn boundaries. Others explore possibilities for moving beyond the hegemony of whiteness in understandings of interest convergence toward a vision of solidarities that recognize difference, rather than sameness, in pursuit of educational justice.

Across these multiple contexts and pathways forward, the papers contribute key theoretical insights for achieving justice in educational policies, practices, and outcomes and invite a transdisciplinary conversation about transforming the systems that create and perpetuate educational inequities. Overall, this issue seeks to provoke new ways of thinking about the notion of “interest,” what motivates change toward racial equity, and what strategies could support such change. More specifically, the collection of articles asks: How might we expand conceptions of interest beyond narrow notions of self-interest? How might our understanding of interest change if we can transcend borders of nation and place? How can we move beyond interest as the only organizing principle for change?

The issue begins with commentary from urban education scholar Richard Milner IV, whose reflections contextualize the contribution of the articles in this issue as part of a broader effort to advance policies and practices that can lead to a more just society. His commentary, “The Permanence of Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Expanding Analytic Sites,” reminds us that even as we expand the ideas of interest convergence into new sites and possibilities, we must continue to attend to the ways in which whiteness reinforces power dynamics through deeply entrenched social systems.

In “‘Accentuate the Positive; Eliminate the Negative’: Hegemonic Interest Convergence, Racialization of Latino Poverty, and the 1968 Bilingual Education Act,” Sung examines the formative origins of the 1968 Bilingual Education Act by bringing Antonio Gramsci's notion of “hegemony” to Derrick Bell's theory of interest convergence. This is an historical analysis that illuminates the need to attend to taken-for-granted power dynamics in the formation of interest convergences. Sung's analysis illuminates how those in power framed the concerns that led to the passage of the Act, ultimately reinforcing existing social control rather than fundamentally uplifting Latino communities. Following this critical analysis is “A Strategic Racial Equity Framework” by Garces and Gordon da Cruz. The authors apply Derek Bell's theories of interest convergence and racial realism to highlight the ways in which educational policies and practices have shifted to repeal progress for communities of color, culminating in a period of retrenchment and renewed forms of racism that require transformed approaches for pursuing racial equity in education. Moving beyond the theoretical, they integrate examples from education to illustrate the types of policies and practices and the new interest convergences that their proposed “strategic racial equity framework” might generate.

Drawing on a collaborative participatory design-based reform effort between nondominant families and teachers, Ishimaru and Takahashi highlight the possibilities for collective agency to emerge across boundaries of traditional power asymmetries in “Disrupting Racialized Institutional Scripts: Toward Parent–Teacher Transformative Agency for Educational Justice.” They problematize the expectation that individualistic self-interests lie at the heart of social change. They call attention to the collective agency that can develop across groups in the enactment of shared practice, implicating a politic of solidarity across difference as a potent resource for transformation. Gordon da Cruz, likewise, considers how a critical approach to “community-engaged scholarship”—partnerships between universities and communities to collaboratively develop and apply knowledge to address public issues—could lead to practices that more effectively dismantle structures of racial inequity. In “Critical Community-Engaged Scholarship: Communities and Universities Striving for Racial Justice,” she argues that integrating lessons from critical race theory into recommended practices for community-engaged scholarship can produce knowledge that is more effective for addressing public issues, as well as honoring the core commitment to justice held by many who practice community-engaged scholarship.

“The Spationalization of Racial Inequity and Educational Opportunity: Rethinking the Rural/Urban Divide” recounts and examines the history of American public education for poor urban and rural students of color. Tieken uses the lens of critical race theory to illuminate how the nature of educational inequity is not only raced and classed, but also embedded in and maintained through geography. Her analysis helps us better understand the mechanisms that contribute to today's inequities and suggests potential ways forward in a shared struggle among urban and rural communities for educational justice. In a related critique of problematic and false distinctions that serve to divide otherwise convergent interests, Taylor provides a timely critique of a rationale for racial equity, motivated by U.S.-centric notions of competitive interest, that positions students and communities abroad as our competition. In “Expanding the Frame: Building Transnational Alliances for Racial and Educational Justice,” Taylor acknowledges how such economic rationales have spurred some efforts to address educational inequalities but highlights these advances in the context of global development and deployment of racism. She suggests that educational equity advocates adopt a collaborative frame to cultivate transnational alliances to argue for global educational justice both in the United States and abroad.

In his closing commentary, “New Strategies for Racial Equity in Education: Interest Convergence and Movement Building,” Mark Warren leaves us with a note of hope. He argues that a social movement for educational justice is, in fact, emerging, as seen in the school-to-prison pipeline movement. He reminds us that efforts to (re)focus education toward racial equity require attending not only to issues within schools and universities, but to broader inequities, such as poverty, housing, and immigration. Although education is one of many important areas of focus, it is, in many ways, at the heart of struggles for racial justice.