Creating diverging opportunities in spite of equity work: educational opportunity and whiteness as property

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study of an urban high school draws on critical race theory’s tenet of whiteness as property and the notion that educational opportunity is a race-conscious construct to interrogate the impacts of school improvement work intended to increase educational opportunities for students of colour. Educational opportunity is defined as students having access to culturally relevant pedagogy, highly qualified teachers, rigorous curricula, and appropriate resources (fiscal, technological, texts, learning spaces, etc.). Findings demonstrate that the school’s equity-minded work actually increased educational opportunities for white students while limiting opportunities for students colour. The inequities in educational opportunity along racial lines was the result of leadership’s inability to decouple educational opportunity as an expectation of whiteness and resist the bullying forces of whiteness. Implications demonstrate how schools can decouple connections between educational opportunities and whiteness and how researchers can critically investigate equity-minded school improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• whiteness as property
• critical race theory
• school leadership
• anti-racist leadership
• whiteness

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

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

Notes

1. I engaged in a personal debate related to the appropriate gender-specific descriptor to use for the students of colour participating in this research. As all students were in 10^th, 11^th, or 12^th grade at the time of participation, they were below the age of 18, yet would not personally identify as ‘boys’ or ‘girls.’ I opted to use boys and girls because of the ongoing over-ageing of young people of colour in the U.S. and the real implications of that over-ageing related to the ongoing treatment by the criminal justice system and general perceptions of youth of colour.