Building on W. E. B. Du Bois's color line concept, I argue that white supremacy is deeply embedded in U.S. educational organizations and that White racial actors, opportunity hoarding, and the cultivation of racial ideology and racial ignorance help sustain it. In doing this, I seek to move away from the aspirational progress narratives often…

This article contextualises the crisis in Black education and the death of a 100-year-old Black educational system resulting from an unintended consequence of Brown: the excavation of thousands of highly educated and skilled Black educators. This theoretical article advances the literature on Brown using two critical race theory (CRT) tenets, the…

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb"--among the most powerful moments of the 2021 presidential inauguration--inspired the central inquiry of the 18th Annual "Brown" Lecture in Education Research: Why are we still climbing the hill of educational equity 67 years after the U.S. Supreme Court's…

In this article Danielle Marie Greene-Bell and Francis A. Pearman II examine racial disparities in school closures across the United States, with a particular interest in majority Black schools. Using survival analysis and longitudinal data, they find that majority Black schools are far more likely to close than non-majority Black schools and that…

Using critical race theory (CRT) as both our theory and analytical framework, we interrogated vocational, career, and technical education (VCTE) policy as a racial instrument. We applied key CRT themes to examine both primary sources; including historical and contemporary VCTE Acts (e.g., Perkins I-V) and Congressional reports; and secondary…

NAME declared, "… we must all rise up against the current tide of white supremacy to defend multicultural education." Yet, fearful educators omit curriculum and conversations deemed 'divisive.' In response to these challenges posed by white supremacy and the consequential pressure on educators to avoid "divisive" topics, this…

This article uses Charles W. Mills' Racial Contract to interrogate the political, historical, and philosophical roots of the conservative campaign against critical race theory (CRT) in schools. Prescribing that political power will be used to maintain a white supremacist racial hierarchy, the Racial Contract connects itself to American schools…

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the "separate but equal" principle promulgated in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. Yet, almost 70 years after Brown, schools continue to be segregated, and the structure of the public education system has fostered inequities across the nation. Although…

The longstanding overrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) students in United States K-12 exclusionary school discipline outcomes (i.e., suspension, expulsions, referrals to law enforcement and arrests) underscores the unrecognized concept that school discipline disparities are a purported outcome--rather than a…

Recent efforts to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in U.S. public schools have been criticized for fundamentally misunderstanding both CRT and K-12 teaching and teacher education. This paper argues that Anti-CRT fear-mongering in the U.S. is a new face on an old practice, the racist use of public education to sustain White supremacy. Using…

"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

This research applies critical race theory to investigate Michigan's system for funding public schools, focusing on structural racism and discrimination embedded in education finance laws, housing policies, and residential and educational segregation. We find that the average Black student receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) receives $411…

This issue of Equity Dispatch discusses engaging teachers as social justice actors. In this issue, we contextualize current teacher mobilizations toward fair wages, better resources, and better learning conditions within a professional history of objectification and exploitation. We provide examples of "social justice unionism" (Alter,…