In this manuscript, we recognize that young children learn stories that propagate white supremacist narratives through selective traditions of early childhood curriculum. The role of early childhood teachers, therefore, is to critically examine curriculum for biases, omissions, and distortions, as well as to rewrite curriculum to tell accurate…

Building on Critical Race Theory, Black Critical Theory in education (BlackCrit), and Black Male Studies (BMS), the author theorizes what he terms "Black PlayCrit" and, by extension, "Black PlayCrit Literacies." Black PlayCrit brings attention to the specificity of Blackness and anti-Black misandric violence in the play…

This article focuses on some languaging that occurred during a race event within a literacy lesson involving a racially White, female adult and a racially Black, male child. I analyze an excerpt from this race event, illustrating an approach to race analysis which might be useful to the field of urban education. I ask, "What is the racial…

I argue in this article that a close examination of preservice teachers' Black history knowledge is needed to possibly improve curricular and instructional approaches of Black education. Seven preservice teachers were studied and asked to write Black history narratives to ascertain how they interpreted Black history. I analyzed these responses…

This critical case study analyzes Michigan's implementation of Public Act 4 (PA4), also known as the "emergency management" (EM) takeover law. PA4 grants the state control of school districts with dire budgetary problems. As most U.S. school districts are citywide, PA4 gives the state direct control over all the (previously locally…

Recent census data indicate that student populations in U.S. classrooms continue to become increasingly racially diverse. Despite these changes, many early childhood teachers remain reluctant to teach children about race and racial justice. In this article, I argue that multicultural picture books can and should be used to promote racial awareness…

This article examines how three Black women educators disrupt oppressive norms in urban schooling through their applications of critical race womanist pedagogy (CRWP). Using narrative excerpts formed from semi-structured interviews exploring how they contend with sociopolitical injustices through their pedagogical choices and actions, CRWP…

In commemoration of the germinal 1995 critical race theory (CRT) in education manuscript offered by Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate IV, the following account seeks to perform several tasks. As CRT has traveled throughout the myriad of disciplinary foci in education (curriculum, foundations, special education, educational psychology, youth…

Social justice, ensuring that all students receive access to equitable educational resources and opportunities to succeed academically, is a guiding principle for school counselors. With this ideal in mind, specific sociocultural factors that affect the academic achievement of African American students in urban school settings are considered.…

This article uses three tenets of critical race theory to critique the common pattern of teacher education focusing on preparing predominantly White cohorts of teacher candidates for racially and ethnically diverse students. The tenet of interest convergence asks how White interests are served through incremental steps. The tenet of color…

In the era of Black Lives Matter (#BLM), urban teacher education does not exist in isolation. The White supremacist, neoliberal context that impacts all aspects of Black lives also serves to support antiblackness within the structures of teacher education. In this article, the authors, who are grounded in a race radical analytical and political…

The authors put forward a theorization of a Black Critical Theory, or what might be called BlackCrit, within, and in response to, Critical Race Theory, and then outline ways that BlackCrit in education helps us to more incisively analyze how the specificity of (anti)blackness matters in explaining how Black bodies become marginalized, disregarded,…

Conceptualizations of urban context and place in research, practice, and policy are relational, ranging from spatial dimensions to cultural practices of children, families, and communities in metropolitan areas. In this article, we focus on the inherent complexity of these conceptualizations and long-standing debates in education and social…

This article uses counter-storytelling to examine how four urban African American mothers understand and discuss the role of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in their children's education. Counter-storytelling is used as an oppositional framework to dominant stories privileged by educational systems. Findings conclude how parents posit valid…

Educational researchers, leadership, and policymakers have had the privileged voices and place from which to theorize and address educational inequities. But for some exceptions, nondominant families have been relegated to participation in school-centric "parent involvement" activities. Drawing from a participatory design-based research…