Research has demonstrated that decades of equity-oriented reforms have not significantly repudiated problems associated with teachers' negative expectations of students of color in the classroom. This paper draws on the concepts of "Whiteness as property" and the "educational racial contract" to explore the first author's efforts as a classroom teacher to challenge the racist ideologies underpinning today's curricular expectations of students of color. This autoethnography finds that, despite teachers' beliefs in social justice in a small learning academy, Whiteness continued to be manifested through savior mentalities that re-created a structure of racial domination. We pose that, unless educators are willing and able to challenge the interplay between Whiteness and the educational racial contract, it will be difficult if not impossible to construct a more humanist and justice-based approach to education.