Race & American Public Schools

This course explores the fundamental role that race and racism have played in the structure, stratification, and social functioning of American public schools, and how schools in turn shape our collective ideas about race in the United States. Working from both a historical perspective and an analysis of contemporary policy, we will use theoretical and empirical texts to explore questions of identity, otherness, and ethics, such as: what can the histories of schooling for Black and Native students reveal about the educational project of the nation? How does the notion of whiteness as property shape public presumptions about what makes a "good" school? How are taken-for-granted ideas about other vectors of identity such as class, disability, and language informed by racialized school policies? Most fundamentally, can schools contribute to creating a more just world, and if so, how?