Researching Race in Education

A volume in Education Policy in Practice: Critical Cultural StudiesSeries Editors Edmund T. Hamann University of Nebraska-Lincolnand Rodney Hopson George Mason UniversityIn traditional educational research race is treated as merely a variable. In 1995 Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate IV arguedthat race is under-theorized in education and called for educational researchers to pay closer attention to the relationship between raceand educational inequity (Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995). In particular they argued drawing on legal scholar Derrick Bell's notion ofRacial Realism (Bell 1995) that racialized inequities are not accidental or aberrant; rather racialized educational inequities are theresult of particular and specific policies and practices that are designed to maintain particular forms of dominance and marginalization.More specifically Bell and later Ladson-Billings and Tate argue that racial inequity persists despite liberal policies and legislation thatwere ostensibly designed to eradicate it. The Racial Realist perspective takes into the consideration the longevity and history of racismracial inequity and White supremacy in the U.S. and serves as a mirror to reflect back the limitations of proposed policies and legislationthat fail to address those issues. In this way Critical Race Theory and the scholars who draw on CRT view our work as an importantcheck and balance in the effort toward racial equality.