Race and 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. Working within and between historical perspectives, contemporary policy challenges, theory, and empirical research, we will explore questions of purpose, identity, otherness, and justice. What can the histories of Black and Indigenous schooling 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? Perhaps most fundamentally, can schools be engines for racial justice, and if so, how?