"It's tensious work": a case study of anti-racist educators

Disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes between Black and Latino students and their White peers are well-documented and have been reported continuously since the government-issued Coleman Report was published in 1966 (Coleman, 1966; Darling- Hammond, 2010). The role of teacher bias has been examined as a cause of these disparate outcomes, but studies of how to address both educator and institutional racism are limited in number and scope. Using two tenets of Critical Race Theory, this case study examines a self-described anti-racist high school to understand how educators work to combat this historical trend of inequitable school outcomes. Findings suggest that the core processes of anti-racist teaching is paradoxical tension. Within the larger racist context of the U.S., anti-racist teaching is a necessary but insufficient intervention for addressing racial disparities in educational outcomes.