Darius O. Johnson, Briana Markoff, and Dorinda J. Carter Andrews examined data from focus groups conducted with more than 60 Black boys in midwestern high schools to learn how teachers and schools can refuse antiblackness and reimagine futures for Black boys in school. Black boys and young men want safe school environments and will create safe…

In this commentary, Festus Obiakor responds to Louise Taylor's "Seeking Equality of Educational Outcomes for Black Students: A Personal Account" (EJ1316951). He begins by describing himself as a Black man who has consistently endured racism, xenophobia, and prejudice in the United States. Growing up in Nigeria, he experienced lots of…

In the early 1960s, colleges and universities in the United States launched dozens of new pre-college programmes for low-income and predominantly African American high school students. Many of these initiatives were inspired by the civil rights movement. Moved by the sit-ins, marches and boycotts that had riveted the nation, a range of educators…

Over the past two decades, there have been significant advances in stereotype threat research on African Americans. The current article reviews general issues of internal validity and external validity (or generalizability) beyond college laboratories in stereotype threat studies, and as they are revealed specifically in the context of advances in…

This article explores the range of experiences and meanings of Black life in suburban space. Drawing from educational, historical, and sociological literatures, I argue that an underconsideration of suburban space has left many portraits of educational inequality incomplete. The article outlines the emergence of American suburbs and the formation…

In this article we argue that latent and explicit theories of Black insufficiency shape how achievement gaps are defined and assessed in civic education research. We engage the substantive historical and conceptual precedent for rejecting the gap framing. Our call to action demands that radical points of departure are needed to produce loving and…

The Orlando Sentinel published a 1955 letter to the editor from Zora Neale Hurston. In it, she condemns the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the leadership of the Black intelligentsia in the decision. Using Timothy Parsons' myth of a progressive empire, this article emphasizes Hurston's central thesis: that forced…

While the existence of affinity initiatives, like Harvard's Black Commencement--a commencement exercise intended solely for its Black students--may seem to perpetuate the social isolation of minority students, the opposite is true. By addressing minority feelings of otherness and exclusion, these measures not only strengthen individual groups, but…

Race has been a central thread in the American fabric since the country's inception, and relationships among racial groups, particularly between Whites and African Americans, have been strained due to the nation's historic founding. Larger, societal tensions around race likely manifest in schools and threaten to impede the premise and promise of…

Historically, Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have consistently functioned as engines of social change and racial uplift and are among the few places where Black culture is placed at the forefront, appreciated, and sustained. Today and in the future, it will be paramount for HBCUs to not only embody their eminent legacies of social change,…

This paper argues that implicit racial bias regarding black males is a manifestation of a long trajectory of Western racial memory and anti-blackness where black males have been considered subhuman or as human kinds. The author draws from theological, scientific, and social science literature to illustrate how racial discourses have historically…

This essay revisits college presidents during the early 1960s to investigate the long history of how academic leaders manage racial unrest on college campuses. Throughout time, the concept of a welcoming and inclusive climate for black students on majority-white campuses has functioned as an illusion alongside the prevailing reality of racism on…

This forum paper dialogues with Sheron Mark's "A bit of both science and economics: a non-traditional STEM identity narrative. In her paper, she discusses the development of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) identity by a young African American male during an informal STEM for Social Justice Program. Here, the…

Over the years, many scholarly publications have extensively discussed disability 'diagnoses' and placement practices in special education programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. These publications argue that racism and classism rather than clinically predetermined factors appear to influence the disability diagnosis and placement…

In this response to Stephen Brookfield's "Why White Instructors Should Explore Their White Racial Identity" (EJ1246146), Edith Gnanadass writes her response from the point of view of an adult educator with a multiplicity of identities in her critique of Brookfield's concept by going beyond his call for reflection of one's own whiteness.…