“Antiracist Education in Theory and Practice: A Critical Assessment” As a set of pedagogical, curricular, and organizational
strategies, antiracist education claims to be the most progressive way today to understand race relations. Constructed from
whiteness studies and the critique of colorblindness, its foundational core is located in approximately 160 papers published
in peer-reviewed journals in the past 15 years-identified through a comprehensive search of
Academic Premier Search,
EBSCOMegaFile,
Education Abstracts,
JSTOR, and
SOCIndex. A critical assessment of these papers concludes that antiracist education is not a sociologically grounded, empirically
based account of the significance of race in American society. Rather, it is a morally based educational reform movement that
embodies the confessional and redemptive modes common in evangelical Protestantism. Inherently problematic, whether or not
antiracist education achieves broader acceptance is open to debate.
Keywords Antiracist education - Theory and practice - Critical assessment
Presented at the joint meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society/North Central Sociological Association, Chicago, IL, April
7, 2007