Although we often look to schools to solve complex social problems, many educators are not ready to address the structural racism behind many contemporary conflicts. Pedro Noguera and Julio Angel Alicia present a brief history of the socioeconomic forces that drove school closures and gentrification in Chicago, the remaking of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and generations of disadvantage in Los Angeles. By becoming aware of the structural barriers to change, educators will be better equipped to lead discussions with students about the need for justice in our society.
This study examines how three teachers working at a South Central high school teach critically about race and place. While building on the “spatial turn” in social science, the article draws on Critical Race Spatial Analysis to advance literature at the intersection of race, place, and pedagogy. Additionally, the article utilizes cognitive mapping to understand the teachers’ senses of place and then, through a combination of interviews, observations, and document analysis, examines how they integrate racial-spatial ideas into their teaching. Positing a “critical pedagogy of race and place,” the study concludes with implications for future research and teacher education.
This article defines and situates the concept of the racial state within the sociological literature on educational inequality. Currently, much of the sociology of education literature fails to engage with theories of the state or does so in undertheorized ways. Drawing on theories of the racial state and forms of state violence, this article contributes to literature in political sociology, race and racism, and education. It does so by arguing that the U.S. is a racial state that violently produces and reproduces educational inequality through structural, symbolic, and institutional violence. In charting a research program for a racial state analysis of educational inequality, it provides examples of each kind of state violence and provides suggestions for future research, which may be termed a political sociology of education. The article concludes by noting the value of the state violence framework presented for sociological studies of state authority and comparative work that looks across geographical and historical contexts.
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