“On a Risky Slope of Democracy”: Racialized Logics Embedded in Community–School Board Interactions

Abstract

As school board meetings are integral sites of local education policymaking, scholars must consider how structural racism manifests in these spaces across various district contexts. We examine how racialized institutional logics undergird the interactions between majority-Black district leadership and a local Black community during school board meetings. Through an ethnographic case study of school board meetings over the 2019–2020 school year, we find that racialized pressures led predominantly Black school board members and district administrators to uphold policies and practices that limited two-way authentic interactions with their Black constituents. In conclusion, we argue that racial representation in educational politics may be important, but is not sufficient unless accompanied by changes to policies and practices that privilege Whiteness and reproduce racism.