Managing Whiteness: The Call for Educational Leadership to Breach the Contractual Expectations of White Supremacy

Abstract

Judge Robert Carter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argued that White supremacy is the leading cause of de facto segregation. However, White supremacy is still undertheorized in educational leadership. Through the lens of Charles Mills’ racial contract, this article interprets a controversy surrounding White teachers’ expectations in a racially integrated high school. White supremacy operates in schools in the following ways: (a) meritocracy as property, (b) institutional violence as colonialism, and (c) racial othering as racial selfing. This article calls upon school leaders to “manage” Whiteness and disrupt the racial contract as a strategy to confront structural racism in urban schooling.