Chapter 4: Critical Race Design: Emerging Principles for Designing Critical and Transformative Learning Spaces

It is this juxtaposition of incredible innovation and power in the country’s capital next to dilapidated schools in and around the Washington, DC metropolitan area that led us to develop an education research project in Prince George’s County, Maryland (population around 865,000). Prince George’s County, as the most affluent Black majority community in the United States, has tremendous community capital that stands in sharp contrast to its predominantly under-resourced school system, Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS). Critical urban scholars (e.g., Anyon, 1980; Apple, 1996; Green, 2016) have repeatedly demonstrated how neoliberal political economies that systemically devalue Black and Brown urban bodies and spaces have led to the underfunding of majority-minoritized schools. Accordingly, this paper relies on critical theories of race to situate, examine, and address the vividly contrasting spaces of minoritized communities.