Chapter 6: Students of Color in Majority White Schools: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Race and Gender

The literature focused on the racial identities of students of color has consistently attempted to answer questions concerning the impact of racial identity on student academic achievement and success. Conceptualizations of student identity have been framed through a number of theoretical positions such as cultural ecology, social reproduction, and social interaction-ism (Diamond, 2006). These theories have been used to explain the psychological processes and behaviors involved with how students craft their identities in racially homogenous and heterogeneous communities and school contexts. “Specifically, reproduction theories in their current academic deployment are deeply engaged in a project of ‘racial myth-making’ whereby racially explicit experiences and practices are recoded as cultural or social with little or no attention to the role of institutionalized racism in the construction of social inequality” (Akom, 200, p. 208) Moreover, little research has more directly focused on how racism, in school contexts, creates and maintains fissures in the identity development of students of color (Carter, 2008; Diamond 2006).