What Are the White Kids Learning? (De)Constructing White Identities in a School with an Anti-Racist Agenda

Conceptual Framework: Linking Whiteness, Schooling, and White Identity Formation

Despite white supremacy being foundational to schooling and education in the United States, there has been little empirical attention to revealing and transforming its oppressive grip (Diamond, 2024). In this article, we use the whiteness of/in schooling as a conceptual frame to consider how the structure of schools (i.e., the whiteness of) and the everyday experiences and practices within them (i.e., the whiteness in) are anchored in white supremacist foundations. By white supremacy, we refer to a sociopolitical, cultural, and economic system of racial domination that sustains and reproduces dominance, power, and material resources for/by white people across every sector of society (Ansley, 1997; Grzanka et al., 2019). How white supremacy exerts its force in schooling and society writ large is through the institutionalization of whiteness. In this article, we draw on conceptualizations of whiteness as an ideology with the dual function of hegemonizing white cultural practices, beliefs, and ways of knowing as well as justifying racial oppression and violence against people of color (Leonardo, 2009; Tevis et al., 2023). Defining whiteness as an ideology stands in contrast to the dominant approaches in education, where scholars typically study whiteness or race as an individual identity or variable. Such approaches fail to capture how whiteness and racism are ideological processes that function even in the absence of white bodies, such as in the everyday organizational routines, policies, and curricula of schools (Diamond & Gomez, 2023; Yosso, 2002). For example, the practice of standardized testing within schools is an organizational routine that has functioned to sort students according to how well they conform to white ways of knowing and learning (e.g., Cunningham, 2019).

Because the ideology of whiteness permeates the schooling experience (and society writ large), it is the backdrop against which children construct their racialized understandings of self and society (Rogers, Moffitt, et al., 2021; Spencer et al., 1997). Indeed, schools are salient developmental and institutional settings wherein children's racial identity formation unfolds and takes shape (Stevenson, 2014). Historically, and for good reason, much of the educational and psychological literature has examined how the racial dynamics of schools shape the racial identity formation of youth of color (e.g., Byrd, 2023; Carter Andrews et al., 2019; Leath et al., 2019; Nasir et al., 2009; Spencer et al., 2001). In this article, we hold this literature while also turning the spotlight on the ways in which the whiteness of/in schooling works to sustain white supremacy via the making of white students’ racial identities. In particular, we argue that one such way to examine what schools do for and with whiteness is through listening closely to how white children construct their racialized understandings of self and society while attending to the school processes that may work to nurture and produce such understandings.

There exist very few studies that use a critical frame to interrogate white identity formation in school contexts. A notable exception is Perry’s (2002) ethnographic study of white identities in two high schools, where she examined how school racial composition shapes white students’ racial identity formation. Her findings illuminate how white students who attended a racially diverse school had “more complex, multiple, and contradictory” white identities than white students who attended a mostly white school (p. 150). In this way, features of the schooling context seemed related to how white students were constructing their white identities. In another ethnography, Trainor (2008) examined how the “emotioned rules” of schools shaped white students’ racial meaning making in an all-white high school. For example, in her findings, she showed how white students’ desire to focus on the positive and not engage with the lived realities of racism when reading literature from Black authors was not an individual-level attitude but mediated via the school discourse and culture that often exhorted students to focus on the positive (Trainor, 2008). Taken together, this small body of literature suggests that white identities do not merely appear in school contexts but emerge from and take shape via school practices and discourses. In this study, we build on and extend this literature by examining how institutional narratives in a school with an anti-racist agenda shape, and potentially challenge, white students’ racial identity formation.

Institutional Narratives in School as Sources of Racial Learning and Identity Formation

In this study, we use the term institutional narratives to describe the shared cultural scripts within an institution that guide how its members form and negotiate social realities and identities. This framing of institutional narratives parallels other frameworks that seek to identify shared scripts at the more macro level (i.e., master narratives; Hammack & Toolis, 2015; McLean & Syed, 2015). We argue that a focus on institutional narratives allows for an examination of the everyday practices within schools that interlace with how students construct meaning around race and racism. More specifically, because a school's institutional narratives may or may not align with larger societal master narratives, they represent a critical site of analysis for connecting the macro and micro forces of identity formation in school (Rogers, Niwa, et al., 2021). Importantly, our framing of institutional narratives in school is rooted in the m(ai)cro perspective, which acknowledges the inextricable link of macrosystems of power and everyday experiences in the microsystem (e.g., school and identity development; Rogers, Niwa, et al., 2021). Such a framing makes clear how institutional narratives do not merely emerge from thin air but are coproduced with the racial macrosystem of white supremacy and anti-Blackness (Bonilla-Silva, 2014). In this way, institutional narratives are not necessarily emerging from the schools themselves but are in response to, and often uphold, the larger societal hierarchies in which schools are embedded and navigate (Leonardo, 2009; Rogers, 2020). Thus, in this analysis, we frame institutional narratives as a critical juncture between the macro and micro, shaping how students learn, take up, and remake the racialized dynamics of society.

Traditionally, research has documented the pervasive institutional narrative of colorblindness in schools (Castro-Atwater, 2016; Lewis, 2001; Welton, 2013). The colorblind narrative of schooling maintains that the path toward racial equality is best realized through the downplaying or ignoring of race and racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2014). In practice, this can take the form of teachers avoiding race talk altogether, discipline policies that are race “neutral”, and/or the dismissal of teacher or student racism as nothing to do with race (Lewis & Diamond, 2025; Skiba et al., 2011; Stoll, 2014). The problem with the colorblind narrative of schooling is that whiteness and racism are ideological and systemic processes built into the very fabric of schools and thus do not vanish but grow unhindered when schools decide to ignore race. Although limited, some research has shown how the narrative of colorblindness is negotiated, (re)produced, and challenged within children's racial identity development in school settings (e.g., Hazelbaker & Mistry, 2022; Rogers, Moffitt, et al., 2021). Most relevant to this analysis is Lewis’s (2001) ethnographic study of race in a mostly white school, where she found that colorblindness was the dominant frame through which white children (and their parents and teachers) constructed racialized understandings of themselves and others. Her findings revealed that although white students claimed that race did not matter to them or in school, the “color-blind discourse masked an underlying reality of racialized practice” (p. 799). In other words, the narrative of colorblindness is successful in teaching white students the logic of white ignorance (i.e., to not know or notice racial realities; Dull et al., 2025; Mills, 2007), but it does not address the oppressive realities of whiteness and racism that undergird schooling.

Importantly, though, the institutional narratives that schools adopt and socialize, like colorblindness, are not static. In fact, the sociopolitical context is integral to shifting how institutions, and in particular schools, respond to and engage with race (Furrey, 2023). In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement—a racial justice movement to dismantle white supremacy and anti-Blackness in and beyond policing—some schools created and adopted commitments to anti-racism and racial equity (Tometi, 2020). This took the form of anti-racist professional development for school personnel, redesigning curriculum, revamping school discipline policies and practices, and posting public statements in support of Black lives and racial justice, among others (Agarwal & Sen, 2022; Furrey, 2023). How such anti-racist commitments shape schools’ institutional narratives related to race and subsequently students’ racial learning and identity is relatively un(der)explored in the literature. It is possible that the institutional narrative of colorblindness continues to maneuver and seep through, or it might be the case that such narratives are replaced entirely by new ones that shape students’ racial learning and identity formation in new and novel ways.

In this article, we seek to explore the institutional narratives of a school with an anti-racist agenda to uncover the changing discourse that white students have access to as they negotiate, perform, and rework race. Our focus on white students is not an effort to (re)center white children in conversations about school and racism but rather to acknowledge that anti-racism efforts are incomplete without disrupting the role that schooling plays in linking white identities to the oppressive practices of whiteness. To be clear, the (de)construction of white identity is only one piece of a larger puzzle in school anti-racism efforts, but it is a necessary piece to create just and humane education for all students (Escayg, 2019; Spencer & Dowd, 2024). It is with this critical frame that we approached this study.

This Study

This analysis draws from interviews with 28 early adolescent white students (ages 12–14 years) who attended a school with an anti-racist agenda. We were interested in exploring what white students were learning in this context and whether and how whiteness and white identity were addressed via the school's institutional racial narratives. Our focus on institutional narratives extends the literature by bridging the macro and micro forces that shape white identity formation in schools (Rogers, Niwa, et al., 2021). In other words, our interest was not necessarily to reveal what individual white students say and think about race and racism (a micro lens) but to understand how schools help produce particular kinds of white identities that feed back into the system of white supremacy (a m(ai)cro lens).

More specifically, we had two main aims: (a) What do white students’ interviews reveal about the institutional narratives related to race in a school with an anti-racist agenda? and (b) What are the consequences of these institutional racial narratives on shaping white students’ racial identity? We expected, with some variation, that given the school's commitment to anti-racism, white students’ interviews would reveal both school and personal racial narratives that contrasted with colorblindness and white supremacy. As such, this study provides a unique angle from which to peer into the “enduring struggle between white supremacy and racial justice” that takes place in schools (Diamond, 2024, p. 137).

Describing the Research Context: Middle West Elementary School

We address these research questions in the context of a school where anti-racism and racial equity are stated priorities. Middle West Elementary School (MWS, a pseudonym) serves grades K–8 and is in an urban and racially diverse city in the Midwestern U.S., which is reflected in the demographics of the students: 40% white, 37% Hispanic/Latinx, 9% Black, 6.5% Multiracial, 5% Asian, and 2.5% other. MWS's mission is to “build a culture of equity that centers belonging, inclusion, and anti-racist practices.” In conversations with administrators, teachers, and students, it was apparent that the school's teachers intentionally discuss racism in the classroom, engaging topics such as police brutality, intersectionality, slavery, and environmental racism. In history and English classes, teachers employ the “Facing History and Ourselves” curriculum, which includes numerous lessons that “challenge teachers and their students to stand up to racism, antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry and hate” (facinghistory.org). Much of the literature that students read is from authors of color and/or center on highlighting racial oppression (e.g., books like Hidden Figures, Warriors Don't Cry, and Locomotion). Students regularly engage in schoolwide events and projects to celebrate Black and Latinx history months, and they hold racial affinity groups and student clubs around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The emergence of this research study also reflects the school's commitment to anti-racism, in that school administrators desired to understand what was needed within their school to continue working toward their racial equity mission and goals. This is all to say that MWS is not a “colorblind” or “color-evasive” school as typically defined; its approach to race is one that includes engaging explicitly with racism, although, as we will show, this engagement with racism occurs in particular ways.

Participants and Procedure

Data were collected as part of a larger community-based research partnership. All white students who were in grades 6–8 were eligible to participate in the interviews. Parents and caregivers of eligible participants were sent the study details and consent form via email and told that researchers were exploring how white students at MWS understand and describe their racial experiences in school. Twenty-eight white students completed the consent process, which also included a short demographic survey. The mean age of participants was 12.85 years (SD_age = 0.85), and most students identified as female (61% female, 36% male, and 3% nonbinary). Students’ socioeconomic position was measured via parent-reported annual family income and was as follows: 50% had a family income >$150,000, 39% between $90,000 and $149,999, and 11% <$89,999. Most students had a family income above the median ($68,000) in the study location. The interviews took place between March and May of 2024 during school hours. All data collection followed the guidelines and ethical standards approved by the university institutional review board (#STU00214718) and the local school district.

Semistructured Interview Protocol

The overall goal of the semistructured interview protocol was to capture students’ meaning making around their racial and gender identities as well as their school racial experiences. This analysis pulls from the parts of the interview focused on racial identity and school racial experiences. In the racial identity section of the interview, students were asked a series of questions such as, “What does it mean to you to be white?” and “What are some of the good/bad things about being white?” In the school racial conversations section, participants were asked questions such as, “Can you tell me about a time when you talked about race in school?” and “Have you ever talked about what it means to be white in school?” Contrary to the public discourse where (white) children are framed as innocent and unaware of race (Dull et al., 2024), we found that white children in our study had much to share about race in their interviews (mean interview time = 39.26 minutes, SD = 14.89).

Qualitative Analysis Approach

Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. The qualitative analysis was primarily inductive and grounded in a reflexive thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) attempts (a) to reveal shared meaning and patterns across a dataset through systematic coding and (b) recognizes researcher subjectivity “as a resource for analysis” and inextricably bound to the “processes and outcomes of coding and theme development” (Braun & Clarke, 2023, p. 68). Unlike other qualitative approaches that attempt to minimize the perspective of the researcher by using rigid coding standards or reliability metrics, RTA emphasizes the always situated nature of data interpretation and knowledge construction. In line with RTA, we briefly note here how reflexivity and positionality informed the data collection and qualitative analysis.

Reflexivity throughout the research occurred both individually and collectively. The first author (Brandon, a white cisgender man) conducted all the interviews for this study. During the data-collection phase, Brandon struggled to balance cultivating an interview space where white students felt comfortable sharing their experiences while also considering whether and how to challenge their actively racist or harmful perspectives. He recognizes that in his attempt to reveal the workings of whiteness and white identity in school contexts, the interview space may have inadvertently reinforced whiteness by leaving students often problematic viewpoints unchallenged. Importantly, however, the experience of interviewing white 12- to 14-year-olds about race and hearing their racial disinterest and apathy pushed him to consider the inadequacy of revealing white students’ racial identities without attention to the contexts that work to produce such identities. In the data-analysis phase, all the authors, including the second author (Onnie, Black cisgender woman) and the third author (Karen, Latina cisgender woman), reflected together on how to frame this analysis in a way that shines light on the racial structure that pervades schooling as opposed to simply centering white students’ voices about race. In sum, we leveraged our multiple racial standpoints throughout the research process to consider the varied ways that whiteness shows up and exerts its force in and beyond schooling.

For data analysis, we followed the six phases of RTA (Braun & Clarke, 2023). In the first phase, data familiarization, the first author read through the transcripts taking detailed notes, focusing primarily on (a) how white students conceptualized and understood their racial identities and (b) whether and how participants reported engaging in school racial conversations. During this phase, it became apparent how both white students’ identities and school racial conversations eclipsed a critical engagement with whiteness. After the first author finished this initial round of familiarization, the third author joined the analysis process, reading three full transcripts. Based on the initial observations, all the authors decided to consider how the school's racial practices and narratives were shaping white students’ racial identities. In the next phase, data coding, we began to systematically code the data using an open-coding approach. We generated both semantic (content of the data) and latent codes (conceptual interpretation) relevant to our research question, such as “talking about racial oppression” (semantic) and “evading whiteness” (latent). Both the first and third authors coded all the transcripts and met regularly to discuss the codebook and interpretations of data.

After the coding was complete, the next phase involved generating initial themes. To do this, we clustered codes around underlying or unified patterns in the data. For instance, during this phase, we noticed that many codes related to the content of school race conversations (e.g., “talking about racial oppression,”“never talked about whiteness,”“historical focus,” and “racial harmony”) that we collapsed to construct a theme around “the school's approach to talking about race.” For codes related to white identity, we constructed a theme around “learning to dismiss and detach,” which captured codes such as “dismissing racism,”“racism as individual,”“reverse racism,” and “white ignorance.” In the next phase, reviewing and developing themes, we went back to the data to consider whether each theme we constructed reflected the complexity of participants’ narratives. In particular, we considered whether the data within each theme was “too diverse and wide ranging without a clear central organizing concept unifying them” (Braun & Clarke, 2023, p. 75). Considering this, and using institutional narratives as a guiding conceptual frame, we separated the initial theme of the “school’s approach to talking about race” into two themes that captured distinct institutional narratives, one of which focused on race conversations in the classroom (“the narrative of the oppressed racial other”) and a more general school discourse (“the narrative of school racial harmony”). We also split the initial theme we generated around white identity—“learning to dismiss and detach”—into two separate themes given the complexity of the data (“learning to dismiss racism” and “learning to detach from racism”).

In the next phase, refining, defining, and naming themes, we considered how the themes we generated related to each other. In this process, we aimed to “provide a coherent overall story about the data” (Braun & Clarke, 2023, p. 74). This led us to see how the themes related to white identity (e.g., “learning to dismiss racism” and “learning to detach from racism”) seemed connected to (i.e., consequences of) the school racial narratives (e.g., “the narrative of the oppressed racial other” and “the narrative of school racial harmony”). It also was during this phase that we generated the theme from our coded data, “how the school's institutional narratives preserved white students’ active ignorance” to complete the story of how white students were making meaning of race at MWS. As a result of this iterative process, we identified three main themes, organized across three analytic levels (see Figure 1). The final phase, producing the report, involved crafting the presentation of the findings, which we provide below.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Summary of themes: what are the white kids learning about race in a school with an anti-racist agenda?

The Narrative of the Oppressed Racial Other: “We’re Talking About . . . Enslaved People”

Across interviews with white students, many reported “talk[ing] about race a lot” in school, which, as expected, deviates from the traditional colorblind narrative that often characterizes race talk in schools (e.g., Lewis, 2003; Pollock, 2009). There was, however, still a clear shared narrative among students about the content of these school race conversations. In their interviews, white students described race conversations that explicitly focused on the racial oppression of others, which was often (though not exclusively) framed as historical or “in the past.” For example, Julia (13-year-old girl), when asked whether she remembers talking about race in class, said, “Yeah, definitely. Uh, we talk about race a lot, um, especially like with the past—like Martin Luther King and the sit-ins and like—I forgot his name—yeah, Fred Hampton.” When asked what she learned during these conversations, Julia responded, “Um, the fight for freedom I guess that they had to endure.” Anna (12-year-old girl) gave a similar response:

Both Julia and Anna recall having explicit conversations about racism in school, particularly around topics related to the racial oppression of Black people, like the “the fight for freedom” or why certain stories are “different” because the main character is Black. In this way, the focus in these school race conversations from the perspective of white students seemed to prioritize racial oppression (often from the lens of Blackness), eclipsing any discussion of privilege or whiteness.

This focus on racial oppression is powerfully reflected in Ryan's (12-year-old boy) interview when he was asked if he remembered talking about race in class:

Yes, actually, because in ELA, um, we're reading about a book called Hidden Figures and, um, and seeing like, seeing how people of color were working with NACA that's what NASA was called, in the international space race. So, how they were treated differently, um, how they were labeled like where they could go like colored computers, colored bathrooms, like they were labeled as something, and they could only use stuff that was meant for them. . . . we were talking about how unfair it was. Yeah, um, like racially wise. It was all, I can't really say positive because we were talking like how unfair it was and how the modern day made it so, so that everyone could have rights.

Ryan’s answer, along with other students’ interview responses, illustrates how talking about race at MWS meant talking about racial oppression—that is, how “unfair” racism is (or “was” in his words) for people of color and Black people in particular. While this orientation, of approaching the topic of racism from the perspective of oppression, is a necessary component of anti-racism, it is an incomplete narrative that conflates oppression with racism and ignores the fundamental role of privilege and whiteness (Rogers, 2019).

That said, it is possible that students naturally gravitated toward narratives of racial oppression as they described instances of talking about race in school because these were most prevalent or salient to them. To address this, we explicitly asked students whether they also talked about racial privilege and whiteness at school. Despite this probing, no student was able to recall having any conversations about privilege or whiteness. For example, when Abigail (14-year-old girl) was asked if she ever talks about what it means to be white in the classroom, she shared:

No, actually we do not. . . . I mean you don't really talk about that; we mostly talk about the experiences of the person who is in the, who we're talking about or like you know like enslaved people.

Abigail’s response exemplifies the ways in which talking about racism in this context became synonymous with the oppressed, often the Black “other”—the person who is “enslaved” but never the “enslaver” nor the systems of white supremacy that made possible the violent enslavement of Black people.

In a similar way, Jackson (13-year-old boy), when asked about what he had learned about race this year, said: “Um, like this year we just—it’s U.S. history, so stuff like the Civil War, stuff like that, and slavery.” When asked if he learned at all about what it means to be white, he responded, “No . . . it's more about the topic.” Here, from Jackson's perspective, the topics, of the Civil War and slavery, are not tied to what it means to be white. This response demonstrates how this elision of privilege and whiteness in school race conversations is not merely innocent or benign, but white students, like Jackson, derive meaning from the absence, such that the race “topic” become constructed as separate from what it means to be white. Ironically, then, in not talking about whiteness or privilege in school race conversations, white students seem to learn a fundamental feature of what it means to be white: to not name or engage with (one’s) whiteness.

In another example, when Scarlett (12-year-old girl) was asked whether race is talked about in school, she said:

In sum, across interviews, as in Scarlett's, white students perceived “talk[ing] about race a lot” in school, specifically, and most often, conversations centered on the historical racial oppression of Black people. However, when asked whether they talked about whiteness or what it means to be white in these conversations, students shared responses like those above (“You don't really talk about that” or we talk “more about like, uh . . . Black people”). This approach to school anti-racism is not necessarily unique but mirrors both larger societal race narratives and theoretical approaches for addressing racism in schools that dismiss the role of whiteness and white identity in sustaining racial dominance (Diamond, 2024; Escayg, 2019). In fact, multicultural and anti-racist education has often led with the assumption that learning about racism through the lens of the other will encourage white students to reflect on their own whiteness and racial identity (Escayg, 2019). However, as we show in the next section, the narrative of the oppressed racial other did not necessarily translate to more reflective and anti-racist white identities.

Narrative of School Racial Harmony: “Everyone Is Equal and Everyone Is Loved”

In addition to framing racism as only oppression, interviewing white students at MWS also revealed a schoolwide narrative of racial harmony. This narrative of racial harmony was evident in how white students described their school as a place without racism, where everyone is equal and gets along. To be clear, this narrative did not sound like the traditional colorblind racial narratives that emphasize the unimportance or insignificance of race altogether but rather was a narrative that used race-conscious language to emphasize the school as not a racist place. To illustrate this shared script of racial harmony, when talking about race and racism in their school, white students shared:

Like Ben and Anna, across interviews, white students consistently described their school as a place that is equal and beyond racism. It was clear in the interviews that this narrative was more than individually endorsed but institutional in nature:

In this way, as with the narrative of the oppressed racial other, this notion of racial harmony was not merely an individual narrative but an institutional narrative and practice that seemed central to the school's anti-racist agenda. Sarah and Hannah both alluded to the institutional nature of this discourse: “It’s reiterated many times” and “It’s like always shoved in your face.” Although the narrative of racial harmony may be seemingly conducive to a school's anti-racist agenda, we analyzed how such messages show up in white students’ meaning making about the racism they see and witness in school.

A Troubling Paradox: How the School's Institutional Narratives Reinforced White Students’ Active Ignorance

In this final theme, we zoom out to show how the institutional narratives at MWS—a school working to challenge racism—had the paradoxical effect of reinforcing white students’active ignorance. Up to this point, we have revealed how the school's racial narratives, intentional or not, avoided engaging with whiteness and consequently served to maintain the oppressive practices tied to white identity construction (e.g., detachment and dismissal). However, there is still a question of whether more race-conscious narratives, such as the ones we uncovered at MWS, might make white students more curious or willing to explore their connection to racism and whiteness. To answer this question, we asked white students in their interviews whether they wanted (or would be willing to) learn more about what it means to be white, a question that also was shaped by the school leadership's interest in how to create educational spaces where white students could engage critically with race.

Contrary to our expectations, most participants responded to the question by stating that they would not be interested in learning more about what it means to be white. In other words, in a school with an anti-racist agenda, white students were not open to learning about their connection to racism but voiced both disinterest and discomfort by the idea of having to engage with their whiteness. We interpret white students’ responses as reflective of an active ignorance, which we define not as a lack of knowledge but rather as a socialized way of being where one actively (even if unintentionally) resists acquiring new racial knowledge (Medina, 2013; Whitt, 2016). In this section we demonstrate white students’ desires to not know (i.e., active ignorance) and consider how the school's institutional racial narratives, despite the school's best intentions, inadvertently seemed to support white ignorance.

In some cases, white students, such as Ben (12-year-old boy), seemed quite startled by the question, stumbling through a response riddled with hesitations and uncertainties:

Here, Ben explains that he would not like to learn more about what it means to be white because learning about whiteness is “not important to [him].” Ben's lack of curiosity and unwillingness to learn about what it means to be white are interesting and raise questions about why or what underlies this disinterest. Although our data could not specify the cause, this is a notable response from a student within a school that is explicitly committed to anti-racism, where the goal is for students to locate themselves within and against racial injustice. Moreover, engaging a critical analysis of Ben's response moves us beyond individual-level explanations (and motivations) to consider the systems that inform this response, that is, how the school's white-evasive racial narratives may have inadvertently taught, or at least allowed, Ben to not know and not want to know about (his) whiteness. Said differently, Ben's active disinterest in learning more about being white could be understood, in part, as connected to the school's racial narratives that frame race as oppression and racism as outside the school—and thus, not about him.

Madison (13-year-old white girl) also voiced a similar response when asked if she wanted to learn more about what it means to be white:

Madison does not hesitate; she voices an explicit disinterest in knowing or talking about whiteness (or “it” in her words). Learning about being white is neither interesting nor relevant to her—“I don't like need to talk about [it].” Again, our analysis of such responses, however, is not simply to show white students’ active ignorance but to highlight how white students’ desire not to know can be read as shaped by school racial narratives and practices that leave whiteness out of critique and challenge, which is happening even in an “anti-racist” school where race is “talk[ed] about a lot.” From this view, it seems that Madison has already learned, via her school's and other societal forces, “to avoid and not concern [herself] with [certain] areas of life,” which as Medina (2013) reminded, is a “socially produced and carefully orchestrated” process (p. 33).

Further, some white students explicitly named comfort as the reason for not wanting to learn about whiteness. For instance, in the following conversation with Liam (12-year-old boy), he shared that he would “not really” like to learn about what it means to be white because “I feel like that would be kinda uncomfortable for me.” When asked in what ways that would make him feel uncomfortable, he responded, “I’m not sure. I just feel like it would.” Although it is understandable how talking about whiteness might make Liam feel uncomfortable (indeed, the realities of whiteness are deeply uncomfortable), his narrative brings to light the ways in which white students come to expect, and are granted, (racial) comfort in schooling, which, in turn, as we see here, becomes a mechanism through which a racial not knowing is maintained and justified (Zembylas, 2018).

In a similar fashion, Jacob (13-year-old boy) voiced a discomfort around the idea of having to learn about what it means to be white:

Jacob’s response illuminates an underlying motivation for not wanting to know about whiteness. In his view, racism is a thing of the past (something “back then”), and learning about whiteness would mean having to learn about the “bad people,” like Darth Vader, rather than the “good” people, like Luke Skywalker. That is, Jacob does not want to learn more about what it means to be white because he “already pretty much know[s]” that “white people were not good people back then.” This response not only reveals how white students come to misrepresent racism using oversimplified binaries (e.g., past vs. present, good vs. bad) but also the privilege that white students have to choose whether or not they'd like to engage with this racial history and race more broadly. To be clear, this is not a choice that students of color have in educational contexts because their “non-whiteness” always already subjects them to the oppressive conditions of our racial history.

In sum, this final section illustrates how the school's institutional narratives related to (anti)racism did not seem to translate to white students’ desires to know and engage with their whiteness. In fact, we found the opposite, in the sense that most white students displayed a lack of curiosity and active ignorance when asked whether they would like a space to learn more about what it means to be white. Although this is a troubling finding, it underscores how, even in schools that are working to challenge racism, the oppressive dynamics of whiteness can persist (and be socialized) through the institutional practices of schooling, a point we expand on in the general discussion.

New Narrative(s), Same Effect? The Unchallenged Whiteness of Race-Conscious Narratives in School

Historically, educational research has revealed the pervasive nature of colorblindness in schools (Hazelbaker & Mistry, 2022; Khalifa & Briscoe, 2015; Lewis, 2003; Welton, 2013). In response to racialized sociopolitical events and movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter), some schools have shifted their policies and practices from race neutral to anti-racist. Such a shift begs the question of how institutional narratives evolve and change when schools take up the work of anti-racism. This analysis examined this case, exploring the racial narratives in a school with an anti-racist agenda. Our analysis revealed that, indeed, the school's racial narratives, on the surface, seemed to evolve past racial silence or race as unimportant (i.e., colorblindness; Lewis, 2003) and instead were more race conscious in content, explicitly naming race and oppression. However, much like research on the consequences of colorblind racial narratives on students (Milner, 2012), our findings revealed how the race-conscious narratives in the school largely did not disrupt or challenge the oppressive dynamics of whiteness or white identity formation. In this way, much like Bonnett's (1996) theoretical critique of anti-racism and white identities, we observed how white students at MWS “occup[ied] a privileged location” in the school's anti-racist agenda; they were allowed “the luxury of being passive observers” in the sense that their racial identity was “never actually made slippery or torn open” (p. 98). To be clear, this does not mean that white students learned nothing about race in school. On the contrary, as we have shown, the school's racial narratives were inextricable forces on white students’ racial identity formation.

More specifically, we identified the narrative of the oppressed racial other as an explicit race-conscious discourse in school, which was characterized by engaging with the historical realities of racism, particularly in relation to the racial oppression of Black people in the United States. Notably absent from this narrative, however, was critical attention to naming or deconstructing whiteness (i.e., no student reported discussing whiteness or what it means to be white in their school race conversations). The framing of racism as oppression—or as only about Black people—allows schools to discuss and engage with race but not trouble the structural and cultural processes that produce racial oppression (Dull et al., 2024; Leonardo, 2004). Whiteness sits invisible, untouchable, out of reach in such conversations because race is strategically constructed as about “others,”not white. At the identity level, white students reflected this practice of seeing race as detached from themselves (as only about others). Like other scholars of schooling and white identity (e.g., Lewis, 2001; Perry, 2002; Trainor, 2008), rather than consider white students’ detachment from race as naturally occurring or reflective of a lack of knowledge, our findings speak to where and how whiteness is learned and specifically how a school's racial narratives may unwittingly provide white students with dominant ideological tools and resources that serve to maintain the dominance of whiteness.

This notion, of incorporating school racial narratives into one's sense of self and other, also was reflected in the narrative of school racial harmony. As with other research (e.g., Douds, 2021; Foste, 2019; Pascoe, 2023), the racial harmony narrative captured the explicit discourse through which the school positioned itself as a fundamentally not racist place, where “everyone is equal, and everyone is loved.” This narrative was race conscious in the sense that racism was acknowledged, but as an ongoing reality outside (as opposed to inside) the school. Of course, racial harmony may be considered a well-intentioned goal, but as we and others have shown, such narratives guide students and teachers toward glossing over, rather than confronting, the racism that occurs in schooling (Foste, 2019; Ray, 2023). In this way, the narrative of school racial harmony is characterized by two contradictory features: It simultaneously claims no racism while upholding it. Although many scholars have documented how white students dismiss racism in school (e.g., Perry, 2002; Raby, 2004), we extend this literature by showing how this dismissal is scripted through and in institutional racial narratives. Meaning, like the identity practice of detachment, dismissing racism, rather than merely an individual disposition or behavior, appears consistent with the school's institutional narrative of racial harmony.

Taken together, considering the school's dominant racial narratives and how the white students in our study engaged with them, it seems that although colorblindness may have been swapped for a more race-conscious narrative, the consequences for the maintenance of racism remain similar (Ray, 2023). The oppressive whiteness of/in schooling is not challenged in colorblind schooling, nor does it seem to be in race-conscious schooling (Lewis, 2003). In fact, our final theme in the results showcases how in MWS, a school with an explicit anti-racist agenda, white students’ active ignorance (or resistance to knowing about whiteness) appeared to be preserved, and in some cases may even have been reinforced. At first glance, the paradox of white students’ active ignorance being reinforced in a school with an anti-racist agenda is equivocal. However, taking a closer look at the school's white-evasive racial narratives reveals how the school's practices may have inadvertently socialized the logic of white ignorance. This finding corresponds with Trainor’s (2008) ethnography, where she shows how white students’ racism is a mediated phenomenon “that emerges from and responds to the routines and culture of schooling” (p. 102). But if whiteness can be socialized and maintained via the institutional narratives of school, it also can be disrupted. Thus, we now turn toward considering what our findings suggest for how schools can move toward an anti-racist institutional narratives that challenge whiteness.

Toward Anti-Racist Institutional Narratives that Challenge Whiteness and White Identity

Disrupting the dehumanizing legacy of white supremacy and whiteness in schooling will require confronting the ways in which schools produce particular kinds of white identities that maintain (rather than disrupt) the racial status quo. Importantly, adopting an anti-racist institutional narrative that challenges whiteness is not simply for or about white students but in service of creating the necessary conditions for all students (including students of color) to experience educational environments that are just and humane (Kincheloe et al., 1998). As Spencer and Dowd (2024) reminded us, schools cannot recognize the humanity of Black children, and other students of color, “without confronting and dismantling white supremacy at the core of white identity” (p. 10). In this way, our findings speak to the need for schools to reconfigure their institutional practices, narratives, and policies that inevitably embed themselves in how children come to know and understand race. Thus, we offer two alternative institutional narratives to the ones that we uncovered at MWS that are rooted in efforts for anti-racism and social transformation. To be clear, we do not conceive of these narratives as static, the “solution,” or universal; instead, we offer them as a starting point for schools to take up the work of challenging whiteness and white identity (Rodriguez, 1998). And importantly, the specificity of such narratives will always also be deeply informed by the sociopolitical context, given that what schools can or cannot teach about racism is often subject to intense political debate (Diamond, 2024).

In response to our first finding, the narrative of racism in school cannot be isolated to talking only about racial oppression (or the racial “other”) given how such a frame misrepresents the relational realities of racism and allows white students “the luxury of being passive observers” in race conversations (Bonnett, 1996, p. 98; Rogers, 2019). We argue that taking up anti-racism in school requires an institutional narrative of critiquing white supremacy. As other scholars have argued, engaging students in a critical analysis and rejection of white supremacy can rightfully bring into purview the (white) racial actors and systemic processes implicated in racism (Leonardo, 2004). This narrative, then, would trouble the often-explicit focus on the oppressed racial other in school multicultural and racial equity efforts, which falls short of attending to the conditions of racial power, privilege, and hierarchy that create oppression. In this way, a narrative of critiquing white supremacy provides critical scaffolding from which all students can construct ways of being and knowing that work against (rather than for) whiteness. To be sure, however, it is a narrative and practice that not only asks students to locate themselves within, and against, white supremacy but also the schools themselves. It recognizes that (white) identities cannot be remade in school without shifting institutional processes and mechanisms built to protect whiteness and perpetuate racism (Trainor, 2008). Thus, a narrative of critiquing white supremacy within and outside of the classroom creates space for racial justice by exposing and rejecting the harmful logics of whiteness (and its linkages to anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, colonialism, etc.) that are built into schooling while at the same time seeking to reshape (white) students’ identities around anti-racist ways of knowing and being (Castagno, 2014).

Further, instead of embracing a school racial harmony narrative, our findings suggest that an institutional narrative of recognizing and confronting racism is required. Indeed, Douds (2012) argued that “the construction of racial harmony may make any form of racial progress more difficult, as it is taboo to even recognize the existence of racism or racial injustice” (p. 1382). This is precisely what we heard and saw from white students at MWS. A recognizing and confronting racism narrative inevitably would seek to not silence or downplay racism but to create conditions for students to actively name, reject, and take action against racism at the levels of self, school, and society (Raby, 2004). Such a narrative, like the one above would require a turning of the lens inward so that white students, like students of color already do, locate themselves within the complex racial histories of which they are attached. Doing so creates space for a “radically rethinking of what it means to be white,” which is not tethered to white practices of dismissing, detaching, and ignorance but rather to an anti-racist stance that recognizes and confronts racism (Rodriguez, 1998, p. 33). In this way, working toward school anti-racism is not marked by the absence of racism but rather by a refusal to accept or allow it. Across both narratives, we argue that it is necessary to take a developmental perspective that attends to children's evolving sociocognitive capacities (Spencer & Dowd, 2024). Thinking developmentally can ensure that a school's anti-racist narratives are not static messages but increase in complexity and nuance as children's cognitive development unfolds and evolves.

Limitations and Future Directions

We know that contexts shape human development and identity (e.g., Rogers, Moffitt, et al., 2021), and this study reveals the intricate nature through which school practices work to shape and mold white students’ racial identities; however, it is not without limitations. First, this analysis presents data from a single school in a liberal and racially diverse context. Although it was our intention to examine white identity formation in a racially progressive school, it is likely that the school presented is not generalizable to more rural and conservative contexts. To understand the dynamics of white identity formation in school settings, we must expand beyond the urban and more liberal school contexts where researchers often examine race and education. Further, in this study, our narrowing in on the school context is not meant to suggest that schools are the only source of socialization that informs white children's racial learning and identity formation. For instance, research has demonstrated the ways in which white families socialize their children toward particular racial ways of knowing through the types of social contexts (e.g., neighborhood, community, and school) parents create for their children (Hagerman, 2018). More work to link how children navigate and negotiate the family and school contexts simultaneously in their racial learning and identity formation is a fruitful avenue for future research. Finally, we only interviewed white students in the school for this analysis. While our sample was intentional, we also recognize that the realities of whiteness shape the lives of students of color perhaps most forcefully (Spencer & Dowd, 2024). Future research should investigate what is revealed about the whiteness of/in schooling from the perspective of students of color.