The Supremacy of Whiteness in Local Educational Politics: A Review of Literature

Whiteness Studies as a Field of Inquiry

Whiteness studies emerged as a distinct scholarly intervention that fundamentally reoriented the study of race. Rather than analyzing how racism affects people of color, scholars increasingly examined whiteness itself—theorizing it not as an unmarked norm or fixed biological reality related to skin color but as an active, constructed system conferring material and ideological benefits (Omi & Winant, 1994). This epistemological shift required treating whiteness as a racial project demanding explicit examination (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995; Leonardo, 2002). By centering whiteness as an object of study, this emerging field developed analytical frameworks for understanding how racial domination is maintained and reproduced through racialized experiences and ideologies.

Whiteness in Educational Scholarship: Positioning This Review

Within the field of education, recent reviews of scholarship have advanced critical understandings of whiteness across educational policy and higher education contexts. Piontaka and Zajiceka’s (2024) review of literature on whiteness in state and federal policymaking demonstrated how it is reproduced through manipulated discourse, colorblind ideologies, and safeguarding against the perceived danger to white supremacy—mechanisms that sustain racial hierarchy even within seemingly neutral policy language. Southern (2025) extends this analysis to higher education institutions, demonstrating how whiteness remains entrenched through institutionalized values, diversity initiatives, and standards of “excellence” that uphold racial dominance. While these studies offer vital insight into education’s systemic entanglement with whiteness, there is an absence of systematic reviews on how these dynamics operate within the localized governance of K–12 schooling.

This review differs from prior work by centering K–12 local educational politics (board, district, school leadership, school, and parent/community levels) where policy is actively negotiated and implemented. Examining local educational politics through the lens of whiteness is essential because it is precisely at this level of politics that racial ideologies become material reality for students and communities. While acknowledging that classroom- and state-level processes also shape, and are shaped by, these local dynamics, by narrowing the scope to these levels, the review can more clearly trace the context of policymaking and institutional governance where decisions about resource allocation, school access, and structural inequities are most directly enacted in local contexts. By examining whiteness within these contexts, the reviewed literature holds the potential to illustrate the mechanisms through which racial hierarchies are reproduced and potentially contested, offering pathways essential for scaling policy changes toward genuine educational transformation and racial justice. This systematic review also expands on previous scholarship by connecting systemic theories of whiteness to the localized, context-specific enactments of whiteness that sustain its broader structural power.

Present Study

In examining the varying ways scholars have adopted whiteness over time, this paper aligns first and foremost with Roediger’s (1994) contention that “whiteness is not just false and oppressive, it is nothing but false and oppressive” (p. 13). As Leonardo and Zembylas (2013) urge, this assertion brings critical aspects of whiteness into the center. The falsity lies in the popular idea that whiteness is reflective of a unified consciousness attached to the white racial identity. The white racial identity has always remained conditional on the sociohistorical requirements of white supremacy to maintain power over lives deemed “other” (HoSang & Molina, 2019). It stands that whiteness has expressed itself in varying ways throughout history, with classifications of the white racial identity reflecting this range (Omi & Winant, 1994). Thus, the construction of this identity has always depended on defining the “other” as negative (Guess, 2006).

Although the falsity of whiteness rests, in part, on its mutability, the objective of whiteness was and continues to be a matter of racial domination (Leonardo & Zembylas, 2013). The oppressiveness of whiteness endures both in ideology (Mayorga-Gallo, 2019) and the material inequalities organized along lines of race and class (Roediger, 1994). Hence, to effectively characterize whiteness, one must attend to the ways whiteness defines the hierarchies of power within a “racialized social system” and is also a “historically contingent social identity” defined as a means to legitimate systemic inequality (Doane, 2003, p. 9).

I take the view that whiteness is not predicated on phenotype. Looking only at skin color risks overlooking the system that has given meaning and value to white identity to uphold racial stratification. This conceptualization aligns with critical whiteness scholars who theorize whiteness as a structure of dominance rather than a set of physical traits (Frankenberg, 1993; Leonardo, 2004). In a related vein, the inclusion of racialized ascriptions (i.e., white, Black, Latinx, etc.) in this paper reflects the language used in the reviewed literature. Thus, their inclusion in this paper should be understood not as a reification of the biological and cultural essentialism of race but rather with the stipulation that racialized identifications are reflective of broader structures of white supremacy.

For the purposes of this review, this stance directed my interpretation of the literature. Specifically, I focused on the mechanisms through which educational processes reproduce or challenge racial domination, highlighting the relational dynamics of power, legitimacy, and stratification embedded in local governance and decision-making. Moreover, studies were interpreted not in terms of who was phenotypically “white,” but in how whiteness functioned as an organizing logic within educational institutions and practices.

Search Strategy

To locate relevant literature, I searched Educational Resources Information Centers (i.e., ERIC, ProQuest, and Summons) in February 2024 using the Boolean terms:

“whiteness” OR “white supremacy” AND “school board policy” OR “school board” OR “school district policy” OR “school district” OR “district leadership” OR “school leadership” OR “central office” OR “superintendent” OR “parent engagement” OR “community engagement” OR “parent organizations” OR “teachers’ unions”

Given the salience of these concepts to the nature of this inquiry, I exclusively searched article abstracts to identify studies that positioned whiteness or white supremacy as central to their analyses. These terms were selected to capture the organizational, political, and governance dimensions of local educational contexts. While Boolean terms such as “school board” and “school district” are not exclusively school policy–oriented, they were retained to ensure inclusion of literature addressing the political and organizational dimensions of local schooling, rather than macro-level or state policy contexts. The results of this search were subsequently filtered to peer-reviewed articles published in the previous two decades (i.e., 2004–2024) to capture scholarship reflecting contemporary policies and social contexts in local educational politics while aligning with what Twine and Gallagher (2008) describe as the third wave of whiteness research.

Article Screening and Selection

Across the three different platforms, the searches yielded 169 nonduplicative peer-reviewed scholarly articles. The article screening proceeded in two stages. First, abstracts were reviewed to identify potential relevance based on inclusion criteria. Second, full-text articles were read when the abstract alone did not provide sufficient information to determine whether whiteness or white supremacy was substantively analyzed. During this stage, articles were excluded if they met any of the following conditions:

Data Analysis

Following this process, 26 articles met all criteria and were included in the final review (see Table 1). These articles were coded and tracked in Microsoft Excel using a systematic coding framework organized across 12 columns: (1) full citation, (2) abstract/stated goals, (3) theoretical/conceptual framework explicitly named by authors, (4) research questions, (5) methods and data sources, (6) study population and setting, (7) key findings summary, (8) implications proposed by authors, (9) which local political level was examined (board/district, school leadership, school policies/practices, parent/community), (10) how authors defined or theorized whiteness, (11) key aspects or mechanisms of whiteness the study surfaced, and (12) gaps or analytical limitations I identified. This comprehensive documentation created an audit trail that enabled systematic comparison across studies and supported theme development.

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Table 1

Overview of Reviewed Articles

Author(s) & Year	Local Political Level	Primary Theme(s)
Amiot et al. (2020)	School leadership	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Aviles and Heybach (2017)	School board/district	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Segregation and Isolation
Bertrand and Sampson (2022)	School board/district	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community
Bertrand and Sampson (2024)	School board/district	Mechanisms of Whiteness; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Blanton et al. (2021)	Parent/community	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Castagno (2009)	School policies/practices	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Castro et al. (2022)	School board/district	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Chang (2022)	Parent/community	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community
Dorner et al. (2023)	School board/district	Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism
Dunning-Lozano (2016)	School policies/practices	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Segregation and Isolation
Forman et al. (2022)	School leadership	Mechanisms of Whiteness; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Hemmler et al. (2022)	School board/district	Segregation and Isolation; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Holmes (2023)	District leadership	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Khalifa (2015)	School leadership	The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism
Khalil and Brown (2020)	School board/district	Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Lewis-Durham et al. (2023)	Parent/community	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism
Matias and Rucker (2018)	School board/district	Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism
McCarthy Foubert (2023)	Parent/community	Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Nelson (2015)	Parent/community	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community
Rivera-McCutchen (2021)	Parent/community	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Sampson and Bertrand (2022)	School board/district	Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community
Staiger (2004)	School policies/practices	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism
Vaught (2009)	School board/district	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism
Wade-Jaimes (2023)	School policies/practices	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation
Wall et al. (2022)	School policies/practices	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; Segregation and Isolation; Reconstructing White Racial Identity
Wilson et al. (2021)	Parent/community	Mechanisms of Whiteness; Power/Disempowerment of Parents and Community; The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism; Reconstructing White Racial Identity

Note. Articles are organized alphabetically by first author. Many studies addressed multiple political levels and themes.

Building on the approach of Viesca et al. (2019), I analyzed these studies for their theoretical, conceptual, and methodological orientations. The coding process proceeded through three iterative cycles. In the first cycle, I conducted open coding after several readings of the article, generating initial codes that captured both theoretical orientations and empirical patterns (Miles et al., 2018). These initial codes included both inductive and deductive codes. Deductive codes were derived from the aforementioned theorizations of whiteness proposed by various scholars and adopted in this paper, with specific attention paid to third-wave conceptualizations of whiteness (e.g., color-evasiveness, class intersections). Inductive codes emerged from the data (e.g., white parent authority, identification processes as exclusion). Based on this process, initial codes included, but were not limited to: white privilege, segregation, equity rhetoric without material change, white parental power, individual-focused implications, and anti-Blackness.

In the second cycle, I conducted pattern coding to identify relationships among initial codes and consolidate them into broader analytic categories. Pattern coding not only illuminated deeper meanings behind initial codes (Saldaña, 2013) but also revealed recurring material and ideological dimensions of whiteness (Miles et al., 2018). The third cycle involved comparing patterns across all 26 articles to develop the five overarching themes, attending to both what appeared frequently and what was notably absent in the literature.

To ensure analytical rigor and reflexivity, I maintained analytic memos throughout the coding process, documenting decisions about code application, noting emergent patterns, and interrogating my own interpretations (Saldaña, 2013). I also engaged in constant comparison, revisiting previously coded articles as my understanding of patterns developed, which led to the refinement of several initial codes. For instance, early in the process, I coded multiple articles under “class intersections,” but later recognized a need to distinguish between studies that acknowledged the socioeconomic status of individuals (e.g., middle-class white parents) and those that linked it to structural processes of domination. This refinement led to the development of a subcode that differentiates these orientations, thereby informing my critique of the relative absence of literature that deeply interrogated the intersection of whiteness and dimensions of class hierarchy.

Throughout the analysis, I coded for how studies theorized whiteness or white supremacy, and when no explicit framework was named, I examined how authors invoked race, racialization, and racism. For example, Dorner et al. (2023) used theories of policy enactment to guide their analyses of dual language bilingual education (DBLE) programs. I coded for how the authors employed whiteness and related constructs of race to guide their findings and what it demonstrated about their theorization of the concept. In this particular example, whiteness was closely tied to white parental choice and the power it wielded over the DBLE program, at the expense of multilingual or immigrant families’ input.

Positionality Statement

My positionality shapes both what questions I ask and how I interpret the scholarship examined in this review. As the daughter of immigrants and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I have been attuned to how historical trauma and structural exclusion persist across generations and contexts. This background, along with my scholarly pursuits, has cultivated a critical consciousness regarding power, belonging, and the material conditions that determine who is granted access and opportunity.

My queer identity and my navigation of multiple cultural positions have also called me to question how visibility and invisibility operate within systems of access and privilege. Relatedly, my relative privilege, particularly my capacity to remain mutable with respect to race, faith, and sexuality, demands reflexivity. Following Táíwò’s (2020) concept of deference epistemology, I recognize that my experiences of marginalization do not automatically grant me insight into structural oppression or authorize my perspective on those struggles. Rather, this positionality calls me toward constant interrogation. It requires that I resist assumptions of shared experience, remain skeptical of claims to special understanding, and stay accountable to the communities whose struggles I am examining.

These commitments have shaped my analytical approach, as I have sought to foreground the material conditions and systemic processes that structure educational inequality, rather than attributing inequity to individual choices or characterizations. I have attempted to center the perspectives and struggles of those most harmed by racial domination, while remaining aware of my own limits and responsibilities in this work. This positionality does not grant me inherent insight. Rather, it compels me to approach research as an act of illumination, revealing how equity is claimed, contested, and constrained in practice while remaining grounded in the concrete action and collective work necessary for genuine transformation.

The Mechanisms of Whiteness

One primary theme of this review centered on the literature’s engagement with frequently cited mechanisms of whiteness: color-evasion, privileging, normalization, and duplicity. While all four mechanisms ultimately serve to legitimize white dominance and often co-occur, each operates through distinct processes: color-evasion obscures racialized dynamics, privileging legitimates benefits to those racialized as white, normalization renders whiteness invisible as the default, and duplicity actively disguises and denies racial advantage. The 19 articles (n = 19) categorized under this finding engaged with these mechanisms to varying degrees, in that not every article conceptualized whiteness through each outlined tenet. Evaluated together, however, they largely align with third-wave scholarship on whiteness, which asserts that whiteness can be recognized through these common mechanisms. These mechanisms were observable across the literature through both discursive patterns (e.g., how race and equity are discussed or avoided) and material practices (e.g., how resources, opportunities, and access are distributed).

Half of the articles discussed the concept of colorblindness or color-evasiveness, a term used in the literature to describe the ideology that minimizes, ignores, or obscures the significance of race (Annamma et al., 2017). Studies were identified as engaging with this concept if they explicitly discussed either colorblindness or color-evasiveness in relation to their topics of study, or if they referenced how whiteness was maintained by evading the subject of race or racism. Collectively, these studies make evident how colorblind or color-evasive discourse serves to maintain hegemonic schooling conditions (Amiot et al., 2020; Bertrand & Sampson, 2022, 2024; Castagno, 2009; Castro et al., 2022; Dunning-Lozano, 2016; Forman et al., 2022; Holmes, 2023; Rivera-McCutchen, 2021; Staiger, 2004; Vaught, 2009; Wade-Jaimes, 2023; Wall et al., 2022; Wilson et al., 2021). For instance, Bertrand and Sampson (2022) utilized discourse analysis and the strategy of intertextual co-optation to evaluate community members’ responses to their school board’s failure to effectively take action against incidents of racism. Their strategies reflect the oppressive, color-evasive ideologies and discourse of board members in the protection of whiteness. The presentation of whiteness through color-evasiveness often demonstrated its duplicitous nature in that whiteness frequently exploits invisible and furtive means in maintaining the racial state. Interestingly, in Staiger’s (2004) evaluation of a gifted magnet program in California, the authors observed how whiteness becomes tantamount to giftedness. Regardless of the magnet school’s initial construction to facilitate desegregation, the program avoided overt discussions of race and instead protected the segregated white students in the gifted program through the rationale of giftedness (Staiger, 2004). The literature on this theme largely confirms the central premises of foundational whiteness theories, which contend that whiteness preserves privileges associated with the white racial identity by strategically avoiding explicit discussions of race and recasting inequality through seemingly neutral frameworks (Annamma et al., 2017; Mayorga-Gallo, 2019). The reviewed studies echo the enduring adaptability of whiteness and its capacity to reproduce racial hierarchies through familiar educational discourses like “giftedness” that obscure structural inequality.

Whiteness is noted here even when the outward appearance of local educational politics seemingly facilitates laudable projects of racial equality (e.g., school desegregation). As such, I offer that there is an adaptable, surreptitious nature to whiteness that is expressed in the literature as well. This understanding of whiteness is, to some extent, sustained through the normalizing function of whiteness. The formalized and tacit rules of school board meetings exemplify this, where stakeholders generally accept systematized guidelines of local school board governance as the standard, despite these guidelines being racialized and silencing oppositional voices (Sampson & Bertrand, 2022). As such, the normativity of whiteness produces the uncontested center, remaining undetected precisely because it is the accepted standard from which to judge (Doane, 2003).

Yet the normalizing function of whiteness extends beyond institutional procedures. Holmes (2023) reveals how whiteness operates through the cultural encoding of regional identity in rural Wyoming. By examining how administrators’ resistance to diversity operates through “Cowboy Epistemology,” a framework combining demographic conservatism, cultural homophily, and whiteness as an invisible standard, the author shows that whiteness does not rely on explicit racist rhetoric. Instead, it functions through the normalization of a particular way of life (i.e., ranching, extraction economy, and isolationism) as the default against which diversity is measured as aberrant. In this context, adherence to traditional values becomes indistinguishable from whiteness, revealing how whiteness produces the uncontested center not only through governance procedures but through the cultural sedimentation of regional belonging itself. Where Sampson and Bertrand (2022) identify how school board meeting rules silence oppositional voices, Holmes (2023) shows how regional identities are racialized in ways that render diversity as foreign or threatening, making resistance to inclusion appear as cultural preservation rather than racial domination.

Finally, in the reviewed local educational policy literature, whiteness is positioned as legitimating privileges and benefits to people racialized as white. Dunning-Lozano (2016) specifically addresses this in their study of the enrollment and referral processes that systematically segregated students of color in an under-resourced continuation school. Dunning-Lozano (2016) renders these practices as part and parcel of “how racism continues to determine the livelihood and quality of life experienced by some privileged groups and not others” (p. 455). Privilege granted to those of the white racialized identity is a consequence of whiteness, granting entitlements across racialized and class-based domains. Therefore, privilege is understood as primarily held by white people and specifically by white stakeholders in the local political process. Wall et al. (2022) make this concept evident through their exploration of institutional processes that impeded working-class Latinx and Black families’ access to two-way dual language (TWDL) programs. Drawing from tenets of critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2000), Wall et al. (2022) assert that white privilege, or the unmerited benefits accrued from being racialized as white, is understood through the dichotomy of ownership in that a person either owns the property of whiteness or does not. The favoring of white, affluent families in district and school-level processes allowed this group of stakeholders to capitalize on this asset and secure access to TWDL schooling while excluding other racialized families. As follows, the possession of privileges by students and families of the white racialized identity permits them to assert power in local educational politics, which in turn allows them to confer additional educational advantages.

Identifying these mechanisms (i.e., color-evasive, privileging, normalization, duplicitous) provides recognizable markers for naming and challenging whiteness, even when actors within systems appear to operate with benign intent. The finding, however, holds larger implications for the field in that relying on these mechanisms may serve to essentialize whiteness. Whiteness is expressed through historical and locally situated relations of power, which were often secondary or completely omitted in this literature in favor of these accepted features of whiteness. Although nearly 75% of the reviewed articles were categorized under this theme, only four studies (n = 4) contextualized these mechanisms in specific local settings by tracing how elements of whiteness originated in or were influenced by local histories. Without examining how historical decisions, funding structures, or political pressures produced particular policies and practices in specific districts, the literature risks reifying whiteness as an abstract ideology disconnected from the concrete institutional arrangements and relations that give it power in local contexts. This gap is particularly consequential because it limits our understanding not only of how whiteness becomes embedded differently across unique local contexts, but also what material hierarchies and racialized distributions of resources particular expressions of whiteness sustain and defend over time. Thus, this theme should be regarded as a cautionary signal to the field of the imminent reductionism in research on whiteness in local educational policy, if researchers continue to overemphasize these essences.

The Power and Disempowerment of Parents and Community

More than half of the studies (n = 17) reviewed examined the power dynamics affecting parents and communities, highlighting how local institutions sustain the social and material advantages of white families at the expense of marginalized racialized groups. Central to this finding was the consistent focus on white parents and their influence in shaping local educational politics. In particular, this literature analyzed how whiteness is reproduced through the prioritization of white parents’ interests and desires, enabling the hoarding of resources and opportunities to the detriment of other racialized groups. White parents’ ability to secure access to STEM programming (Wade-Jaimes, 2023), dual language schools (Blanton et al., 2021; Dorner et al., 2023; Wall et al., 2022), augmented school funding (Vaught, 2009), and gifted programs (Matias & Rucker, 2018; Staiger, 2004) become demonstrative of this.

In a similar vein, the literature presents white parent advocacy as a formidable force in local politics, evident in their countermovements against culturally responsive curricula, such as ethnic studies (Chang, 2022), and their influence in school rezoning processes that perpetuate school segregation (Castro et al., 2022). As aptly summarized by Wade-Jaimes (2023), “In the cases presented here, it is clear that it is not the students, teachers, or families in the ‘failing school,’ but rather White parents and families, and industry leaders that are in control of ‘reforms’” (p. 1209). The literature in this study thus validates how local institutions, through their investments in whiteness, maintain the social and material benefits associated with the white racial identity. As such, this literature affirms how white parents are actors who not only leverage these benefits but also reinforce similar structures that further disadvantage specific racialized groups.

Critically, this pattern of white parental power and the marginalization of racialized communities extends beyond formal school governance structures to ostensibly progressive movements. Rivera-McCutchen (2021) demonstrates this through their analysis of the New York State opt-out movement against high-stakes testing. Despite the movement’s equity rhetoric and legitimate critique of testing policies, the movement was dominated by white middle-class parents whose concerns centered on preserving advantage for their own children. The movement’s framing emphasized individual parental choice and raising awareness about testing harms, but largely unexamined were the underlying structural issues of how testing policies differentially impact communities with fewer resources to absorb educational disruptions (Rivera-McCutchen, 2021). This exemplifies how white parental power operates not only within institutional decision-making but within activist spaces, where the prioritization of white middle-class concerns, which are framed as universal equity concerns, effectively marginalizes the distinct interests and structural analyses of communities of color.

A notable underexplored area in this body of research is how socioeconomic status intersects with whiteness to shape parental authority in school politics. While many studies note the middle-class status of white parents, the majority of this literature did not interrogate the intersection of whiteness and class. Wilson et al. (2021) provide a rare exception, examining a rural parent engagement program aimed at including lower-income white parents in school decision-making. Their findings suggest that middle-class white norms continued to structure participation, both limiting access for lower-income parents and shaping the evaluative lens through which these parents judged others. This example validates how whiteness operates through class stratification even among those racialized as white, thereby determining access to the local political process. Even in this case, however, parental authority is primarily framed in terms of individual behavior rather than the structural conditions (e.g., broader economic restructuring, housing policies, or labor market changes) that enable or constrain participation. Although the literature of this review did not thoroughly interrogate the intersection of whiteness and dimensions of class hierarchy, its nascent inclusion exposes an undertheorized dimension of whiteness that merits deeper scrutiny—how class becomes implicated in racial domination.

Segregation and Isolation

The evaluated literature further explores the consequences of whiteness, with nearly half of the articles (n = 12) highlighting the segregation of students of color as a chief byproduct of endemic whiteness. Close to half of the studies on this theme employed “whiteness as property” as a theoretical framework (Harris, 1993). This literature demonstrates how whiteness contributes to the physical isolation of various student groups. For example, Vaught’s (2009) ethnographic analysis of a West Coast school district found that the district’s policies on school choice and weighted student funding, as well as their decentralized governance structure, resulted in increased segregation and unequal resource allocation across racialized domains. Particularly in the culture of student tracking, whiteness legitimates disenfranchisement through the guise of legitimacy and policy neutrality while obstructing a more equitable alignment toward distributive justice (Vaught, 2009).

Through the synthesis of this literature, I advance that this shared tenet surfaces how whiteness produces both the conditions and the rationale for inequitable education. Separation is positioned as the consequence of school district and school-level policies and practices that, despite attempts to amend segregated schooling opportunities on the surface, functioned as instruments to exclude (e.g., Castagno, 2009; Castro et al., 2022; Dorner et al., 2023; Khalil & Brown, 2020). Notably, the isolation of various racialized ethnic groups was undergirded by whiteness latent in identification processes (Dunning-Lozano, 2016; Hemmler et al., 2022; Matias & Rucker, 2018; Staiger, 2004; Vaught, 2009; Wade-Jaimes, 2023; Wall et al., 2022; Wilson et al., 2021). Identification processes, as regarded in the research of this review, would determine eligibility for specialized school programs and spaces. Hemmler et al.’s (2022) research provides a glimpse into the exclusionary processes of prevailing mechanisms for identification. In their study of 11 school districts’ rural gifted education programs, Hemmler et al. (2022) observed that Black students were “over three times more likely to be excluded from gifted identification than their White peers with the districts’ methods of identification” (p. 15). The authors interrogate how the preponderance of whiteness in gifted spaces ensures spatial injustice, where access to “valued” opportunities is undercut despite eligibility and similar educational experiences (Hemmler et al., 2022). Extending Hemmler et al.’s (2022) findings, the studies in this review deepened comprehension of whiteness not only as a driver of unequal outcomes but as a constitutive logic shaping how educational policies, identification systems, and opportunity structures are designed and justified. In local educational contexts, whiteness sustains itself through institutional practices that segregate racialized groups and deprive them of material and educational resources, thereby reproducing perceptions of racialized inferiority (e.g., non-gifted) that are later cited to rationalize continued exclusion.

Implicated in the literature on segregated schooling is also the changing geographical landscape of municipalities, prominently seen through gentrification (Aviles & Heybach, 2017; Blanton et al., 2021; Khalil & Brown, 2020; Wade-Jaimes, 2023; Wall et al., 2022). For example, in Khalil and Brown’s (2020) examination of school leaders’ attempts to reintegrate their charter schools through relocation, the authors found that diversity-oriented school-level policies alone were insufficient to combat the displacement of lower-income students of color resulting from city policies and gentrification. This example illustrates the connection between school-level initiatives and broader municipal and policy contexts in that local efforts to promote equity are deeply constrained by structural and spatial processes beyond the school’s control.

Throughout the literature on this theme, only a limited number of studies addressed these contextual dynamics, which were identified based on whether authors explicitly connected school-level outcomes to neighborhood, city, or policy-level processes. While most examined institutional actors or school policies in isolation, only four articles traced the contextual importance of neighborhood change in the persistent segregation of lower-income students of color. Within this subset, Aviles and Heybach (2017) provide the most expansive contextual analysis. In studying Chicago’s closure of 49 predominantly Black schools and its impact on students experiencing homelessness, they connect school closings to housing instability, gentrification, neoliberal urban policy, and the racialized displacement of Black families. Their analysis demonstrates the nature of systemic contextual work, showing how education policy is inherently intertwined with housing policy, municipal development decisions, and the economic logics that render certain communities disposable.

The limited attention to broader structural and spatial contexts demonstrates an ongoing gap in the field. Without connecting local educational patterns to the political-economic forces that shape disinvestment, displacement, and racialized resource allocation over time, scholarship risks presenting segregation as primarily the product of individual decision-making (e.g., which families choose which schools, which students are identified as “gifted”). Expanding analytical attention to these intersecting dynamics would strengthen understanding of how local educational, housing, and urban policies together sustain the racial project of whiteness and reproduce enduring hierarchies of opportunity.

The Hegemonic Power of Non-Racism

Twelve studies investigated policies and practices that maintain whiteness despite the adoption of diversity- and equity-oriented rhetoric (Bertrand & Sampson, 2024; Castagno, 2009; Castro et al., 2022; Dorner et al., 2023; Forman et al., 2022; Khalifa, 2015; Khalil & Brown, 2020; Lewis-Durham et al., 2023; Matias & Rucker, 2018; Staiger, 2004; Vaught, 2009; Wilson et al., 2021). This hegemonic embrace of “non-racism” demonstrates mechanisms of whiteness in action. For instance, duplicity operates through the gap between professed values (e.g., equity, inclusion, diversity) and the practices that maintain them (e.g., tracked classes, neighborhood-based assignments, competitive gifted programs). By adopting the language of equity without restructuring opportunity, districts deploy what Bonilla-Silva (2003) terms “racism without racists,” where systemic inequity is maintained through ostensibly non-racial policies.

For instance, research by Bertrand and Sampson (2024) on school district leaders’ responses to racism classified hollow and evasive equity initiatives as part of the “white innocence playbook,” where school boards avoid responsibility by naming racism through strategies of positive image management (see also Bridgeforth, 2021). Lewis-Durham et al. (2023) further clarify this theme through their analysis of a social justice–centered school where, despite the school’s explicit use of equity language, the leadership’s stated commitments to disrupting whiteness were contradicted by their inaction when confronted with white dominance in parent spaces. Even when presented with opportunities to disrupt practices that advantaged some families over others, such as an open-door policy that gave unfettered access to those with time and resources to visit during the day, the leaders took no direct action to remedy these problems of inequitable access (Lewis-Durham et al., 2023). This case emphasizes a critical difference between anti-racism and non-racism: leaders’ professed anti-racist values become non-racist in nature when they perpetuate whiteness through silence and procedural legitimacy, allowing ostensibly neutral processes to function as mechanisms of exclusion.

Matias and Rucker (2018) similarly assessed the disconnection between purportedly “equity-oriented” policies and reality through their evaluation of Denver Public Schools’ Denver 2020 plan, which was principally intended to close the achievement gap in their district. The findings from the study, however, indicate that the tools and policies instituted to support this chief aim only proliferated historical racialized inequities (Matias & Rucker, 2018). Despite pretenses of equity in their positionings, the research of this review converges in highlighting the constant embedding of white supremacy in the policies and practices of local education agencies.

Relatedly, Castro et al. (2022) evaluated school leaders’ and community stakeholders’ narratives on school redistricting rezoning. Their research shows how persistent segregated schooling can be upheld through rhetoric that largely accentuates resource equality before integration and obscures the racialized history that shaped the present political moment (Castro et al., 2022). Castagno (2009) further explores this disjuncture between the unsubstantiated equity claims of policies and the reality of persistent injustice in their assessment of an urban district in Utah. In it, the author contends that this disjuncture is the difference between formal equality and substantive equality, where the former foments small changes in local political contexts and the latter would bring forth expansive visions of educational equity that largely upend the present conditions of oppression in education (Castagno, 2009). Consistent with the literature on this theme, historical and present-day decisions to emphasize educational equality can obscure the preservation of hegemonic power dynamics. They illuminate that diversity- and equity-oriented policies should be equally interrogated for their maintenance of whiteness, as they can often serve as rhetorically palatable ways to sustain racialized material inequalities.

While studies in this theme identify the gap between equity rhetoric and material outcomes, few trace how this gap is produced through connections between educational policy and broader political-economic forces. For instance, studies documenting hollow equity initiatives often don’t examine how funding structures, city policies, or state accountability regimes constrain local leaders’ capacity to enact substantive change, even when they possess a genuine commitment to equity. By focusing primarily on discourse and stated intentions, much of this scholarship foregrounds the moral and rhetorical dimensions of equity work but gives less attention to the structural conditions that limit its realization. As a result, policy shortcomings may appear as failures of leadership or will rather than as products of systemic constraints that persist regardless of individual actors’ values or awareness.

Notably, a small subset of the literature (n = 5) cited whiteness as being maintained by non-white individuals (Bertrand & Sampson, 2022, 2024; Castro et al., 2022; Forman et al., 2022; Khalifa, 2015). For example, Khalifa (2015) examined abusive and exclusionary practices instituted by Black school principals, challenging the common notion that whiteness is displayed only by those of white racial identity. As argued by the author,

This study has deep implications for our understanding of White supremacy, for it reinforces our understanding that it is systemic and can be reproduced by anyone. In fact, it might be argued here that systems of White supremacy would intentionally pursue non-threatening Black principals who will ostensibly not resist a very palpable racially oppressive context. (pp. 277–278)

These sobering implications point to the importance of taking a systemic lens in such research.

The literature within this subgroup problematized the diversity of political actors in educational contexts, deeming it inadequate to effectively address whiteness. Indeed, Khalifa’s (2015) study shows that we must move away from analyses of equity that use diversity narratives alone and instead take on systemic lenses to fully uncover white supremacy’s structuration of local educational politics. This strand in the literature was not as established, although it was classified under the overarching ideas of this theme. It, nevertheless, resurfaces key takeaways from this subset of literature and one that merits further evaluation in studies of whiteness.

Reconstructing the White Racial Identity

Thirteen articles in this review suggested that whiteness could be addressed at the individual level by fostering awareness of and engagement with racial justice. I found that studies in this group often emphasized individual remediation strategies, including building awareness (Wall et al., 2022), taking responsibility (Bertrand & Sampson, 2024; Castagno, 2009), thoughtfully listening and engaging (Blanton et al., 2021; Wall et al., 2022), and shifting beliefs (Hemmler et al., 2022; Wilson et al., 2021), among others. It is necessary to acknowledge that not every article under this theme proposed actions solely focused on individual remedies. Nevertheless, roughly half of the evaluated studies contended that working to reconstruct the white racial identity by modifying stakeholders’ consciousness, responsiveness, and perspectives was a viable means of addressing whiteness ingrained in their specific contexts.

For example, Forman et al. (2022) explored school leaders’ attempts to connect social-emotional learning (SEL) with anti-racist objectives. The authors found that leaders often applied strategies that frame SEL as a way for teachers to manage their emotions of fear, defensiveness, and shame when becoming knowledgeable about racism and to provide teachers with tools to better understand racialized students’ experiences (Forman et al., 2022). With these findings in mind, Forman et al. (2022) emphasize that although SEL cannot solve systemic racism, it is a constructive way to contest racism and harm done to students of color by addressing “White teachers’ emotional resistance to implementing anti-racist instructional practices” (p. 377). Unsettling the mindsets of white teachers is thereby situated as a method that educational leaders can use to assist in teachers’ comprehension of and investment in racial justice.

Research implications on the improvement of white stakeholders’ mindsets and actions further promoted improved dialogue and awareness strategies. For instance, Blanton et al.’s (2021) research on a Black mother’s counterstorytelling on their engagement in school and PTA processes demonstrated the marginalization of Black families in dual language (DL) programs. Alongside policy recommendations, Blanton et al. (2021) “encourage[d] White parents and administrators to listen and thoughtfully engage when confronted with the ‘sneaky’ ways in which Whiteness is perpetuated in DL and other educational settings” alongside having these groups “acknowledge that they may be celebrated while parents of color are often vilified for speaking against racism” (p. 481). In this respect, attending to the harmful racial dynamics in DL programs was, to some degree, contingent on white stakeholders recognizing their differential privileges and assuming a more attentive and receptive position when approached about racialized inequities.

The research in this theme asserts that subverting whiteness requires those of the white racial identity to reflect on and recognize their privilege, their harm to racialized communities, and their racist beliefs at multiple levels of school governance and decision-making. In this view, changing the tide of white supremacy in local educational politics calls on individuals to commit themselves to possessing greater knowledge of racial injustice and advance policies and practices that reflect a commitment to racialized equity. Correspondingly, educational equity is predicated on individuals reconstructing their white racial identity, which is not only myopic but also relegates anti-racism to an individual pursuit rather than a systemic one.

This finding also reflects a tension between identifying systemic issues and relying on personal transformation as the main response. Many studies document how whiteness operates through institutional mechanisms, such as identification processes that sort students into unequal tracks or policies that concentrate resources in predominantly white schools, while emphasizing changes in individual consciousness as a means of redress. For example, Amiot et al. (2020) examined a leadership team’s use of critical race theory to guide equity audits that revealed systemic bias in tracking, identification, and discipline practices. Their interventions centered on building teacher awareness through professional learning communities and family dialogues. These efforts contributed to greater reflection and modest improvements in school outcomes, yet the underlying systems that produced inequities remained largely intact.

While shifting mindsets holds value, its predominance allows scholarship to appear structurally critical while proposing interventions that often leave the racial project of whiteness intact. Without diminishing the role of individual complicity in sustaining racial inequity, the recurring emphasis on reconstructing the white racial identity through awareness, listening, and responsibility-taking risks positions personal transformation as sufficient when the issues identified (e.g., resource hoarding and inequitable policy design) demand structural change and material redistribution.

Mutually Reinforcing Dynamics

It is important to recognize that the five themes identified in this review do not operate in isolation. Rather, they often reinforce one another, creating cumulative effects that sustain white supremacy in local educational politics. For instance, in Blanton et al. (2021), the authors demonstrate how mechanisms of whiteness, which legitimize privileges to people racialized as white, shaped which parental voices are heard and which forms of engagement were deemed legitimate. This, in turn, reinforces patterns of exclusion and disempowerment, particularly among racially minoritized families, perpetuating structural inequities in access to decision-making and student educational access. The authors suggest that the implications of this research call on people of white racial identity to listen and engage when their whiteness is confronted, as well as further understand their privilege.

These interconnected dynamics underscore how rhetoric, policy, and practice work together to sustain existing hierarchies. By foregrounding these mutually reinforcing relationships, this review emphasizes the ways in which whiteness operates as both an ideological and structural force, shaping local educational politics not only through overt exclusion but also through subtler mechanisms of normalization. Understanding these interactions provides a framework for interpreting the findings and situating them within broader discussions in whiteness studies.

Overall, the 26 articles analyzed in this review are a part of third-wave whiteness scholarship in that they attend to locally specific, performative expressions of whiteness in educational contexts. However, my analysis reveals significant gaps in how third-wave frameworks have been operationalized in education research. In the next section, I discuss the complexities of these findings and their alignment or lack thereof with fundamental developments in third-wave whiteness studies.

Ontology of Whiteness

Understanding the mechanisms of whiteness (e.g., color-evasive, privileging, normative, and duplicitous) is aligned with the scholarly premises of the third-wave whiteness studies of the past few decades. There is utility alone in naming these elements, as it makes visible the hidden ontology of hegemonic power relations. Identifying these mechanisms also circumvents the notion of intentionality. Since white supremacy pervades society, the institutionalization of whiteness through rhetorical, ideological, and material devices can skirt claims of intentional harm (Matias & Newlove, 2017).

Nevertheless, the significance of naming the ancillary elements of whiteness (e.g., color-evasive, privileging, normative, and duplicitous) should be coupled with epistemological caution against essentialization. As stressed by Nakayama and Krizek (1995), “The risk for critical researchers who choose to interrogate whiteness . . . is the risk of essentialism” (p. 293). “There is no ‘true essence’ to ‘whiteness,’” Nakayama and Krizek (1995) continue, “there are only historically contingent constructions of that social location.” (p. 293). As seen in this review, scholarly sensitivity to these mechanisms may impede discernment of the ways the “performativity of whiteness” shifts in local political contexts over time (Matias & Newlove, 2017, p. 319). The absence of acknowledgments of local histories in a significant portion of the literature may be illustrative of this. Ahistoricism, notably as it pertains to whiteness, devalues the complexity and mutability of racial projects, masking the fact that the process of racial supremacy is, by nature, deeply historical (Doane, 2003). Thus, the ahistorical nature of the reviewed studies could be the byproduct of essentialism, where scholars opt to account for dimensions of whiteness that have been readily acknowledged rather than attuning to the situational and historical relations of power that have restructured whiteness in service of the present moment (Twine & Gallagher, 2008).

Moreover, whiteness can be sustained by those racialized as non-white. Focusing analysis on individual privileges (i.e., who has them, who doesn’t, who acknowledges them) obscures how “whiteness is not synonymous to white people,” but operates as a structural force that can be upheld regardless of the racialized identity of specific actors (Matias & Newlove, 2017, p. 317). Additionally, privilege is the everyday counterpart of structural domination. Privilege cannot be gained in the first place without the persistent stronghold of structural domination (Leonardo, 2004). As such, the rhetoric of white privilege in the assessment of whiteness has the potential to inaptly focus on the byproduct of white supremacy (i.e., “being dominant”) rather than the “institutional processes that secure domination” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 137). Although not all articles in this review adopted this lens, this distinction should remain at the forefront of research on local educational politics that seek to use whiteness as a lens in their inquiry.

Actors vs Systems

In critical respects, the literature reviewed illustrates the disproportionate attention paid to certain actors, such as white middle-class parents, while giving less consideration to the broader systems that shape local educational politics. Notwithstanding the importance of judging how these figures comprise a vital force shaping the course of school policies and practices, the immense significance given to this group begs the question of whether education scholars have “mystif[ied] the process of racial accumulation through occlusion of history and forsaking structural analysis for a focus on the individual” (Leonardo, 2004, p.141). Simply put, if not connected to broader systems of racism, these studies may further obscure the racial project of whiteness by overemphasizing individual political actors.

Gillborn (2008) points to an analogy that exposes the limitations of concentrating whiteness studies exclusively on individuals. In it, they assert that “individual people (teachers, policy-makers, commentators) and separate agencies (education; the media; the criminal justice system) can be viewed as spokes connected through a central hub of whiteness, i.e. the shared supposedly ‘commonsense’ beliefs that privilege White experiences, assumptions and interests” (Gillborn, 2008, p. 244). Gillborn (2008) continues by saying,

Every individual actor is important and implicated but each individual can hide in the mass of other spokes and deny their significance. One of the strengths of institutional racism is that no single person or agency can be held up as wholly responsible, but to some extent the system draws authority from them all. (p. 244)

Gillborn’s (2008) hub-and-spoke model clarifies why an actor-focused lens can obscure systemic processes: Individuals derive their authority from the structural networks in which they operate. Without attending to these networks, analyses risk underestimating the logics of whiteness that extract power from the number of other spokes in the system and reify its supremacy (Gillborn, 2008). Thus, the prominence of literature that solely focuses on figures operating in the institution of whiteness may obfuscate other “spokes” at work in their contexts and the structural aspects that give meaning and legitimacy to the actions of these figures.

Non-Racism vs Anti-Racism

Through the scholarship in this study, the field of education has also come to apprehend the third-wave focus on “how power and oppression are articulated, redefined, and reasserted through various political discourses and cultural practices that privilege whiteness even when the prerogatives of the dominant group are contested” (Twine & Gallagher, 2008, p.7). The recasting of seemingly “good” motivations in local political processes remain circumspect insofar as they appropriate the discourse of diversity and equity-oriented politics to safeguard whiteness in local educational contexts. Put simply, the assessed policies and practices in this review allude to “the commodification of ‘diversity’ that holds white supremacy in place,” advancing evidence of whiteness as being articulated through rhetoric and optics to evade opposition (Gerrard et al., 2022).

Accordingly, scholars in this review have begun to develop a theorization of whiteness that intellectualizes the distinction between “non-racism, a form of image management” and “anti-racism, a political project.” (Leonardo & Zembylas, 2013, p. 151). In the present conditions, local political developments reflect non-racism, allowing school districts and political actors to feign substantive changes toward educational equity while fashioning local educational contexts to further sustain marginalization. Thus, participation in the discourse of diversity, equity, and inclusion divorced from the political project of anti-racism becomes exploitative at best and oppressive at worst.

Reconstruction vs Abolition

Finally, the thematic emphasis that implied a reworking of the awareness and actions of those who are racialized as white engages in the oppositional conclusions made by whiteness theorists for many decades: Does dismantling racial domination require the abolition or reconstruction of whiteness? Hallmark literature produced by Frankenberg (1993) and Roediger (1994) offers a glimpse into this dialectic. Bonnet (1996) rightly situates these texts as offering divergent conclusions on how to challenge whiteness. Frankenberg (1993) aligns with the prospect that white people must name, challenge, and reconstitute whiteness toward anti-racism. Roediger (1994), on the other hand, stresses that whiteness must be abolished altogether, calling for anti-racism to align itself instead with class struggles. In later texts, Roediger (1999) questions whether a healthy white identity is possible, arguing that “fostering awareness of how Whiteness operates as a category is different from encouraging an identification with Whiteness” (p. 243). Although they have different means of diminishing the oppressive consequences of this racial project, both authors propose valuable considerations, only one of which seems to be reflected in the literature evaluated in this review.

Commitment to reconstructionism offers an opening for stakeholders who are racialized as white to engage in racial dialogue and recognize their privilege vis-à-vis awareness of whiteness. Buy-in, in this regard, is predicated on acknowledgment and understanding but critically fails to call for the relinquishing of material resources that justice necessitates (Leonardo, 2004). In other words, reconstruction does not, by nature, lead to the disinvestment from the racial project of domination. With this in mind, Hartman (2020) offers:

The possessive investment in whiteness can’t be rectified by learning “how to be more antiracist.” It requires a radical divestment in the project of whiteness and a redistribution of wealth and resources. It requires abolition, the abolition of the carceral world, the abolition of capitalism. What is required is a remaking of the social order, and nothing short of that is going to make a difference. (para. 7)

While it remains difficult to envision the “remaking of the social order,” Hartman’s assertion bears further study. Can shifting knowledge and beliefs toward anti-racism alone dismantle whiteness structured into local educational institutions and systems? The favored position of reconstruction in the literature, although valuable, may constrain the vision of what is possible in these contexts and anti-racism work in general (Gillborn, 2006). This is not to dismiss consciousness work entirely. Awareness of whiteness remains necessary—one cannot divest from what remains unnamed and unrecognized. However, I contend that research on local educational contexts must reposition awareness as only a preliminary step rather than the endpoint—necessary but insufficient for achieving structural transformation. Reconstructing white racial identity to be “less harmful” leaves intact the structures that make whiteness valuable in the first place. Although whiteness scholars have historically debated the limitations and possibilities of the abolishment or reconstruction, the field of education is obliged to examine the possibilities of both paths for racial transformation in educational policies and practices.

A Proposed Reframing

Rather than proposing a distinct “fourth wave,” I offer that education scholarship deepen and extend third-wave whiteness analysis through more rigorous theoretical engagement. To operationalize this reframing in practice, I propose the following analytical framework for future research on whiteness in local educational politics:

Research aligned with this reframing must simultaneously ask: (1) How is whiteness performed and legitimized in this specific context? (2) What material hierarchies and resource distributions does this performance sustain? (3) How did the historical development of this particular locality produce these specific expressions of whiteness? (4) How do the mechanisms of whiteness in local educational contexts intersect with the other structures in the local political economy, such as housing, municipal, and economic policies? (5) How are racialized communities organizing against these structures, and what do their demands reveal about what transformation requires? (6) What structural changes in policy, funding, and governance would their liberation necessitate?

This approach demands methodological expansion beyond discourse analysis and interviews with institutional actors. Researchers must trace policy genealogies through archival work, connecting present practices to historical local policy decisions. They must analyze city and state policy and data alongside local educational policies. Critically, they must also center the organizing work of Black and racialized communities, not as “participant voices” but as theorists of their own conditions whose insights drive the research questions themselves.

For instance, rather than documenting that identification processes exclude Black students in local educational contexts and recommending “awareness training,” whiteness research under this reframing would trace how these identification criteria emerged from specific local resistance to desegregation court orders in the 1970s and ’80s (Naff et al., 2020) or document how Black parent organizations have demanded universal enrichment programming. Similarly, as opposed to documenting white parent hoarding of DL programs, whiteness scholarship could trace how the district’s DL program expansion coincided with gentrification policies that displaced Latinx families while attracting white professionals; analyze enrollment policies, transportation access, and school placement in relation to housing costs and displacement patterns; or center Latinx community organizations’ demands for community-controlled schools and Spanish language preservation.

While these methodological shifts exemplify the practical dimension of this reframing, they are anchored in a deeper theoretical imperative: to move beyond documenting the operations of whiteness and critically interrogate the conditions that necessitate its continual reproduction. Where third-wave scholarship illuminates how locally specific expressions of whiteness are performed, scholarship insists we ask why it must be performed. Local educational contexts are particularly revelatory in this regard, as understanding how whiteness is employed through mechanisms such as district policies and parent engagement structures is insufficient without understanding what material hierarchies and racialized distributions of resources they sustain and defend. As has been surfaced in this review, local educational contexts provide a crucial site where this insight becomes urgent, as it directly affects the material realities of students and communities. This proposed reframing demands both third-wave analytical sophistication and clarity about what must fundamentally change.

Presently, the field of education has made immense contributions in recognizing the functions of whiteness in local political contexts, yet it is not postured toward alternative liberatory possibilities. Research rooted in emancipatory potentials of local educational policy and practice would necessitate a rhetorical and philosophical reconstitution of whiteness that reframes racial domination not as a byproduct of whiteness but rather as its intended outcome. The field must begin to grapple with the politics of whiteness as a deeply implanted fear of the “other” to acutely comprehend the conditions of emancipation.

Scholars may be called to question whether focusing on the white racial identity should be the primary mode of inquiry in whiteness literature. By assessing those that possess power to shape the trajectory of their particular contexts, “whiteness, and white people, are turned into the key agents of historical change, the shapers of contemporary America” and local educational policies (Bonnett, 1996, p. 153). In this regard, the field of education may reestablish the center of whiteness through the vantage point of the advantaged rather than the material realities of those who remain oppressed through the dynamics of the racial state (M. Apple, 1998). An alignment with liberation would compel us to question whether liberation can be conceived through a constrained lens of who and what has comprised the “center” of whiteness studies.

Correspondingly, reorienting whiteness studies in education calls for a stringent conceptualization of local educational policy and practices as fundamentally rooted in anti-Blackness, a concept that, while related to whiteness, demands distinct analytical attention. As Dumas (2016) theorizes, anti-Blackness positions Black bodies as an ontological threat to the social order, making Blackness “a/the key ‘other’ against which civil society is built” (p. 12). This is not merely another expression of whiteness but rather reveals whiteness’s constitutive dependence on Black subjugation.

Although the methodology of this review focuses specifically on whiteness as a distinct theoretical formation, the literature reviewed surfaces a limitation of that framing, suggesting that whiteness scholarship alone cannot fully theorize the anti-Black logics that structure local educational contexts (Dumas & Ross, 2016). The reviewed literature demonstrates this dynamic through the exclusion of Black families from dual language programs (Blanton et al., 2021; McCarthy Foubert, 2023), the systematic under-identification of Black students for gifted programs (Hemmler et al., 2022), and even the maintenance of whiteness by Black principals (Khalifa, 2015), all of which suggest that anti-Blackness operates as a structuring logic in local educational contexts. While whiteness studies establish how dominance is maintained and performed, centering anti-Blackness reveals how education reform itself often functions to manage and contain Blackness rather than pursue genuine equity. As Dumas (2016) argues, anti-Blackness operates as the foundational logic against which other forms of racialized exclusion are organized. The literature reviewed here demonstrates this not only through the exclusion and marginalization of Black families and students, but also through the systematic displacement of Latinx communities and other racialized ethnic groups via similar mechanisms of containment and control.

Understanding whiteness thus requires analytical frameworks that refuse to recenter whiteness and instead commit to the liberation of all communities systematically oppressed by white supremacy, recognizing how anti-Blackness functions as the constitutive foundation that enables these broader patterns of domination. If whiteness is deemed, first and foremost, a political project to maintain racial order, then “fomenting a new politics, a new practice of education, committed to Black—and therefore human—emancipation” is one of the few paths forward to fundamentally shift the entrenchment of whiteness in local education politics (Dumas, 2016, p. 17). While research is merely one of many intertwined mechanisms in this broader liberatory project, the repositioning of educational policy research toward liberation is an avenue the field cannot ignore.