First Look at Educational Researcher’s Special Issue on Anti-Black Racism in Education


March 2023

Educational Researcher’s first set of Anti-Black Racism in Education articles has been released. The articles are part of a two-part special issue that will contain more than a dozen articles that confront how systemic racism and racialized organizations propagate and uphold anti-Black racism as well as anti-Black policies, activities, ideologies, and dispositions in the education field. To disseminate this crucial, generative work in a timely manner, Educational Researcher will first publish the articles online in smaller sets prior to the publication of the full two-part special issue.

The editors circulated the call for the special issue during the height of the racial reckoning catalyzed by “the Black Lives Matter movement’s sharp critiques and brave truth-telling” after the disturbing deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd.

The editors envisioned a special issue that not only brought attention to systemic racism but specifically emphasized the enduring harm of anti-Black racism that remains in residence in educational institutions in the 21st century all over the world. It is their hope that the research published in this special issue will do more than inform scholars about new research being done in the field of education, but will also create social change and contribute to the ongoing conversations surrounding racial justice in education, politics, criminal justice, and beyond.

Topics that authors were invited to address included, but were not limited to, analyses of anti-Blackness in the foundations of education research; colonization and decolonization in education; global perspectives on anti-Blackness; and education for Black liberation and/or applications of Black liberation theology.

The first five articles are available open access at the links below and are posted OnlineFirst. Readers are encouraged to watch for the release of the two-part special issue, which will also be available open access at ER Issues and Archives and will open with an introductory essay by the editors.

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