Towards Anti-Racist Educational Research

Book excerpt: Towards Anti-Racist Educational Research: Radical Moments and Movements is a call for educational researchers and teachers to engage in the work needed to be anti-racist. In the academy, there is no place for neutrality when it comes to race. One either endorses the idea of a racial hierarchy or that of racial equality. Educators and researchers either believe problems are rooted in groups of people or locate the roots of problems in power and policies. Therefore, we can either allow racial inequities to continue or confront racial inequities. Delane Bender-Slack and Francis Godwyll work to confront those racial inequities in educational research. As they continue to grapple with their role in radical moments and movements—from various identities, perspectives, and positionalities—they strive to identify their intellectual, social, and cultural labor in their research, and in this writing, as anti-racist. The editors define what it could mean to be anti-racist in research methods, projects, and agendas, and they pose the following questions: How do we ask anti-racist research questions? How do we create anti-racist curricula? How do we design anti-racist policies? What does it mean to be racially humanizing educational researchers? How do we intentionally work towards racial justice?