Race and Pedagogy

Book excerpt: In the United States, higher rates of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans fail to graduate from high schools than Caucasians. Adams and Buffington-Adams identify persistent, institutional racism as the cause, and they stress the need for teachers to acknowledge the limitations of their own cultural lenses and to recognize the validity of others’ views. Race and Pedagogy provides a retrospective glance at the authors’ experiences within the Equity Group, an organization created to provide teachers with the opportunity to talk about their own racial, cultural, and language backgrounds in order to identify, examine, and fix the failings of the current educational system. Natural, relational, and sustainable approaches are recommended which will enable educators to create classrooms and schools in which all students, regardless of racial, ethnic, or linguistic identity, are welcomed, challenged, treasured, and able to be academically successful. Book recommended for scholars of education and race studies, as well as practitioners.