“The Things We Carry”: Interventions against the cumulative effects of racism in K-12 education

Abstract

Anti-Black racism in K-12 education settings has long-term impacts on Black students, including negative academic and mental health outcomes. Limited interventions following experiences of racism shape Black students’ expectations of K-12 education, accumulating over time into institutional distrust and these mental health outcomes. As such, it is necessary to understand how Black students experience racism within K-12 settings to better inform interventions that can be implemented at the school level. To that end, this study employed the participatory action research (PAR) method of photovoice to understand the impacts of racism in educational settings among 5 Black women undergraduate students. Results highlight the cumulative effects of racism on identity development and early coping. Implications inform future interventions to address the cumulative effects of anti-Black racism in K-12 education.

Keywords:

• Black girls
• educational interventions
• K-12 education
• photovoice research
• racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Drawing from Jack Halberstam (2018), the term woman* is used here to indicate that the members of the research collective hold a range of gender identities, including both cisgender Black women and a genderqueer/nonbinary Black femme.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.