Teachers’ awareness of systemic and individual racial bias as a first step towards anti-racist schools

Fostering anti-racism in schools is critical for reducing the racial disparities that exist between White and racially minoritized students. To foster anti-racism schools, teachers' awareness of how racism works at systemic and their individual levels in perpetuating racism in schools are critical features for effecting change. Using open-ended responses, this study explored teachers’ awareness of schools as racialized systems as well as ways teacher complicity perpetuates racist practices. Of the 228 teachers (82% White; 78% female) recruited from five Southern school districts, 52% failed to acknowledge schools as racialized systems and 56% failed to identify any self-complicity in perpetuating racial inequities.