‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t:’ Black parents’ racial realist school engagement

Conventional scholarship frames parent involvement in schools as crucial for student success, often depicts Black and Brown parents as under-engaged, and implies their increased engagement would lead to the end of racial disparities in education. This study challenges this traditional discourse and introduces the notion of Racial Realist Parent Engagement. Racial Realist Parent Engagement is a practice and theoretical framing drawn from Derrick Bell’s notion of racial realism and a qualitative multicase study of the school engagement experiences of 16 Black parents. These parent participants resisted antiblackness in their children’s schools while simultaneously recognizing racism to be a permanent and inevitable aspect of schooling. Racial Realist Parent Engagement shifts parent involvement theory, policy, and practice to a more complex understanding of the purposes and benefits of parent engagement for Black and Brown families – and demands expansive racial justice policy for student learning.