Race Wrestling: Struggling Strategically with Race in Educational Practice and Research

As researchers try to understand, improve, and equalize U.S. schooling, we talk too little about how to study race well. It is particularly crucial, I argue, that researchers struggle to interrogate education’s familiar racial practices more self‐consciously and strategically. I suggest that researchers “race wrestle” by struggling with race on two levels: researchers can (1) learn from the everyday struggles over race already taking place in U.S. schools and (2) struggle more actively with race talk and analysis in our own research. I argue that refocusing analytic attention on everyday struggles over race in educational practice and research is a necessary strategy for moving forward toward racial equality.