START with Race: Designing Racially Conscious Principals

Racism is about institutional power to maintain racial hierarchy (Solorzano, Allen, & Carroll, 2002). School systems are hierarchies that were originally designed to educate white males. The majority of school districts and buildings are led by white people.

The focus of this paper exposes the normalization of inherent racism and institutional power structures in existing principal preparation programs and one University’s efforts to disrupt these practices by purposefully including racial equity in all aspects of its programming. Building upon the work of Furman (2012) and the work of Gooden and Dantely (2012), this article will present a theoretical framework for examining and assessing existing practices and then offer alternatives to disrupt any practice that fails to yield more racially conscious principals.