Perpetuating Racial Inequities in Education: An Examination of Pre-Service Teachers' Interpretations of Racial Experiences‪.‬

Introduction The challenges that African Americans experience in U. S. schools can be attributed to the dynamics of race. Winant (1994) contends that race remains "deeply fused with the power, order, and indeed the meaning systems of every society in which it operates" (p. 2). As such, people have come to believe that visible differences, or race, are linked to differences in "mental capacities, and that these innate hierarchical differences are measurable by the cultural achievements of such populations" (Montagu, 1997, p. 44). Wynne (2005) wrote "the political tenor of this country has turned towards a Nazi-like paranoia of all groups of children and adults who are comprised of anything that is not mainstream White Euro-centric" (p. 59). Such a climate is upheld by the nature and structure of the country's educational system. This "Nazi-like paranoia" identified by Wynne (2005) is simply a more recent characterization of the white supremacist ideology prevalent in American society. The prevalence of such an ideology adversely influences a country's efforts to achieve educational equity because the climate impacts teacher perceptions. The goal of this article is to examine the ways in which White supremacist ideology influences the education that African Americans receive. We do so by examining some of the scholarship on disparities in American education.