The story of schooling: critical race theory and the educational racial contract

Abstract

This article is an engagement of methodology as an ideologico-racial practice through Critical Race Theory's practice of storytelling. It is a conceptual extension of this practice as explained through Charles Mills' use of the ‘racial contract (RC) as methodology’ in order to explain the Herrenvolk Education – one standard for Whites, another for students of color – that is in place in the USA. At its most general, the article introduces the full offerings of Mills' RC methodology for a study of educational research. Once deployed, the RC as methodology unveils a school system's foundation as deeply racial rather than universal or race-neutral.