Speakers
Description
Integrative Statement: Racist bullying in schools reflects and reproduces broader patterns of structural racism, yet its relationship to colorblind ideology remains understudied from a global perspective. This symposium presents findings from qualitative and quantitative studies conducted across three continents (United States, Sweden, and Chile), examining how colorblind racism shapes both institutional responses to bullying and everyday microaggressions and other acts of bullying in schools. In each study, we demonstrate how the minimization of race and racial inequity enables and perpetuates racist bullying across these diverse contexts. Our comparative approach reveals striking similarities in how colorblind ideology operates transnationally, while also highlighting distinct manifestations shaped by local histories and demographics. The symposium identifies key mechanisms through which colorblind racism operates in schools: the normalization of racial microaggressions, institutional resistance to naming racism and addressing bullying motivated by race, and the deployment of "culture-neutral" anti-bullying strategies that fail to address racial power dynamics. We argue that effective anti-bullying interventions must directly confront how colorblind racism permeates educational spaces at both interpersonal and institutional levels. The symposium concludes with recommendations for developing anti-racist approaches to school bullying that acknowledge structural racism while building solidarity across diverse student populations.
Keywords
colorblind racism, global racism, racist bullying
Additional field for symposia
Study 1: Racist Bullying in a US Middle School Context: Intersections of Colorblind Racism and White Fragility
Authors: Anne Williford, Tiffany Jones (both Colorado State University School of Social Work)
Despite increasing social awareness of racial inequities in the United States, racist behaviors and beliefs persist in educational settings, often masked by colorblind ideologies that claim not to "see race". This study examines how colorblind racism and white fragility contribute to the persistence of racist bullying in a diverse middle school setting. Drawing from a sample at a diverse Pacific Northwest middle school with a predominant white staff, we conducted focus groups with teachers (n=4), administrators (n=4), and students (n=12). Data were analyzed using template analysis, where a priori codes were applied based on the central tenets of colorblind racism and white fragility. Findings reveal a significant disconnect between racial and ethnic minoritized students' experiences of racist bullying and staff recognition of these incidents. While minoritized students reported frequent encounters with racist microaggressions and bullying, white staff often exhibited colorblind attitudes, minimizing or dismissing these experiences through statements emphasizing human sameness or denying racial barriers. This colorblind stance, combined with defensive responses characteristic of white fragility, created an environment where racist bullying was essentially rendered invisible to those in positions of authority. Minoritized students expressed little confidence that staff would address racist bullying effectively, citing examples of differential treatment by school personnel. The study demonstrates how colorblind racism and white fragility can function as interpersonal and institutional barriers to addressing racist bullying in schools. These findings suggest that effective bullying prevention must explicitly address bias-based bullying and challenge colorblind attitudes among both students and staff.
Study 2: Racist Bullying and polite exclusion in Swedish Schools
Author: Layal Wiltgren (layal.wiltgren@liu.se,
Linköping University)
In modern Western societies, racism and discrimination are often viewed as individuals' issues rather than systemic ones. This dominant view frames racism as extreme or overt acts, overshadowing subtle but pervasive forms like racist bullying. In Swedish schools, this issue is compounded by a reluctance among educators to address race openly, fearing accusations of racism. Although Swedish school law mandates schools to address societal values, teachers lack clear guidance on managing race-related challenges, often leaving students from ethnic minorities to face subtle forms of exclusion alone. This study, conducted in a Swedish secondary school with a diverse student body, reveals significant disparities between school staff’s perception of an inclusive environment and minority students’ experiences of exclusion. Many students with migrant backgrounds report feelings of isolation and polite exclusion manifested through small but frequent acts of avoidance and non-engagement by their Swedish peers. Although school staff acknowledge some instances, they frequently downplay them, attributing the behavior to unrelated social factors rather than racism. Applying Critical Race Theory (CRT), this research suggests that the color-blind approach prevalent in Swedish schools fails to address the lived realities of minority students.
Study 3:School Bullying in the United States and the Significance of Immigration
Authors: Anthony A. Peguero (anthony.peguero@asu.edu); Jennifer M. Bondy (jmbondy@asu.edu); Yasmiyn Irizarry (yirizarry@austin.utexas.edu)
With the evident rapid growth of minoritized students in the United States schools, this growth has been driven in part by immigration. With that noted, any effort to address school violence and implement school safety policies must consider barriers and hurdles associated with the children of immigrants’ schooling and educational experiences, especially bullying and victimization. Of the many diverse sociocultural factors and inequities associated with the disparities and stratification of bullying is immigration. Even though there is much interdisciplinary research (e.g., child and school psychology, public health, social work and counseling, sociology, criminology, and developmental psychology) that demonstrate race/ethnicity matters with school bullying, this presentation will highlight the multilevel aspects of how immigration is associated with school bullying. To guide this presentation, we utilize a social ecological framework to highlight with qualitative and quantitative evidence the significance of immigration with school bullying.
Study 4: Seeking anti-racist school climates: experiences from collaborative research with school communities in Chile.
Author: Andrew Webb, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile).
This paper presents experiences from the Millennium Nucleus for Research on Anti-Racist Chilean Education (MRACE), detailing collaborations with four school communities in Santiago and Temuco (Chile) as part of an initiative toward developing anti-racist school climates. The paper begins by setting out some of the theoretical principles that guide MRACE’s research, centering on the effects of structural racism in education, and the ways this prevents racial justice. We follow this with an overview of how structural racism affects school climates in contexts of ethnic diversity, alluding to the benefits of a social ecological perspective, while also drawing attention to the scarcity of research conducted in this field. Thirdly, the presentation will address the methodological implications of participatory research and the collective construction of knowledge "from below", involving different members of school communities (students, teachers, parents, principals, education stakeholders) and how this has been used effectively within existing bullying research. We then present some of the innovations and proposals that have been developed alongside these educational communities and their potential impacts for anti-racist school climates. These include ways of developing explicitly anti-racist values, norms and relationships within schools and broader communities, while also focusing on a variety of means of eradicating microaggressions in day-to-day contexts.
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
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| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Qualitative method study |
