Victory or Defeat? The Dilemma of Palliative Schooling in an Era of Racial Equity

Abstract

The study of colorblind racism has been central to understanding why racial inequalities persist in schools. However, I argue that merely increasing racial awareness through school policies, official and unofficial, does not alleviate educational racial inequalities. Ethnographic data from a progressive suburban high school reveal that some teachers’ responses to struggling marginalized students, in environments that promote racial equity, may be characterized as palliative schooling. Palliative schooling has two interrelated, core features: it prioritizes students’ immediate comfort as a form of caring, and it assumes a sense of hopelessness regarding what one can do to improve students’ situations. In this high school, entrenched in racial disparities and racial meanings, palliative schooling only reinforces social inequalities rather than disrupting them. I argue that the school’s racial equity strategies and the structural inequalities of the broader society underlie the individual practices of palliative schooling. My findings challenge what counts as and what facilitates “real” caring because progressive agendas may instead sustain social inequalities through a counterintuitive bond between caring and hopelessness.