Racial Othering in Schools: A Typology

Racial Othering in schools remains a deeply entrenched issue—difficult to articulate and even more demanding to confront. Conversations about the problem are often avoided, deflected, or softened through vague language. Disagreements over what constitutes racial Othering also persist. These dynamics hinder the development of effective strategies for meaningful change. In response to such conceptual and practical challenges, this article proposes a typology that identifies labels, mechanisms, and manifestations of racial Othering in schools. At the discursive level, racial Othering occurs when students are labeled as different, deficient, or disruptive. In the domain of practice, mechanisms of racial Othering include devaluation, discrimination, and demonization. Finally, the intersection of these labels and mechanisms engenders specific manifestations of racial Othering: misrepresentation, non-recognition, misrecognition, marginalization, stratification, over-discipline, stigmatization, pathologization, and criminalization. My goal in developing this typology is to provide educators and other practitioners with a sharper lens for assessing, challenging, and addressing racial injustice in schools.