The Supremacy of Whiteness in Local Educational Politics: A Review of Literature

The field of education has renewed its focus on whiteness and white supremacy as constitutive forces in local educational politics. Using integrative literature review methods, this article examines what scholarship on local educational politics reveals about how whiteness operates in specific contexts and how the field theorizes whiteness. Five themes emerged: the mechanisms of whiteness, the power and disempowerment of parents and communities, segregation and isolation, the hegemonic power of non-racism, and the reconstruction of white racial identity. Findings reveal that whiteness is actively maintained through subtle and overt policies, practices, and governance systems that uphold racial hierarchies, yet this scholarship often highlights individual actors over structural, historical, and class-based forces. Using local educational contexts as sites for transformative, liberatory inquiry, future research should center anti-Blackness; situate whiteness within broader political, economic, and spatial systems; and prioritize dismantling rather than merely documenting racial domination.