Racial Tokenism in the School Workplace: An Exploratory Study of Black Teachers in Overwhelmingly White Schools

This article examines how Black teachers in overwhelmingly White schools evaluate their work experiences as both numerical and racial minorities. I extend Kanter's (1977) theory of tokenism through a look at how ideology shapes the work experiences and evaluations of racial tokens. Kanter developed a framework that outlined 3 general processes associated with token representation: performance pressures, boundary heightening, and role entrapment. In this exploratory study, I show how token Black teachers positioned themselves as heroic individualists who managed numerical and racial processes in schools. More specifically, I show how participants used traditional civil rights ideology to justify and to evaluate positive aspects of racial tokenism, emphasizing performance enhancers, border crossing, and role integration. This article rethinks claims in educational research that token Black teachers face only negative work experiences due to Black and White differences in a White school culture. The conclusion is a discussion about how the work experiences of successful token Black teachers raise foundational issues for educational policy and practice.