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In the context of ongoing antagonism on college campuses, attacks on Critical Race Theory, and widespread backlash against racial justice initiatives, this paper underscores the growing need to recognize co-optation and other counterinsurgent strategies used against racial justice to make room for transformative scholarship. By presenting qualitative interviews from 15 white HBCU students, we illustrate how diversity research, advocacy, and organizing previously used to advocate for racial justice has instead constructed distorted understandings of race and racism and has been used to expand ideologies of whiteness. The findings show what CRT scholars have cautioned about for decades--when left uninterrupted, ahistorical approaches to racial diversity programming and research may lend to the co-optation of justice-focused diversity language and the appropriation of BIPOC strategies of resistance. This not only inhibits and detracts from racial justice work, but can function to expand white supremacy. We relate these narratives to an emerging racial backlash whereby white people attempt to distort understandings of structural racism to claim a "persecuted" status--a delusion that we argue warrants a new ideological frame. We posit this work lays the foundation for advancing equity in one of the most counterinsurgent eras in higher education (Matias & Newlove, 2017).

For decades, research has shown the pervasive racism of teacher education and its harmful impact on teacher candidates of Color. In this conceptual article, we argue that teacher education programs must interrogate how racism is embedded structurally through policies and practices that guide the various facets of the institution. We build from higher education scholarship on racial climate and "health" and teacher education research on race and racism to explore how multiple dimensions of a teacher education program (historical, organizational, compositional, behavioral, and psychological) accumulate and shape the experiences and well-being of teacher candidates of Color. We offer a model to assist teacher education scholars, administrators, and practitioners to reflect upon their current structures as they strive for a healthy racial climate responsive to the experiences and needs of a diverse teaching force.

This study illuminates how common holistic admissions practices at so-called "elite" colleges and universities favor high-SES, high wealth applicants through the ways they define and consider "exceptional" performance in extracurricular activities. While many studies have established advantages to high-income applicants based on school resources, standardized testing, and myriad other factors, few have examined the consideration of exceptional performance in extracurriculars. Drawing on higher education literature and Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, and utilizing high school and college athletics data, the authors introduce and corroborate a mathematical model that illuminates the accumulated advantages to wealthy students on three fronts: opportunity, specialization (i.e., breadth of options available), and support. While this paper focuses on elite athletics as one example of exceptional performance, it also explores the usefulness of the model for understanding how "race-neutral" admissions systematically advantage high-income--and white--students.