Not White Saviors, but Critical Scholars: The Need for Gifted Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Gifted Black and Brown students are not voiceless; their voices are suffocated under the knee of systemic racism and white supremacy. This chapter proposes that the field of gifted education advocates for needed structural and systemic change through the discourse of critical race theory. A model of gifted critical race studies (GTCrit) is presented and described as both a way to understand race and racism in gifted education and to drive social change. GTCrit theorizes about the ways in which race, racism, ability, potentiality, and deficit ideology are built into daily interactions and discourses, informal and formal policies and procedures, and systems and structures of education, which disproportionately impact students of color qualitatively differently than white students.