Introduction

“The problem of the color line,” as described so vividly by W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1903 text The Souls of Black Folk, has been the focus of scholarly attention for academics in a variety of disciplines and fields for well over one hundred years. In education, race has primarily functioned as one of many variables used by scholars to examine educational outcomes. In the mid-1990s, critical race theory (CRT) emerged as a way to engage race as both the cause of and the context for disparate and inequitable social and educational outcomes. CRT scholars in both the law and education argued that scholars must place race at the center of their analyses. The Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education provides examples of key scholarship that draws on CRT and other related frameworks, concepts, and methods as tools to analyze, investigate, document, and describe the impact of race and racism in education.