Abstract
Scholars have shown that young children understand race and interpret messages about race from families and schools. In the United States, many children spend their early years in preschool classrooms, where preschool teachers contribute to constructing racialized environments for children. How do preschool teachers communicate ideas about race and racism in the classroom? Using interview data from 27 preschool teachers, we found that teachers used various classroom practices that tended to avoid addressing racism. Teachers largely avoided explicit mentions of categories such as Black or Asian and discussions of racism. Instead, preschool teachers minimized race by portraying race as an individual, visual attribute, or as an optional source of cultural novelty. In cases where anti-Black racism occurred between students, teachers excused white students’ actions as innocent child’s play. We argue that these approaches divorc race from power and uphold color evasiveness within classrooms. We contribute to scholarship on racial socialization by showing how preschool teachers’ classroom practices may complement or contradict racial socialization in families.
Introduction
Race and racism are socially constructed; this means that children in the United States must learn how to operate in a racialized world. Race is meaningful to children even at young ages—children as young as three years old use race as a basis for inclusion or exclusion in play and actively construct racialized identities for themselves and others (Van Ausdale and Feagin 1996; Park 2011). As children participate in society, they experience racial socialization.
Childhood racial socialization includes messages that children encounter within institutions; children can engage, reject, or interpret these messages (Hagerman 2016). Families’ and K-12 schools racial socialization practices have been studied by race scholars (see, for example, Hagerman 2016; Lewis 2003). Preschools deserve similar attention, as they are key sites of early childhood racial socialization. Most young children in the United States now attend preschool; more four-year-olds attend preschool than attend church weekly (National Center for Education Statistics 2025a; Pew Research Center 2015).
Within preschools, teachers can play a meaningful role in developing children’s racial identities and attitudes (Escayg 2018). Teachers bring their own racialized experiences and beliefs to the classroom (Bell 2021). Yet, in contrast to the somewhat private opportunities for racial socialization afforded to families, teachers’ racial socialization takes place in a large group setting, amidst a challenging social and political climate, and often with children from differing racial backgrounds. How do preschool teachers, key agents in children’s early experiences, contribute to racial socialization?
Drawing on interviews with 27 preschool teachers in Denver, Colorado, we found that although the teachers showed a personal awareness of race and racism, they primarily used color-evasive tactics and treated race as just a visual attribute. Furthermore, teachers relied on the requests of Black, Asian, and Latine families to prompt celebrations of culturally relevant holidays. In some cases, teachers overlooked the racial identities of their students of color and ignored anti-Black racism within their preschools. Based on these findings, we argue that teachers’ approaches to race reflect the racial practices of white society as a whole and help sustain racism by creating classroom environments that communicate to children that race is a visual, individual attribute disconnected from power. Our research underlines the importance of preschool teachers in racial socialization. Preschool racial socialization might support or challenge family-based racial socialization efforts, influencing how children experience race and racism before they enter the K-12 school system.
Racial Socialization in Families and K-12 Schools
Young children participate in the racialized social world of the United States. “Race” as a system was constructed when Europeans colonized the Americas (Dain 2002; Smedley 2007). Colonizers constructed a hierarchical system of racial categories to justify the exploitation of others (Dain 2002). Racial categories, then, were actively constructed as part of a racist system of exploitation. Racism operates at the structural, institutional, and interpersonal levels and is upheld by laws, rules, policies, or behaviors perpetuating racial inequality (Golash-Boza 2016). The complex system of “race” has been documented extensively by race scholars, including the racialization of children’s key institutional environments. As part of racial socialization, children interpret messages about race from families and schools.
Research has shown that the family is a key site of racial socialization, and the messages parents send to children vary. Parents of color often seek to prepare their children to live in a racialized world. For example, Black parents and parents in interracial relationships engage in conversations about race and racism with their children (Banks 2012; Dow 2019; Johnson 2024; Lewis-McCoy 2016). These conversations often aim at preparing Black children and biracial boys with Black heritage for potential discrimination and racial violence (Hughes 2003; Johnson 2024), and for understanding the stereotypes that society may apply to them (Johnson 2024). Parents of color also seek to instill cultural pride in the face of negative, controlling images (Turner 2020). Racial socialization in families of color often begins early; for example, Latine families report socializing children as young as age four (Calzada et al. 2017). A systematic review found that most Latine families engaged in cultural socialization into values of familism and respect and doing cultural practices from their country of origin; many families also prepared children to potentially experience bias (Ayón, Nieri, and Ruano 2020).
Racial socialization occurs in white families too (Hagerman 2014; Underhill 2018). White parents’ approaches to addressing race often align with color-evasive ideologies, 1 as white parents frame race in ways that minimize, rationalize, and deny the structural elements of racism (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Hagerman 2014). Color-evasive views hold whiteness as the norm and minimize structural examples of white privilege (Bell and Hartmann 2007). In turn, white adults can fail to see how race and racism might shape their lives and may view race as irrelevant (Mueller 2017). Related to this view, some white parents avoid proactive race discussions, choosing instead to wait for questions prompted by their children (Underhill 2018). White parents describe avoiding racial discussions due to fear of saying the wrong thing (Sullivan, Wilton, and Apfelbaum 2022) or appearing racist (Hagerman 2016). In addition, some white parents may view racial inequality as an unpleasant or inappropriate topic from which to shield their children (Underhill 2018). When color-evasive white families do discuss race with their children, they often keep the conversations surface-level and brief (Vittrup and Holden 2011), rarely acknowledging racial inequality or white privilege (Hagerman 2014; Underhill 2018).
Although many white families employ color-evasive tactics or remain silent on the matter of race altogether, some white parents adopt a color-conscious approach as part of a broader intensive parenting strategy (Hagerman 2014; Underhill 2018). Such parents actively discuss race and choose more racially diverse environments for their children in the hope of transmitting progressive ideals (Kincaid and Underhill 2025) and providing unique enrichment experiences to their white children (Underhill 2019). This color-consciousness is often accompanied by left-leaning politics and a view of racial diversity as a positive aspect of modern culture (Bell and Hartmann 2007; Mayorga-Gallo 2019). Existing research underscores the central role of the family as a site of racial socialization and reveals that children of color and white children receive different messages.
Much like families, K-12 schools are racialized environments. Amanda E. Lewis (2003:4) contends that “schools are involved in framing ideas about race and in struggles around racial equity.” The K-12 school system is an institution that shapes and perpetuates racism (Handsman and Siegler 2025; Woulfin and Yurkofsky 2025). Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, schools bear the weight of historical and contemporary segregation and unequal offerings to children, amounting to an “education debt” (Ladson-Billings 2006:3; Shifrer and Appleton 2024). Within schools, tracking and disciplinary policies contribute to institutional racism that disadvantages students of color (Golann 2015; Lewis and Diamond 2015; Tyson 2011; Zimmermann 2024).
Within classrooms, teachers are powerful actors in children’s lives (Ray 2025). Teachers respond to the organizational conditions at their schools by cognitively framing inequalities for themselves and their students (Cobb 2017). Teachers can have biased expectations and may evaluate same-race students more positively, leading to more positive outcomes for white students because white teachers dominate the profession (Downey and Pribesh 2004; McGrady and Reynolds 2013). Furthermore, just as parents’ racial identities and approaches to racial socialization vary, teachers bring their own racialized ideas into classrooms. For example, scholars have observed color-evasive approaches among white teachers and more direct approaches from teachers of color (Bell 2021; Cobb 2017; Jackson and Knight-Manuel 2019). In addition, just as scholars have found that young children react to the implicit racial attitudes of their parents (Castelli, Zogmaister, and Tomelleri 2009), the way that teachers approach race—even implicitly—may influence children.
Preschools as Racialized Contexts
Just as K-12 teachers and parents have agency in what they communicate about race to children, preschool teachers may also play an important role. A majority of U.S. children have a preschool teacher during their childhood years. While the federal government does not guarantee access to preschool, many children attend. In 2024, more than 60 percent of children ages three, four, and five in the United States attended preschool; two-thirds of these children attended a public preschool, and one-third attended a private preschool (National Center for Education Statistics 2025a, 2025b). Some private preschools cater to affluent families, but many private preschools also enroll middle-income and low-income families who use government subsidies to pay for care. Nationwide, a majority of preschools are racially segregated, with three main types of race-class compositions (Greenberg and Monarrez 2019; Reid et al. 2015). First, there are predominantly white and affluent preschools that may include a minority of middle-class Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and Asian children. Second, there are predominantly Black and Hispanic preschools that tend also to be predominantly low-income. Because of systemic pathways that facilitate low-income children’s access to subsidized child care slots (see Bouek 2022), these schools may be difficult for middle-class children of any race to access. Third, there are mixed-income preschools with three or more racial categories represented, which amount to 20% to 30% of all preschools (Reid et al. 2015). Although the preschool student population is diverse, early childhood teachers are predominantly white (Kim and Austin 2025). Lead teachers and center directors, who have more responsibility for the curriculum and school environment, are disproportionately white, and teachers of color are more likely to work in low-income schools and in Head Start programs (Kim and Austin 2025; Paschall, Madill, and Halle 2020). In Denver, African, African American, and Black early childhood educators earned $3.58 per hour less than their similarly qualified peers (Butler Institute for Families 2025).
Preschools are segregated, and they are also unequal (Stockstill 2023). For example, national statistics indicate racially disproportionate discipline (Office of Civil Rights 2021). Black children are more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled from preschool, although there is no evidence that they exhibit more problem behavior than white students (Meek et al. 2021). Instead, research suggests that teachers have biased perceptions of Black preschoolers’ behavior, for example, by rating Black boys as more aggressive and hyperactive (Kelly, Xue, and Gullo 2024).
In this segregated and unequal system, preschool teachers nonetheless have agency to address race with young children. Fabienne Doucet and Jennifer Keys Adair (2013) note three approaches to teaching race in early childhood settings: color-evasive, multicultural, and anti-racist. The color-evasive approach matches the color-evasiveness observed among families and explained above—it minimizes differences and describes all people as equal. The multicultural approach, wherein teachers invite families to share about their culture, can create a “tourist curriculum” (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2020) and can result in limited discussions of diversity in homogeneous classrooms (Doucet and Adair 2013). The multicultural approach may be common in the broader early childhood field for two reasons. First, the leading early childhood industry organization, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), accredits preschools that meet their definitions of “best practice,” which includes having diverse books and materials (Wanless and Crawford 2016). Less than 200 preschools nationwide have earned a NAEYC accreditation, which enables preschools to claim to be among the top 10% of preschools in the nation (NAEYC 2025). Second, most states measure the “quality” of preschools. In some states, a preschool’s quality score can affect eligibility for some funding sources and may be displayed to families. One of the two primary tools states use to measure quality asks evaluators to tally the amount of diversity in books and visual materials (see Environmental Rating Scales Institute 2024). The emphasis that NAEYC and quality rating systems place on diverse books and materials creates an incentive to include multiculturalism.
Finally, the anti-racist approach emphasizes power and inequality (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2020). Anti-racist teaching in preschool involves explaining both racial categories and the idea of racism as fair/unfair treatment, which is appropriate to the typical cognitive abilities of preschoolers (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2020). One common approach to anti-racist teaching includes choosing stories that represent students’ experiences and encouraging students to connect their own lives to the books (Falkner 2024; Johnson 2022; Wynter-Hoyte and Smith 2020). However, implementing anti-racist approaches can be challenging. For example, in a study of reading practices, Beneke and Cheatham (2020) observed that teachers struggled to initiate conversations about power. One teacher “focused children’s talk on identifying the skin color of book characters without discussing race as a socially constructed identity marker ascribed to groups of people and embedded in power relations” (Beneke and Cheatham 2020:259). Education scholar Kerry-Ann Escayg (2019) argues that anti-bias frameworks can fail to address power. Beyond these potential shortcomings, even attempting anti-bias approaches in preschools may also be uncommon. For example, as described by Faragó (2024:248), less than 5% of surveyed early childhood educators were familiar with anti-bias education. Similarly, Jennifer O. Briggs (2019) found that, although parents wanted teachers to discuss race with their children, many preschool teachers-in-training felt race was an inappropriate classroom discussion topic.
Within the institutional context of U.S. preschools, teachers may address race and racism in multiple ways. Their actions take place in an increasingly polarized and politicized national discourse around education (see, for example, Pascoe 2023). Still, preschool teachers’ engagement with race in the classroom is potentially consequential for their young students.
Data and Methods
The data for this article comes from a larger, mixed-methods study of Denver private preschools. The larger study investigated teachers’ and directors’ experiences across the segregated landscape of early childhood. We focus here on our whole body of interview data, which includes interviews with 27 teachers from 17 preschools. Interview guides focused on teachers’ work histories, views of families and children, views on curricula and child development, and approaches to the classroom routine. This article primarily draws on teachers’ responses to the portion of the interview guide that explicitly asked about race. 2
Preschools in Denver
Denver is the largest city in Colorado and is a regional hub of the Mountain West. Its multi-ethnic population reflects its colonial history: Colorado was first the land of Indigenous peoples before the Spaniards colonized the region. Mexico later ruled this region. Colorado’s southern and western parts were then ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Around 1858, a gold rush initiated the white settlement of land that became Denver. As of 2020, the city was 54 percent non-Hispanic white, 30 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Multiracial, 9 percent Black, 4 percent Asian, and 1 percent American Indian (U.S. Census Bureau 2023).
Denver families have multiple preschool options. Although Colorado ranked 23rd as a state in access to public preschool (National Institute for Early Education Research 2024), the city has a subsidy, the Denver Preschool Program, that makes both public and private preschools more accessible for families across the economic spectrum. In 2021, this subsidy was available to all families with a four-year-old child, though higher-income families received smaller subsidies.
Our study focuses on two kinds of private preschools: child care centers and stand-alone preschools. First, there are privately operated child care centers that offer preschool classrooms for three- and four-year-old children. These child care centers typically offer extended hours of care and often have additional classrooms for infants and toddlers. Notably, some are accessible to low-income families that can combine the city subsidy for child care with a state subsidy. Second, there are stand-alone preschools that do not serve toddlers and are often part-day only.
Unlike public schools, private preschool programs are not bound by government mandates to collect data on children’s race. Moreover, there is no equivalent to the Free and Reduced Lunch rate to capture economic needs. Thus, it is challenging to determine the racial and economic demographics of private child care centers. Given the lack of data on these characteristics, we asked the directors in our study to report their perceptions of families’ racial and economic backgrounds.
Data Collection
Between August 2021 and March 2023, we invited 131 programs in Denver to participate via email. Forty-seven preschool directors completed an online survey with questions about enrollment, family engagement, pay, and teacher benefits. After completing the survey, preschool directors were invited to forward an interview invitation to a teacher. We interviewed 27 teachers. Most teachers were in mixed-age classrooms with three-and four-year-olds. We interviewed one toddler teacher. Due to COVID-19 health concerns and Institutional Review Board guidelines, we completed interviews on video conference. Most teachers called from their home or a work staffroom. Interviews averaged 74 minutes. At the end of each interview, we asked participants to recommend other teachers for the study; in some cases, they recommended teachers at their center. The interview team, comprising both authors and two research assistants, used a semi-structured interview guide that included questions about how teachers came to their jobs, managed the daily routine, viewed families, and approached race in the classroom. Both authors and one research assistant interviewer are Black, the second research assistant interviewer is white.
Participants
Table 1 shows the characteristics of the 27 teachers interviewed. Regarding classroom demographics, 63 percent of our sample, or 17 teachers, taught at predominantly affluent and white centers, 18 percent of our sample, or five teachers, taught at racially diverse and mixed-income centers, and a further 18 percent of our sample, or five teachers, taught at racially diverse and predominantly low-income centers. The class and race segregation within our sample mirrors the national pattern of segregated preschools (Greenberg and Monarrez 2019). Our sample included 21 white teachers, five Latine teachers, and two Asian teachers.
Participant Characteristics.
Data Analysis
We analyzed the data following the thematic analysis method (Braun and Clarke 2012). First, each author separately read the transcripts and created a set of codes derived inductively from the data. Next, we compared codes for inter-code reliability and worked to identify themes for grouping the codes before creating a closed code sheet. Some codes were close to the text; for example, we coded every mention of “Black” in the interviews. Other codes were our interpretation, for example, when participants showed discomfort with discussing race. The qualitative data analysis software MAXQDA was used to apply the codes from the closed code sheet. At least one author coded each transcript using this closed code sheet. To increase the reliability of coding, a research assistant separately coded each transcript and discussed any mismatches with the authors. After completing this manual coding process, we used MAXQDA’s “auto code” search function to search for keywords and ensure we had not missed relevant portions of the transcripts. We then wrote analytical memos on all key themes relevant to the topic of race, such as books and materials, comparisons of family cultures, holiday celebrations, and teachers expressing discomfort. These memos prompted us to consider how participants described race in their classroom, including what was missing from their accounts of race. We worked with the coded snippets of text but also returned to the interviews to consider the participants’ broader perspectives as teachers.
How Preschool Teachers Approach Race in Their Classrooms
Most preschool teachers addressed race in three ways. First, teachers emphasized diverse materials, but confined race to visual difference through universalizing language. Second, teachers flattened culture to a “diversity potluck.” Third, teachers reframed white children’s anti-Black racism through a lens of childhood innocence. However, one school in our sample took a fourth approach—addressing inequality. This school’s approach was incentivized by community pressure and parent support to do so.
Confining Race to Visual Difference
In line with the early childhood field’s emphasis on multiculturalism and diverse materials mentioned above, our participants viewed books and materials as a comfortable way to “bring in diversity,” but ultimately, these materials centered on “happy” aspects of diversity, without attention to power or inequality (Bell and Hartmann 2007).
The effort teachers expended to incorporate diverse books highlights their interest in curating visual images of diversity for their white students. For example, Amy,
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a teacher at a majority-white and affluent school, expressed confidence in the power of diverse books, indicating that they were the most age-appropriate way to address race. Amy reflected,
We have a lot of texts. I feel like books are the best way to tackle that at this age because it’s one of those things where . . . Obviously [the children] are not blind, they see all that as well, but I also don’t want to force feed it.
Thus, although Amy demonstrated color-consciousness, she also framed race as optional and something to discuss sparingly or superficially. Race was on the menu for students in her class, but she did not want to “force feed” it. Amy’s use of the phrase “force feed” implies a discomfort with discussions of race and shows an embrace of white logic that views routine discussions of race and racism as inappropriate.
The book-based approach to diversity, which has grown in popularity among early childhood educators, is intended to prompt discussions about racial and cultural diversity and increase students’ cultural competence (Beneke and Cheatham 2020; Curenton et al. 2022; Fontanella-Nothom 2019). However, teachers in our sample did not recount racially conscious conversations prompted by these books. It is unclear how much books and materials alone are likely to help children understand their place in a racialized system. Ultimately, diverse books in the classroom may support teachers’ general framing of race: they confined race to visual differences without larger social implications.
Veronica’s account exemplifies teachers’ visual and often skin-tone-focused approach. Veronica, who taught at a majority-white school, was unsure how to address race “in the classroom with really little kids.” She explained,
[I]t is different for them. Obviously, they know about race, and we’ll talk about like, ‘Oh, so-and-so does have this skin, and you have this skin.’ Not making it color-blind, for lack of a better word . . . I think especially growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, we had a much different understanding and teaching around that.
Like many other teachers in the study, Veronica was comfortable talking about race in terms of physical appearance with her students. She described this as a correction from her childhood, in which a color-evasive discourse reigned, but her account still uses multicultural framing that bolsters colorblind ideology. Veronica acknowledged that children were able to conceive of race physically. Her skin-focused framing was universalizing—because everyone has skin. However, Veronica did not mention any racial categories or inequalities.
Teachers called in support from materials to point out visual diversity; they made sure to have different crayon colors and relied on toys and books. Emily, a teacher in a majority-white school, told us, “We got reaccredited [by NAEYC] this past year, and one of their big sections is embracing diversity in the classroom. For that you’re supposed to have a certain amount of displays or toys or stuff that are multicultural.” Emily highlights how the endorsement of a professional association motivates them to incorporate a wider variety of toys and materials. While our participants described buying and offering toys and books to children, they did not describe these materials as sparking broader conversations about race or racism.
Many teachers reported using diverse art materials to lead art activities where children would draw themselves and note their skin color. As Gianna, who taught at a majority-white school with a few children of color, explained,
We did this activity. It was a book. “My skin is the color of,” and it goes through, “My skin is the color of oatmeal, my skin is the color of chocolate,” whatever it is. Then the kids mix paint, and they make their own color, and they write their own, “my skin is the color of,” and then they pick their word.
Another teacher, Amy, provided a wide range of drawing utensils to ensure each child could depict their skin color: “We have skin color-colored pencils, and crayons and stuff. So, there’s not really the need to choose one or the other. There’s a whole plethora.” These activities invite young children to reflect on their skin tone. Such activities highlight physical differences without explaining them—and, importantly, without mentioning the racialized system of inequalities that exists in the United States. Such activities may foster positive individual identity development. However, based on teachers’ reports of classroom activities, these discussions of skin tone were often the only group-based conversations related to race.
Beyond these teacher-led art activities highlighting differences in physical appearance, teachers indicated that students sometimes initiated conversations about skin tone. Revealingly, in every case described, the conversation had either been initiated by Black or Black-white biracial children. Illustrating this, Lexi, a teacher at a racially diverse school, shared that “[t]here was this girl, an African American girl, and all the time she was so proud of [her skin color]. She’s like ‘I’m brown, I’m brown.’” From these moments, we see that some young children spontaneously mention race and may be seeking additional conversations about their identities.
Ultimately, classroom discussions about skin tone and hair texture acknowledged differences, not inequality or power. Sarah’s use of the children’s book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? exemplifies this pattern. The book focuses on the colors of illustrated pictures of animals. For example, a brown bear says he sees a red bird. The last page says, “I see a whole class looking at me” and illustrates a group of children with their teacher. Sarah reported that she read an article explaining how to use the Brown Bear book to launch a discussion of physical differences among children. Sarah said,
So this article talked about how you can say, ‘There’s a boy with pink skin and blonde hair and blue eyes, and there’s a girl with brown skin and curly black hair.’ And making aware of everyone’s differences, but just making it that, like everyone’s different and that’s it [emphasis added].
Sarah used a simple approach to scaffold the book. She pointed out differences in the pictures within the book without explaining why people are different or acknowledging that there may be unequal treatment. When she said, “And that’s it,” Sarah pointed to a tacit assumption about race—that discussions of race with young children should stop at physical differences. A popular book, We’re Different, We’re the Same, from the creators of the children’s show Sesame Street, exemplifies this universalizing approach that creates a generic category of “difference” that applies to everyone and carries no structural impact.
Another teacher, Dev, an Asian teacher at a majority-white school, described a similar dynamic—identifying differences and removing the aspects of inequality or power—when describing relationships among the children in his class. Dev insisted that white children treat their peers of color “equally,” explaining that “they don’t see an issue. So, they’re like, ‘Hey, you’re darker than I am.’ And [the kids of color are] like, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And that’s fine. That’s like the end of the conversations.” Here, we see teachers working out for themselves that it is fine to discuss race, but only indirectly, and displaying a level of discomfort with the idea of discussing race for too long. Dev was clear that the children ended their conversations on skin color and he did not describe adding elements of race or power. Dev’s account assumed that children accepted a vision of the world where people were different but equal and did not see “issues” related to inequality or discrimination.
While we do not know the specific impact these activities and discourse have on children, we can see contradictions that may be confusing. White children are encouraged to view identity as simply color variations that can be acknowledged or not. This framing may negatively impact their later ability to engage in racially conscious discussions and prime them to ignore inequality. For children of color, who are more likely to be taught about racism and discrimination and how it connects to their physical appearance at home, the universalizing framework of difference presented by their teachers may cause confusion and a sense of dissonance, especially in cases where their appearance-based differences open them up to negative interactions with their classmates. Furthermore, as some parents of biracial children seek to challenge discourses that racially mixed people, especially girls and women, are more attractive (see Johnson 2024), the focus on physical traits without mentioning colorism or hierarchy may be out of sync with the goals of parents of mixed-race children. In addition, children of all racial backgrounds may notice their teachers’ implicit discomfort with race.
Teachers created lessons that framed racial differences in terms of skin tone and other visual differences. They talked about skin tone instead of using racial categories like Black, white, or Latine. Within preschool classrooms, teachers reported that children of color brought up their own skin color. When children of color were present in majority-white classrooms, they inspired conversations about physical differences among peers. Teachers reacted to these conversations in mixed ways as they attempted to affirm the child of color while also minimizing the structural impact of race and universalizing difference. Despite seeming to engage with race, when visual aspects of race are detached from named categories and inequalities, skin tone lesson plans may accomplish a version of racial non-knowing (Mueller 2017).
Deflecting Culture to the ‘Diversity Potluck’
The most explicit examples of racial categories came up when participants told us they included culturally relevant holidays in their classrooms. At first glance, this appears to be a progressive approach to race. This approach is in line with guidance from quality rating systems and NAEYC that encourages teachers to embrace the diverse home lives and cultural practices of students and families. However, like the inclusion of culturally diverse books, it stopped at the “happy” aspect of diversity (Bell and Hartmann 2007). Furthermore, when these holidays are initiated by families rather than by teachers, it emphasizes the idea of race and culture as merely occasional aspects of family engagement, and something for people of color that white people can choose to embrace or not.
Preschool quality rating systems encourage family engagement, and teachers’ responses to family holidays seem to fall within this. Families of color sometimes initiated cultural celebrations and teachers were typically amenable. Pam, a teacher at a racially diverse Catholic school, explained,
We did Asian New Year . . . one of the moms, she wanted to bring these rice cake things. Really neat so that everybody, [we] wanted to keep it broad enough to the whole school, and so I got a book about it.
Pam’s somewhat clumsy response to this family-prompted holiday celebration exemplifies the shallow multiculturalism our findings show. Pam’s school included cultural traditions from children’s families, but Pam inaccurately referred to it as “Asian New Year” rather than “Lunar New Year.” Another teacher, Sophia, explained that her classroom celebrated Black History Month, “[a]nd that was because one of our kids is African American and her mom is really into it, so she even helped us to bring in books and we’re just trying to connect with the families as well.” Although they did not initiate the celebrations themselves, teachers like Pam and Sophia responded positively to cultural lessons from the families of color in their classrooms. These families appear to have been teaching the teachers about important cultural aspects of race.
Children of color could become cultural ambassadors when minoritized in their classrooms. Natalie recalled,
The boy we have that his mom is from Korea, he actually talks a lot about the different foods that he eats. And so, that has been kind of an interesting topic for the kids. And he knows that I like spicy food. And so, he’s always telling me about these Korean dishes that he thinks I would like. And then the other kids hear us and they’re like, “What’s that?” And so, he’ll explain what it is.
This boy is a cultural ambassador in a context where he is minoritized. Holidays and food conversations brought celebratory, cultural aspects of race and ethnicity to the classroom. However, teachers relied on children and their families to introduce these aspects, amounting to a metaphorical “diversity potluck” whose quality was contingent on the composition and labor of its participants.
Lexi, a Latina teacher at a racially diverse preschool, contradicted the pattern of family-initiated cultural moments. She was the one to initiate culturally relevant celebrations, tailored somewhat to the students in her class. Lexi brought in diverse books and celebrations to affirm the culture of her students. She explained, “I try to include a lot of the things that they like, that are very important to them from their culture. Whether it be a Cinco de Mayo celebration . . . we do celebrate different festivals or cultures and everyone’s different.” Lexi’s actions differ from those of the teachers above in that she initiated the celebrations. Given that Lexi emphasized the importance of her Latina heritage in her interview, her approach to race and culture in the classroom could reflect her personal racial socialization.
Reframing Moments of Anti-Black Racism as Child’s Play
Teachers’ role in reproducing racism and the limits of the multicultural approach to inclusion in preschool classrooms were most clear when teachers reframed anti-Black racism in their classroom. When describing racist incidents targeting Black students, teachers tended to downplay the racialized nature of the events.
Multiple teachers described classroom incidents in which white peers targeted Black children in explicitly racialized ways. For example, Veronica described an ongoing problem in her primarily white classroom in which two Black boys had been repeatedly mixed up by the other students:
We had kind of a situation where both those boys in the afternoon class who are Black, the kids were mixing up their names. So we were trying really hard to correct that without over-blowing it.
Veronica’s account made it clear that while she understood this situation as a problem, her default reaction was to minimize the racialized aspect of the situation, despite how potentially upsetting it may have been for the two Black children in the class. It is telling that Veronica did not mention any similar instances happening with white children in the class, nor did she mention how the situation was handled for the two Black children who experienced racialized mistreatment, however minor, from their classmates.
Although it was evident to us that the reported incidents were racial, teachers minimized the racial significance of such events in their retelling. Moreover, they did not describe themselves as responding to such incidents by engaging students in conversations about race or bias. Angela’s description of a playground incident illustrates both patterns:
“We did have a situation where one of our diverse students was going home and saying things, and these are things that we didn’t hear . . . from on the playground or whatever was going on . . . and so, caused a little bit of controversy in the class. So that was a little . . . And I’m like, this is four- and five-year-olds. I could just imagine what was going on in elementary school or whatever. I don’t know. It’s scary. We live in a scary time right now, and people hear and say things that just . . .”
“Do you know what kinds of things were being said?”
“Well, one of them was ‘Black is bad. They’re not better than we are.’ These were . . . Okay, these were the little white girls of the class . . . And it was like, ‘Whoa, okay.’ First off, if that was ever said in front of me that would have been addressed right away. But it was out on the playground, when they’re doing their little things. . .Yeah, that did not make me feel very good.”
Angela, who teaches at a majority-white school, used coded language to describe a child of color as a “diverse student,” and she hesitated to classify the girls making biased comments as white. She admitted that she did not address the situation, rationalizing this lack of response because the incident happened “on the playground,” out of earshot. In emphasizing that the events were on the playground, Angela framed these moments as within children’s realm and out-of-reach from adult influence. In addition, when Angela said, “these are four- and five-year-olds,” she expressed the common belief among white people—including many of the teachers in our sample—that young children are unlikely to be bigoted. Notice that the comment “Black is bad” was specifically about a racial group rather than a discussion of skin. The girls’ phrasing “They’re not better than we are” also shows that, contrary to common sentiments in early childhood, children not only notice physical racial differences but have understandings of group conflict and racialized hierarchies. This incident is evidence that children, including white children, can use racial categories in racist ways. A response grounded in addressing racism would suggest the need for classroom discussions of racial categories and bias. Angela downplayed the racial aspects of this playground incident—even in her retelling. This upholds racism.
When we asked Amy if race or culture ever came up among the children, she described an incident in her co-worker’s classroom where classmates told a Black child his skin looked like poop. Amy’s account indicates that her co-worker minimized the racial significance of this incident—a response Amy seemed to endorse:
There was a Black child in the room, and I think some of the kids said that his skin looked like poop . . . There’s a really great book called The Colors of Us, and it compares everyone’s skin to some sort of food or something like that. So, [the teacher] leaned on that story and everyone created their skin color paint, and they made a mural of all of them together . . . It’s not like that kid was being malicious and being like, ‘You look like poop,’ but just saying a statement. Instead of focusing it on [by saying] ‘you can’t say that type of thing,’ she was like, well . . . ‘let’s maybe find a different word to use, but everyone’s skin looks like something’ . . . It’s something I should do proactively and not just as a response to an issue, but it was just a really deep, I feel, way to tackle that situation.
Amy had determined that the child in question was not malicious, but she downplayed the fact that, in general, preschool children joke about poop or are disgusted by it (Shayan 2022). Thus, the child’s comparison to poop implies that brown skin is either funny or disgusting. Moreover, based on Amy’s retelling, the teacher overseeing the interaction did not address it as an instance of racism. Instead, she universalized the issue by leaning on the idea that everyone has skin. Reflecting on her co-worker’s response, Amy praised her co-worker’s response as “deep” and indicated that she aspired to proactively emphasize skin differences in her classroom.
In fact, as mentioned above, Amy and others engaged children in classroom activities that emphasized skin tone in a way that universalized race as one generic category of “difference.” Teachers discussed these activities as the appropriate way to address race in the classroom and felt that while students could physically see difference, they were not yet at the point of applying hierarchy or discrimination based on those differences. Amy and Angela’s stories refute the theories shared by some teachers above that posited that preschool children are too young to see or understand race and demonstrate that children do use race for their own—sometimes exclusionary—purposes. However, teachers ignore the racialized elements of these moments in a way that normalizes whiteness and excuses bias. This moral bargain allows teachers to see themselves and the white children exhibiting racism as innocent. Incidents like these also have implications for Black children. Black children may recognize their classmates’ language as racist and experience no intervention by teachers.
Appletree Center: Addressing Racism, with Parent Support
The teachers featured above avoided discussions of power and inequality, and this characterizes almost all of our sample. However, in one case, local pressure and parent support facilitated a school in discussing racism more explicitly. At Appletree Center, according to Martha, “every single one of our children is white.” However, local 2020 Black Lives Matter protests motivated the teachers to discuss racism with their students:
We’re downtown, and we had graffiti on our windows. There was no way we could ever . . . if we wanted to, which already, Day One, we were like, “We’re not hiding any of this from the kids. We’re being truthful with them.” We couldn’t, because it was everywhere. We’re so close to the capital. So, we recognized that. And we have the most amazing parents that are 100% truthful with their kids. It’s truthful. It’s honest. There’s nothing sugar-coated. And it’s not severe either. It’s never ‘all cops are bad.’ It’s a long discussion about it and what happened to these people. We even got to be a part of a George Floyd memorial, and the kids were on the news. The parents were like, “This opportunity!” The kids came back with more information, and we were able to have an appropriate conversation about it.
This preschool talked explicitly about race and racism. Elements of color-evasiveness are evident in Martha’s account, such as the idea that the preschool might have wanted to hide the fact of racism and police brutality from their students if not for their neighborhood. We also notice that Martha indicated that parents supported the teachers in having race-conscious discussions. Martha’s excitement in retelling this story emphasizes that she and the parents viewed this situation as something unique—an opportunity to expose the kids to conversations and perspectives that would set them apart from the norm. The parent support that Martha recounted echoes Megan R. Underhill’s (2019) argument that some financially privileged, white parents see racial socialization as an avenue to cultivate class and race distinction, or an “opportunity.” Indeed, Appletree Center charged one of the highest monthly tuitions in the city, making it more accessible to affluent families who may have been particularly interested in cultivating race-conscious children as a matter of distinction (Underhill 2019). Appletree Center’s approach suggests that educators in majority-white preschools may be more amenable to directly addressing race when they perceive parent support for doing so and when local and national discourses incentivize such discussions. In this way, we see the constraints that teachers face in addressing race. Teachers work in a social and political context, with national and local pressures on their jobs. They also engage with families, who may approach race in different ways.
Conclusion
As early childhood scholars Doucet and Adair (2013:89) note, “children reach conclusions about race . . . whether or not the adults in their lives talk explicitly about these topics.” Contributing to the study of childhood racial socialization, this paper examined how preschool teachers communicated ideas about race and racism in the classroom. Across 27 interviews, we found that teachers primarily focused on race as a visual attribute. Teachers leaned on “diverse” books and skin tone art projects. Occasionally, teachers facilitated children of color and their families acting as cultural ambassadors, introducing the rest of the class to their cultural traditions. Finally, when interpersonal racism occurred between students, teachers minimized these incidents by explaining and addressing them in non-racial ways.
Our findings contribute to research on racial socialization in early childhood by underscoring preschool teachers’ role in sending racialized messages to children. We found that private preschools broadly mirror the color-evasive approach observed among some white families (Vittrup and Holden 2011). For children of color being raised in households using color-evasive logics, preschool will echo the point that race, and therefore racism, should be ignored, which may contribute to internalized racial oppression (Trieu and Lee 2018). In contrast, for children of color who are steeped in both racial pride and ideas of inequality at home (Hughes 2003), color-evasive preschool environments may foster a sense of dissonance as they minimize the real impacts of racism on children of color. They may similarly confuse white children raised in color consciousness.
Understanding the broader racial socialization occurring in preschool informs race scholarship on early inequalities, including racially disproportionate discipline in preschool. Given experimental evidence and administrative data that show that preschool teachers view Black children as aggressive and disproportionately exclude Black children from school (see Gilliam, Maupin, and Accavitti 2016; Meek et al. 2021), our interview findings showing that teachers were willing to overlook anti-Blackness among their white students are troubling. These findings attest to multidimensional ways in which preschools can fail to be inclusive for Black students. In addition, our research suggests meaningful avenues for preschool teachers to exercise agency to address race with their students. Practitioners might consult recent publications with practical approaches to addressing racism in the classroom (see Escayg, Faragó, and Husband 2025).
This study has three key limitations that could inspire future research. First, although in-depth interviews with teachers provided an efficient way to learn about multiple preschool programs, our conclusions are based on teachers’ self-reports of racialized moments. The majority of teachers in our sample are white, so it is possible that additional instances of racism went unnoticed by these teachers or that they avoided sharing other examples with us due to social desirability bias. Indeed, teachers downplayed the racial nature even of the racist incidents they did report. Considering these limitations, further observational studies in preschool classrooms could clarify our understanding of teachers’ actual behaviors and, importantly, children’s reactions to teachers’ socialization messages. Second, and related to the point above, we primarily spoke with teachers in majority-white preschools and with white women teachers. Black teachers in Denver report experiencing racism at work and overall experiencing “racial battle fatigue” (Butler Institute for Families 2025:3). Black teachers and other teachers of color might make different choices regarding discussions of race in the classroom. Finally, our method of teacher interviews downplays children’s agency in racial socialization and how implied perceptions, nonverbal cues, and informal social contexts may shape children’s racial attitudes above and beyond adults’ intentionally stated views (Hagerman 2016; Vittrup and Holden 2011).
Drawing on interview data with preschool teachers, this article underscores teachers’ agency in shaping the racialized experiences that children have at the start of their journey in schools. As a majority of US children attend preschool, it is critical to examine how teachers broadly address race in their classrooms, offering early racial socialization to children. Alongside families, preschools contribute to early childhood racial socialization.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank Rachel Fish, Johanna Quinn, Rachel Senn, and Emily Walton for reviewing previous drafts of this article. Thank you to Devanae Allen and Morgan Allegretti for assistance with data collection. Laura Freeman Cenegy, Dawun Smith, and Rachel Fish informed the broader data collection and analysis for the project. Marina Mendoza and Chris Miller at the Denver Preschool Program assisted with recruitment. Elena van Stee and Anna Alves provided helpful editing.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grant.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.