In this paper we examine schooling inequalities through drawing from the contributions of racialized organizations.We apply the components of this racial theory to offer a new framework for examining racial inequalities in US K-12 schools. We analyze case studies to demonstrate how the four tenants of racialized organizations operate in three schools. In particular, we highlight how these tenants surface through schools' policies (school rules around discipline, language, and tracking) and practices (interactions between students, teachers and staff). We offer a framework for understanding how schools are shaped by the racial hierarchy at the organizational level. We close by considering implications and suggestions for future research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the health of people of color in the United States. In this study, we use national survey data ( n = 1,844) to examine racial-ethnic variation in people’s worries about COVID-19 mortality and the mechanisms that underlie these differences. Consistent with stress theory, we find that Black and Latinx respondents are more likely than Whites to worry about the possibility that they, a romantic partner, or a child will die from the virus. Black and Latinx respondents are also more likely to report prior COVID-19 infection, to know someone who has tested positive for the virus, to work in essential jobs, to live in more densely populated counties with higher infection rates, and to contend with more same-race COVID-19 infections at the national level. Across these different layers of social context, however, only prior COVID infection and knowing someone who has tested positive for the virus are linked to greater worry about COVID-related mortality. Mediation analyses indicate the greater prevalence of prior infection among Black and Latinx respondents explains little of the gap in anticipatory stress, whereas approximately one-fifth of the Black-White and Latinx-White discrepancy in worries about COVID-19 mortality are attributable to the greater social connectivity of Black and Latinx respondents to family and friends who have been affected by the virus. We outline the implications of these findings for future scholarship.

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