The minority is becoming the majority : a mixed methods study of the role of White principals’ racial socialization in working with students of color.

White school principals in the United States may not fully understand how to interact with the students of color that they lead. Yet, they are responsible for leading in schools where students of color are the majority (Chen, 2019; NCES, 2021a; Schaeffer, 2021). Since conversations about racial relations may not take place in the homes of some White school principals, U.S. education officials must reform leadership preparation programs to racially resocialize White school principals to reshape what they think about race. The purpose of this convergent mixed methods study was to explain how the beliefs and behaviors of White principals leading in racially incongruent public schools in the United States are related to how they were racially socialized. I used purposive sampling to collect survey data through a modified version of the Comprehensive Racial Socialization Inventory (CRSI; Lesane-Brown et al, 2005). I collected CRSI (Lesane-Brown et al., 2005) survey data in the quantitative phase to understand how White school principals were racially socialized. I conducted semi-structured interviews in the qualitative phase to understand the White principals’ perceptions of the role that racial socialization plays in developing their beliefs and behaviors in working with students of color. I then integrated the data to explain how the beliefs and behaviors of White principals leading in racially incongruent learning environments in public schools in the United States relate to how they were racially socialized. The findings revealed that White principals in this study have adopted the colorblind attitudes that they were racially socialized by as their guiding philosophy for interacting with students of color. The data also show that the White principals in this study also have colorblind attitudes toward their own race. Since racial colorblindness is associated with racism and oppression (Lee-Johnson, 2019; Mueller, 2017; Rodil, 2020), the results of this research should be used to reform leadership preparation frameworks to support the racial resocialization of White school principals to build their capacity in addressing social justice issues to improve the academic achievement of students of color.