“No space for race”: Advanced Placement as a racialized organization and a culture trap

Scholars of education and race have long considered the Advanced Placement (AP) program for its capacity to invite more racially minoritized students into college preparatory coursework. How these courses shape ideologies of race among those who participate in AP has received less scholarly attention. This study leverages the theory of racialized organizations and interviews of AP students and teachers at a school serving predominantly working-class Filipinx, Latinx, and Black students to understand how being in AP shapes students’ understandings of race. The findings demonstrate that the AP program was a racialized organization that manifested as a culture trap for students. Students recognized that their AP courses had few Black or Latinx students, but that fact went largely unmentioned in and out of class. Devoid of substantive conversations about systemic racism in AP curricula, the students believed that cultural differences between Filipinx and non-Filipinx students explained racial disparities in AP.