This brief focuses on six paradoxical habits, named such because while they are intended to disrupt inequitable practices, they actually re-entrench inequity. These six paradoxical habits include selective racialization, desirablizing whiteness, burdening the protected, leading technically, centralized compliance and control, and excusing institutional failures. These habits were first identified via a process of policy analysis that sought to identify the ways in which policy language directed change in practice (see Radd & Grosland, 2016; Radd, Grosland, & Steepleton, 2019). These habits are common in schools, even those that are focused on equity.