There is a great need to understand how we might leverage research-practice partnerships (RPPs) to change K-12 school practices, organizations, and policies that continue to reflect structural racism in schooling. In this paper, we present case vignettes of RPPs that aim to create educational improvement efforts but focus on building from the racialized understandings of student and educator experiences. The case vignettes explore the tensions and obstacles that RPPs might face in this context and how partnerships might operationalize processes to create conditions for positive change when putting racial experiences at the center of their work. We illustrate how the creation of RPPs and the moves we made helped us understand the connection between race and the personal, interpersonal, and systemic dynamics of partnership work. These cases contribute a deeper conceptual understanding that may be transferable to other RPP contexts and inform the work of other RPPs.