Countering Complacency With Radical Reflection: Supporting White Teachers in the Enactment of Critical Multicultural Praxis

2020 ◽  
pp. 001312452092768
Author(s):  
Tina M. Durand ◽  
Cassandra L. Tavaras
Keyword(s):  
Effective Teachers ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
Color Blindness ◽  
Diverse Students ◽  
Reflective Practices ◽  
Critical Multiculturalism ◽  
Racially Diverse ◽  
Theory To Practice ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Urban Classrooms

Although White teachers can be effective teachers of racially diverse students, studies continue to document factors that can undermine their success, such as color-blindness and unawareness of racial privilege. We argue that these factors contribute to a sense of complacency among White teachers regarding the implementation of culturally affirming practices. In this review, we advance an argument for the need for radically reflective practices that are necessary for the constitution of effective educational praxis for White teachers who teach in urban classrooms of mostly Black and brown students. Using Critical Multiculturalism as a framework, we address a gap in the translation of theory to practice by providing a set of process-oriented strategies that are necessary for the constitution of teacher praxis that is both radically reflective and radically hopeful, and where complacency is not an option.

Using Racial and Class Differences in Infant Mortality to Teach about White Privilege: A Cooperative Group Activity

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Cebulak ◽  
John F. Zipp
Keyword(s):  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Cooperative Learning ◽  
White Students ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Color Blindness ◽  
Cooperative Group ◽  
Learning Groups ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Learning Group ◽  
Racial Privilege

A considerable amount of research across the past several decades has documented the emergence of a new racial ideology of “color-blindness” as well as evidence that white college students have difficulty recognizing the racial privileges that are obscured by this color-blindness. To address this, we developed a cooperative group White Privilege Activity that used racial and class differences in infant mortality to help students recognize the existence of white privilege. Fielding this in two mass lecture sections of Introductory Sociology, we found that exposure to content on white privilege along with the utilization of cooperative learning group exercises promoted a greater understanding of white privilege for both white and nonwhite students. Furthermore, we found that the racial composition of cooperative learning groups had a significant impact on white students’ racial privilege attitudes.

Whiteness Interrupted

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Bell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
American Society ◽  
Depth Interviews

In Whiteness Interrupted Marcus Bell presents a revealing portrait of white teachers in majority-black schools in which he examines the limitations of understandings of how white racial identity is formed. Through in-depth interviews with dozens of white teachers from a racially segregated, urban school district in Upstate New York, Bell outlines how whiteness is constructed based on localized interactions and takes a different form in predominantly black spaces. He finds that in response to racial stress in a difficult teaching environment, white teachers conceptualized whiteness as a stigmatized category predicated on white victimization. When discussing race outside majority-black spaces, Bell's subjects characterized American society as postracial, in which race seldom affects outcomes. Conversely, in discussing their experiences within predominantly black spaces, they rejected the idea of white privilege, often angrily, and instead focused on what they saw as the racial privilege of blackness. Throughout, Bell underscores the significance of white victimization narratives in black spaces and their repercussions as the United States becomes a majority-minority society.

White Teachers in Urban Classrooms

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry M. Goldenberg
Keyword(s):  
White Teachers ◽  
Urban Classrooms

Voices From Urban Classrooms: Teachers’ Perceptions on Instructing Diverse Students and Using Culturally Responsive Teaching

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (8) ◽  
pp. 697-726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia J. Bonner ◽  
Susan R. Warren ◽  
Ying H. Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Responsive Teaching ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Diverse Students ◽  
Responsive Teaching ◽  
Schools Of Education ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
Diverse Classrooms ◽  
Sense Of Efficacy ◽  
Urban Classrooms

This study explored the perceptions of 430 P-12 urban teachers regarding the instruction of diverse students and their own ability to effectively implement culturally responsive teaching (CRT). Employing qualitative methodology, four open-ended sentence stems were used to capture teachers’ thoughts, beliefs, and experiences. Results reveal teachers’ strong commitment to CRT, an understanding of behaviors which constitute CRT, a strong sense of efficacy in teaching diverse students, and anticipation of positive outcomes through proactively addressing diverse students’ needs. This research provides valuable information for school districts and schools of education as they develop culturally responsive teachers for today’s diverse classrooms.

Religion, Race, and Immigration in Contemporary America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Yukich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Color Blindness ◽  
American Religion ◽  
Racially Diverse ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Multiracial Congregations

Due in part to immigration, religion in contemporary America is more religiously and racially diverse than ever before. Much of this diversity remains hidden, since many American congregations remain racially and ethnically segregated. Multiracial congregations are becoming more common, but they often adopt the beliefs and practices of majority-white religious traditions and embrace narratives of color-blindness while leaving structural racism unchallenged. Transnational religious connections forged through immigration have the potential to shift America’s historical religio-racial patterns. Ongoing encounters with religio-racial “others” from abroad can transform individual and collective religious identities, beliefs, and practices in profound ways. As immigration to the United States continues in the coming years, scholars should pay attention to how religion, race, and immigration intersect, including how color-blind theologies may block the potential of immigration to dismantle entrenched racial and ethnic divides in American religion.

White Teachers, Racial Privilege, and the Sociological Imagination

2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (10) ◽  
pp. 1462-1488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Personal Experiences

The author draws from critical Whiteness studies and the sociological imagination to show how three White preservice teachers in an urban education program used personal experiences with racial privilege to understand structural racism. These stories depart from portrayals of race-evasive White teachers who struggle to engage with critical perspectives on race and racism. The participants’ stories—which openly critique meritocracy and color blindness—not only demonstrate possibility, but they also raise concerns about the use of personal experience by dominant groups and note how considerations of White privilege do not necessarily lead to an understanding of how one is complicit in the reproduction of White supremacy.

Becoming White Teachers: Symbolic Interactions and Racializing the Raceless Norm in Predominantly Black Schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Marcus Bell
Keyword(s):  
Effective Teachers ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Interview Method ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Symbolic Interactions ◽  
The Invisible

Under the banner of critical whiteness studies, scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum have spent the past several decades investigating whiteness and white racial identity, both in the United States and abroad. Of the numerous findings, perhaps none is more pervasive than that of white racelessness: the idea that whites do not see themselves in racial terms but instead think of themselves as just normal. This article complicates white racelessness by examining whiteness that is spatially situated as the racial minority. Using an inductive interview method, the author interviews 32 white teachers who currently work in urban, predominantly black schools. Despite previous socialization as the invisible norm, white teachers were effectively racialized by repeated and continuous symbolic interactions with black students and their families. Through a multistep and mutually reinforcing process, teachers went from thinking of themselves as the invisible, raceless norm to seeing themselves as the hypervisible, racial other. Findings also show that white teachers devised ways to navigate their personal racial identities, all while trying to remain effective teachers to nonwhite students. The experiential loss of white privilege is also discussed.

Supporting Racially Diverse Students at HBCUs: A Student Affairs Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Arroyo ◽  
Robert T. Palmer ◽  
Dina C. Maramba ◽  
Dave A. Louis
Keyword(s):  
Student Affairs ◽  
Diverse Students ◽  
Racially Diverse
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