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.

Whiteness as a Dissonant State: Exploring One White Male Student Teacher’s Experiences in Urban Contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 306-318
Author(s):  
Stephanie Behm Cross ◽  
Nermin Tosmur-Bayazit ◽  
Alyssa Hadley Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Student Teaching ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
White Male ◽  
Male Student ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
K 12

Studies on student teaching continue to suggest that preservice teachers’ feelings of dissonance are related to disparate views of teaching and learning between universities and schools. Drawing on interview, artifact, and observation data, the authors utilize Cognitive Dissonance and Critical Whiteness Studies to make different sense of the experiences of one White student teacher (Brett). Results indicate that Brett experienced dissonance related to fractured relationships, misaligned teaching strategies, and disengagement as he taught youth of color. Importantly, the use of Critical Whiteness Studies helped to additionally reveal the way Whiteness affected Brett’s movements toward consonance—mainly through rationalization and problematic notions of perseverance. The authors suggest that Whiteness itself is a dissonant state, and argue that conversations focused on dissonance from misaligned university theory and K-12 schooling practices is dangerously incomplete. Implications for research and practice are included.

Critical Whiteness Studies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Applebaum
Keyword(s):  
White Privilege ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
White People ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Black President

In 1903, standing at the dawn of the 20th century, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the color line is the defining characteristic of American society. Well into the 21st century, Du Bois’s prescience sadly still rings true. Even when a society is built on a commitment to equality, and even with the election of its first black president, the United States has been unsuccessful in bringing about an end to the rampant and violent effects of racism, as numerous acts of racial violence in the media have shown. For generations, scholars of color, among them Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Franz Fanon, have maintained that whiteness lies at the center of the problem of racism. It is only relatively recently that the critical study of whiteness has become an academic field, committed to disrupting racism by problematizing whiteness as a corrective to the traditional exclusive focus on the racialized “other.” Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) is a growing field of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege. CWS presumes a certain conception of racism that is connected to white supremacy. In advancing the importance of vigilance among white people, CWS examines the meaning of white privilege and white privilege pedagogy, as well as how white privilege is connected to complicity in racism. Unless white people learn to acknowledge, rather than deny, how whites are complicit in racism, and until white people develop an awareness that critically questions the frames of truth and conceptions of the “good” through which they understand their social world, Du Bois’s insight will continue to ring true.

Peter Pan and the White Imperial Imaginary

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Brewer
Keyword(s):  
Racial Difference ◽  
White Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Academic Press ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Peter Pan ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
And Gender

To consider racial difference in terms of exclusion enables whiteness to retain its relative invisibility. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of critical whiteness studies, Mary Brewer examines J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, exploring how the amorphous status granted to whiteness in the text lends it cultural authority. She aims to uncover how race and racism structure the play and to find ways of exploiting the gaps in its representation of white identity. These gaps potentially may be exploited in production – that is, made to operate against the grain and yield explicitly oppositional performances that work toward the denaturalization of hegemonic constructions of whiteness, gender, and sexuality. Mary Brewer lectures in the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University. Her books include Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Women's Theatre (Sussex Academic Press, 1992) and Problems of Exclusions in Feminist Thought: Challenging the Boundaries of Womanhood (Sussex Academic Press, 2002).

The Calculus and Quotients of Social Illiteracy: Equations of Race, Responsibility & Critical-Ethical Literacy in Schools

2020 ◽  
pp. 001312452096208
Author(s):  
J. Kalonji Rand
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
White Students ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Antiracist Education ◽  
American Students ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Critical Literacy Pedagogy

Should students in public schools learn to think critically about racial (in)justice and social (in)equity? The results of a recent mixed methods survey for educators revealed that a significant number of teachers did not believe they were responsible for helping their students develop the skills to critically analyze and respond to social injustice. Quantitative data showed that most of the educators who responded unfavorably, self-identified as “White” teachers of mostly White students; while most of the White teachers of mostly African American students held the opposite belief. Qualitative data provided some context for the rationales informing the divergent beliefs of these White teachers. Utilizing a combination of grounded theory and coding methods, I explore, illustrate, and analyze the responses of both sets of White teachers in an effort to illuminate and contextualize their articulated beliefs. Then, I interrogate the findings in light of their emergence along racial strata, using insights from scholarship in Critical Whiteness Studies and Critical Literacy/Pedagogy. Then I discuss their implications with reference to Robert Starratt’s “Virtue of Responsibility” and current theories of antiracist education. I conclude with a call for improving the educational experiences and societal outcomes of all students by naming and disrupting social illiteracy, championing critical-ethical literacy and encouraging an antiracist ethos.

scholarly journals Revealing Whiteness in Preservice Music Teacher Preparation

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-141
Author(s):  
Andrea VanDeusen
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Preparation Programs ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Music Teacher Preparation ◽  
Critical Whiteness

Educational institutions and teacher education preparation programs tend to reflect White Eurocentric beliefs and values. Additionally, White preservice teachers may have little understanding of their own cultural backgrounds, as they are largely unexamined in a structure of White norms. In this paper, I draw upon elements of critical whiteness studies as a framework to further analyze data from a prior, larger study about an immersion field experience to reveal the ways in which whiteness was largely unacknowledged but always lurking in the background of the experience—in participants’ discourses about their experiences and interactions with students of color in the music classrooms. This deepened understanding of whiteness embedded in the experience was imperative for considering how to better facilitate field experiences for White preservice music teachers and how to better prepare them to work successfully with students of color.

scholarly journals Why Are All the White Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: Toward Challenging Constructions of a Persecuted White Collective

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 679
Author(s):  
Uma Mazyck Jayakumar ◽  
Annie S. Adamian ◽  
Sara E. Grummert ◽  
Cameron T. Schmidt-Temple ◽  
Andrew T. Arroyo
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
White People ◽  
Structural Racism

In the context of ongoing antagonism on college campuses, attacks on Critical Race Theory, and widespread backlash against racial justice initiatives, this paper underscores the growing need to recognize co-optation and other counterinsurgent strategies used against racial justice to make room for transformative scholarship. By presenting qualitative interviews from 15 white HBCU students, we illustrate how diversity research, advocacy, and organizing previously used to advocate for racial justice has instead constructed distorted understandings of race and racism and has been used to expand ideologies of whiteness. The findings show what CRT scholars have cautioned about for decades—when left uninterrupted, ahistorical approaches to racial diversity programming and research may lend to the co-optation of justice-focused diversity language and the appropriation of BIPOC strategies of resistance. This not only inhibits and detracts from racial justice work, but can function to expand white supremacy. We relate these narratives to an emerging racial backlash whereby white people attempt to distort understandings of structural racism to claim a “persecuted” status—a delusion that we argue warrants a new ideological frame. We posit this work lays the foundation for advancing equity in one of the most counterinsurgent eras in higher education (Matias & Newlove, 2017).

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.

A Case for Decentering Whiteness in Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Jamie Utt
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
White Students ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Traditional Curriculum ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Cultural Wealth ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Social Studies Textbooks

Ethnic Studies undermines and challenges the racism inherent in dominant education systems by centering identities and epistemologies of people of Color. While much focus has been paid to the damage done to students of Color by White teachers and the White standard curriculum, this paper addresses the intellectual and material benefit White students disproportionately gain from this curriculum. Through a mixed-methods empirical study examining social studies textbooks and standards from Texas and California, the author argues that the standard White canon acts as a form of White/Western studies that directly privileges White students. Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, Pierre Bourdieu cultural reproduction, and Tara Yosso’s community cultural wealth provide theoretical frameworks in calling for a broader implementation of Ethnic Studies programs and pedagogies while calling for reform of traditional curriculum and standards that act as couriers of dominant capital for White students.

Amidst pandemic and racial upheaval: Where Asian Americans Fit

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Whitney Hua ◽  
Jane Junn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of

Abstract As racial tensions flare amidst a global pandemic and national social justice upheaval, the centrality of structural racism has renewed old questions and raised new ones about where Asian Americans fit in U.S. politics. This paper provides an overview of the unique racial history of Asians in the United States and analyzes the implications of dynamic racialization and status for Asian Americans. In particular, we examine the dynamism of Asian Americans' racial positionality relative to historical shifts in economic-based conceptions of their desirability as workers in American capitalism. Taking history, power, and institutions of white supremacy into account, we analyze where Asian Americans fit in contemporary U.S. politics, presenting a better understanding of the persistent structures underlying racial inequality and developing a foundation from which Asian Americans can work to enhance equality.

scholarly journals A Global Critical Race and Racism Framework: Racial Entanglements and Deep and Malleable Whiteness

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Christian
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
First Century ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
State Economy ◽  
Global Linkages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Components

Twenty years after Bonilla-Silva developed the analytic components of a structural race perspective and called for “comparative work on racialization in various societies,” U.S.-centric race theory continues to be mostly rooted in a U.S. focus. What is missing is a framework that explores race and racism as a modern global project that takes shape differently in diverse structural and ideological forms across all geographies but is based in global white supremacy. Drawing from Bonilla-Silva’s national racialized social systems approach, global South scholars, and critical race scholars in the world-systems tradition, the author advances a global critical race and racism framework that highlights two main areas: (1) core components that include the “state,” “economy,” “institutions,” and “discourses” and “representations,” as divided by “racist structure” and “racist ideology” and shaped by the “history” of and current forms of transnational racialization and contemporary “global” linkages, and (2) the production of deep and malleable global whiteness. With this framework, both the permanence and flexibility of racism across the globe can be seen, in all its overt, invisible, and insidious forms, that ultimately sustains global white supremacy in the twenty-first century.

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