White Apathy and Pedagogical Renegotiations: An Autothistoria-teoría of Teaching While Sick, Tired, and Brown
In this article, I reflect on my experience as a graduate student and an instructor to examine the embodied risks, professional decisions, and consequences connected to attending graduate school while working as an educator in a predominantly white institution (PWI). Through recollection, memory, and archival data, this autoethnographic text highlights events that led me to reanalyze my “failure” at reaching all of my enrolled students in a sociology of race and ethnicity class and reframe it as a reaction to the social environment of White apathy. This mindframe was supported by the practices of an East Coast university after a racial bias event was publicized in national news media. I argue that we must examine how institutions of higher learning are complicit in fostering racial ecologies of Whiteness that subject Women of Color and others to experience dif- ferent forms of pain and abuse. In doing so, we can create new movidas (moves) that hold groups accountable and promote healthier learning environments for all.