Notes on: Picower, B. (2009): The unexamined
Whiteness of teaching: how White teachers maintain
and enact dominant racial ideologies, Race
Ethnicity and Education, 12:2: 197-215.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613320902995475
Dave Harris
How White preservice teachers life experiences
influence their understandings of race and
difference, and how these help resist a critical
multicultural education course. Following critical
race theory, their understandings were assumed to
be hegemonic. They used a set of '"tools of
whiteness"' to manage their understandings of
race, not just as passive resistance but more to
protect their hegemonic stories (197)
90% of the early teaching force in the USA is
white and half the schools do not have a single
teacher of colour, so we need to look at whiteness
and how White teachers conceptualise race. Race is
a key category for inequality in the USA, and CRT
suggest that racism is a normal, inherent feature,
that 'racism is "endemic and deeply
ingrained in American life"' (198), implicit in
discourses that seem to be race neutral or
colourblind, and thus maintaining white supremacy
and the ideology of whiteness. Whites benefit from
institutions that seem to have nothing to do with
race, although the land of Native Americans and
the labour of African-Americans has been crucial.
Participants are often unaware that they have a
racial identity and so can deny their place in a
racial hierarchy - 'power erasure' masking
whiteness in everyday consciousness, blanking
privilege and group membership. Many privileges
are 'invisible and earned and not consciously
acknowledged', and this can reinforce
institutional hierarchies and the larger system.
Privilege is not necessarily only passive but can
result from active oppression where the system
benefits a group, mystifies a system, stops agents
from action discoursing about it and stifles
discussion often by talking about the 'reality'of
the situation. This can be seen with white
teachers.
There is a connection between race and the attempt
of teachers to build sociopolitical consciousness
and cultural competence, but often notions of
whiteness are taken for granted together with
implications for privilege and power.
Nevertheless, they must develop critical
consciousness if they are to be successful with
students from diverse settings, to understand
teaching from a culturally relevant perspective.
Sometimes prospective teachers are provided with
courses to help them analyse their own belief
systems and experiences, with the assumption that
this will help them become better educators. For
example stereotypes of urban students can be
challenged leading to greater capacity to identify
and empathise, or create relevant curriculum.
Courses are offered in things like multicultural
education, and some work. However some report
resistance. It is important to look at life
experiences as a resource to negotiate
understandings.
Eight white female preservice teachers in their
20s were studied on a course on multicultural
education in New York City. The course wanted to
help them explore their own racial identity and
class privilege and their assumptions about
students of colour. There were interviews,
transcripts of class sessions and prior written
assignments from the course. Grounded theory was
used to analyse the data. Very personal data was
sometimes obtained. Picower was a white woman and
this helped participants feel safe, and the
assignments encourage them to reflect on their own
life experiences. There were contradictions
between course materials and previous
understandings which caused 'a great deal of
confusion and discomfort' and it was useful to
voice these.
Participants had a variety of early experiences
with diversity. Some used religious identities to
avoid discussing racial identity and generally to
deny the role of race in oppression - one said she
was Jewish and so had experienced discrimination
not based on colour, and saw whiteness as a
surface identity. Some identified as white but
told 'a hegemonic story about how people of colour
should be able to pick themselves up by their
bootstraps' (201) like their own Italian immigrant
family. This upholds the dominant view of people
of colour as lazy and perpetuates the myth of
meritocracy. This can be admitted to be racist and
can also include resentment towards affirmative
action which unfairly redistributes resources.
Experiences of people of colour were often
limited, and where they existed were hierarchical,
involving hiring nannies, about which they had
mixed feelings, which seem to involve [1 case]
accepting the status quo for what it was.
These participants 'gained maintained hegemonic
understandings of the world concerning race'
(202), in the form of internalised ways of making
meaning, multiple stories justifying their fear of
'people of colour urban communities and students'.
Often whites were seen as victims of racism and
stereotypes and assumptions and misconceptions
about people of colour, especially
African-Americans, were reproduced. Fear was
especially prominent, ranging from anxiety to
terror. Most stories involve seeing
African-Americans as dangerous criminals, unsafe,
neighbouring schools have threatening black
football players, for example, or stereotyped
threatening black teenagers, which was seen as
general and normal, and were carried over into
practice schools in the form of fear of some of
the larger pupils, even where they were eight year
old children.
The second element was a deficit construction, the
difficulties faced in urban schools and
communities. Most students had avoided black
communities and had often only experienced them
for the first time in placement, sharing fears of
travelling, say to Harlem.. The third element was
whites as victims, stories where whites had been
verbally or physically attacked, or feeling bad
and neglected if there is an assumption that
whites have privilege, experiencing 'reverse
racism' which now privileges others. Overall,
'participants were highly committed' to
maintaining these understandings.
The course on multicultural education is designed
to interrogate these understandings, and students
drew upon a variety of tools of whiteness in order
to maintain them - to 'deny, evade, subvert or
avoid the issues raised' (205), in the form of
active protection. The tools were 'emotional,
ideological and performative'.
Emotional tools were based on feelings and
emotional responses, not just immediate reactions
but aligned with hegemonic stories. For example
one statement was '"I never owned a slave"', a
matter of anger and defensiveness, anger at being
made to feel guilty, seeing the analysis of race
as a personal attack, a way of negating general
argument about white privilege. The same for
'"stop trying to make me feel guilty"', because to
feel guilty would be an admission of
responsibility. This was sometimes accompanied
with '"everyone is oppressed somehow"' to deflect
particular responsibility, and to argue that
domination is universal, sometimes not even
particularly connected to race.
Ideological tools included insisting that things
were now equal or that people no longer even saw
colour, or that it was beyond their control that
they could relate to racism. The implication was
that now that things were equal people of colour
were playing the race card, that antiracist work
is unnecessary. Another argument is that racism
was about personal ignorance and discrimination
not institutionalised, and so an institutional
response was not required. Condemning individuals
such as members of KKK could dissociate
themselves. Racism was mean words and
name-calling, and the main effect was low self
esteem [some modern antiracists seem to agree with
this]. There was also a sort of self-fulfilling
prophecy - one white woman crossed the street
innocently but worried because she thought that
African-Americans might think she was a racist.
[There is the problem that you might get treated
with suspicion and hostility no matter how you
behave]
Participants saw themselves as out-of-control and
not responsible for correcting the imbalances of
the traditional curriculum or having to do extra
work when they were already struggling just to
cope. They also thought they could rely on
traditional adages such as just being nice
personally, treating people normally, just like
their families had always argued and practised:
there was no need to learn about culturally
relevant pedagogy acquisition strategies or
anything else as long as you had an open mind.
Others thought that they just could not relate
especially to students who are different and this
meant they could not take jobs in urban schools,
which made them appear as noble in their decision
not to teach in those places.
Performative tools involve behaviours such as
simply silencing talk about race, ignoring it if
it occurred in families, or sidestepping the issue
by saying things like '"I just want to help them"'
(209) which of course involves a deficit theory,
although participants referred to simply bringing
love. There can be denial of racism in the present
situation. This avoids the need for participants
to learn particular skills addressing culture and
racism, and locates the problem in home lives
rather than in institutions. Some participants
referred to '"kissing a minority"', or making
friendships with them, even venturing into sexual
relations with them [!], Which assumes that
personal interactions are a sufficient response.
One respondent did indeed claim that she had
initiated a sexual relation. She was keen to work
with black people, but still held a theory about
biological racial differences, and saw an
interesting multicultural education as a sexual
matter, and other 'inappropriate avenues' (211)
[prude].
Teacher education must improve and deal with the
negative impact that whiteness can have. Perhaps
more black people should be recruited. Until then
white students have to be addressed in order to
transform their understandings. It is unlikely
that one semester of multicultural education will
be enough. Instead a serious attempt is to be made
to interrupt hegemonic understandings through a
variety of forms of critical teacher education,
and these must be integrated across the
curriculum. Opportunities for self reflection and
instruction about historical oppression and
current educational inequity should be provided.
[Teaching] Methods courses for example should help
student teachers design lessons that build upon
emerging understandings [might brass off any other
non-black pupils who will also be denying, evading
etc?]. Issues of equity should be addressed in all
courses. There should be more teacher educators of
colour, although people of colour can equally use
the tools of whiteness, so they should be
committed people of colour. Such people will also
help interact with conventional teachers. The
larger community should be involved, perhaps as
guest speakers mentors or panel participants.
Student placements in urban schools should be
better developed and supervised by skilled
university supervisors
Graduates who enter the teaching profession should
be supported especially in the first year, focused
on resisting the tendency 'to return to hegemonic
understandings' (213). There should be critical
enquiry groups, networks of alumni continual and
repeated challenges.
[I like this, although course it should not just
be confined to hegemonic use of race – they could
do with good critical examinations of class as
well, which brings me to the point that these are
not necessary the students own values, but rather
the ones they feel they should adopt in the
culture of the school. Still the problems of
having to balance minorities though]
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