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Article Excerpt
I think it's almost easier to teach diversity issues [in a racially
diverse school]. You just have to find different ways to work it in a predominantly White school ... like some things just get glossed over. ... There are comments people make, and you can choose to ignore them. Phoebe
Phoebe, (1) a White (2) beginning teacher, argued from her experience observing and teaching at two schools with differing racial demographics that it was easier for a White teacher to talk about "diversity issues" in a racially diverse school than in a predominantly White school. Although she said that discussing these issues can be difficult for White teachers in a racially diverse school "because you might feel like you're offending certain people," she asserted that it was harder to "work [multicultural issues] in or just even address when [they] come up" in a predominantly White school.
In many ways, Phoebe's analysis seems counterintuitive--why would it be easier for a White teacher to talk about issues of race in a predominantly African American class than it is in a classroom where she and all her students are White? Given contemporary tensions about race, one might think that a White teacher would be more wary of discussing race in a racially diverse setting. Yet White teachers in White-dominated educational settings are indeed likely to "gloss over" issues of race, racism, and White supremacy. This article will explore ways of talking, interacting, and thinking that may contribute to this "glossing over" by White teachers and students. This research draws from critical studies of Whiteness, which shows that Whiteness privileges Whites and oppresses people of color in our classrooms as in our society, and it also explores how the interactional styles of White people in White-dominated educational settings impede movement toward progressive, anti-racist education.
STUDY OVERVIEW
This research study reports on data collected in White-dominated (3) educational settings--an eighth-grade classroom and university student-teaching seminar--for more than a year. Shelby Malone was the student teacher in the eighth-grade classroom, and she described herself as a liberal, White, middle-class teacher who was frustrated in her attempts to have her students critically engage with issues of race, racism, and White supremacy. Students in the eighth-grade classroom all identified themselves as White and lived in a small, affluent village near our midwestern state university town. Students in the university seminar, including Ms. Malone, all identified as White and ranged in their familiarity with discussions of racism and White supremacy, but all had self-selected into a student-teaching seminar that focused on multicultural issues and expressed a commitment to and interest in exploring the impact of race and racism on their teaching. They had spent a semester together in an English methods class prior to participation in the study. I, the study author, am a White woman and was the co-leader of this seminar; I included myself in the study in keeping with feminist and critical concerns about the relationship between the "observer" and the "observed" (cf. Behar, 1993; Lather & Smithies, 1997) and to address concerns of such scholars as Hurtado and Stewart (1997), who argued, "It is critical for scholars exploring the meaning of Whiteness to articulate the implications of their own relation to Whiteness" (p. 308).
This study explains how the worldview or cultural model of Whiteness was activated and brought to life in White-dominated educational contexts through a collection of ways of speaking, interacting, and thinking that I call "White educational discourse." "White educational discourse" is a constellation of ways of speaking, interacting, and thinking in which White teachers gloss over issues of race, racism, and White supremacy in ways that reinforce the status quo, even when they have a stated desire to do the opposite. Specifically, this study explored the following research questions:
1. How does Whiteness impact White-dominated educational settings?
2. What "ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, [and] speaking" (Gee, 1996, p. viii) do White teachers and students employ in White-dominated educational settings with respect to issues of race, racism, and White supremacy?
Multicultural Education
Like Banks and Banks (2001), I believe that "all students--regardless of their gender and social class and their ethnic, racial, or cultural characteristics--should have an equal opportunity to learn in school" (p. 3). Multicultural education is an attempt to make school a place where all students can benefit from "education as the practice of freedom" (hooks, 1997). But multicultural education must go beyond the "contributions approach," which focuses on inserting discrete ethnic "heroes, holidays, and discrete cultural elements" (Banks & Banks, 2001, p. 229) into the mainstream core curriculum because in this approach, students see ethnic issues and events as a sideline to "the main story."
Instead, I seek to move toward a "transformative" or "social action" approach to multicultural education. In transformative multicultural education [TME], the mainstream-centric perspective becomes only one of several presented. Various perspectives, frames, and content infuse students' understandings of the "nature, development, and complexity of U.S. society" (Banks & Banks, 2001, p. 234). Social-action multicultural education [SAME] builds on this foundation and goes further to equip and ignite students for social action and change.
CRITICAL STUDIES OF WHITENESS
The literature from critical studies of Whiteness suggests that Whiteness may be a barrier that prevents teachers from engaging in TME or SAME. Critical studies of Whiteness recognize, analyze, and critique the power and privileges associated with Whiteness. From this literature, I have culled three characteristics of Whiteness generally agreed on by scholars: that Whiteness is powerful yet power-evasive, that Whiteness uses a wide variety of techniques to maintain its power, and that Whiteness is not monolithic.
Characteristic 1: Whiteness Is Powerful Yet Power-Evasive
Scholars agree that Whiteness possesses and maintains real power, power that Whites may (often unconsciously) ignore, resist, or deny. Indeed, David Roediger's (2002) review of this literature posits that "the central overarching theme ... is the argument that White identity is decisively shaped by the exercise of power" (p. 23) and argues that Whiteness remains a system of advantages in political, social, legal, and cultural arenas (cf. Harris, 1993; hooks, 1997; Morrison, 1992; Roediger, 1999, 2002).
Interestingly, the primary way that Whites continue this power is by consciously or unconsciously ignoring or denying its existence (cf. Banning, 1999; Fine et al., 1997; Frankenberg, 1993). Winant (2001) nuanced this powerful/ power-evasive dichotomy and argued that many Whites do consciously possess at least some sense of their own power and privilege because of "the partial but real successes" (p. 41) of the Civil Rights Movement. Chubbuck (2004) supported Winant's notion of a dualistic White identity by describing how White teachers may demonstrate both disruptions and enactments of Whiteness in their classroom practices.
Characteristic 2: Whiteness Employs Numerous Techniques to Maintain Its Power
A second major characteristic of Whiteness is that its power comes from (and begets) a diverse range of techniques that keep it at the center. Scholars document how maintaining certain perspectives, such as the myth that the United States is a meritocracy (Frankenberg, 1993; Powell, 1997) and "color-blindness" (Frankenberg, 2001; Morrison, 1992; Paley, 1979), insulate Whites. Others (Duesterberg, 1998; McIntyre, 1997; Pixley & VanDerPloeg, 2000; Sleeter, 1995) have traced how certain interactional and pedagogical strategies such as encouraging student voice, "creating a culture of niceness" (McIntyre, 1997, p. 46), avoiding critique (Gomez, Allen, & Clinton, 2004) and failing to interrogate one's own implication in racial domination also insulate Whites from implication in racial domination.
Characteristic 3: Whiteness is Not Monolithic
The literature on Whiteness also warns against oversimplifying or stereotyping Whiteness. Perry's (2002) work with White youth in two high schools with racially different demographics suggests that the proximity of Whites to people of color greatly impacts how they form White identity, conceive of White culture, and possess or exercise power. In a predominantly White school, White students experienced themselves as normal, color-blind, and race-neutral, whereas in a multiracial school, White students were forced to struggle to more complexly define and understand racial identity and culture. Other scholars have explored how class, sexual orientation, and context (cf. Berube, 2001; Frankenberg, 1993; Hartigan, 2001) also nuance how Whiteness is embodied.
These scholars have described the reasons for and results of the privileging/oppression associated with Whiteness, but there is little evidence to demonstrate how discourses of Whiteness get enacted. This research seeks to fill that gap by showing how the interactional styles of White people in White-dominated educational settings may impede movement towards anti-racist orientations.
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Gee (1999) has provided the following succinct, socially responsible rationale for a focus on discourse:
The fact that people have differential access to different identities and activities, connected to different sorts of status and social goods, is a root source of inequality in society. Intervening in such matters can be a contribution to social justice. Since different identities and activities are enacted in and through language, the study of language is integrally connected to...
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