Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity

Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity - Brookings

By: Richard V. Reeves and Edward Rodrigue

Dated: January 15, 2015 

What would Martin Luther King Jr. think of America in 2015 if he’d lived to see his eighty-sixth birthday? No doubt, he’d be pleased by the legal and political advances of black Americans, crowned by the election and re-election of President Obama. 

But King would be disturbed by the stubborn race gaps that remain, especially in opportunity, tarnishing the idea of the American Dream. In terms of opportunity, there are still two Americas, divided by race. Five facts show how far we still have to go. 

1.       Half of Black Americans Born Poor Stay Poor 

Upward mobility from the bottom of the income distribution is much less likely for black than white Americans: 51% of the black Americans born into the lowest fifth of the earnings distribution remain there at age 40:

 

 2.       Most Black Middle Class Kids Are Downwardly Mobile

 Downward intergenerational social mobility from the middle to the bottom is much more common among Black Americans. Seven out of ten black Americans born into the middle quintile fall into one of the two quintiles below as adults. In some ways, this is an even more depressing fact than the poor rates of upward mobility. Even black Americans who make it to the middle class are likely to see their kids fall down the ladder:

 

 3.       Black Wealth Barely Exists

 Race gaps in wealth – already wide - widened further during the Great Recession. The median wealth of white households is now 13 times greater than for black households --the largest gap in a quarter century, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. Black median wealth almost halved during the recession, falling from $19,200 in 2007 to $11,000 in 2013:

 

  4.       Most Black Families Headed by Single Parent

 Black children are much more likely to be raised in a single-parent household, and as our own research suggests, family structure can play a large role in a child’s chance of success in all stages of life:

  

5.       Black Students Attend Worse Schools 

The school system remains highly segregated by race and economic status: black students make up 16 percent of the public school population, but the average black student attends a school that’s 50 percent black. Our colleague Jonathan Rothwell shows that the average black student also attends a school at the 37th percentile for test score results whereas the average white student attends a school in the 60th percentile:

 

 There are race gaps in almost every conceivable social and economic dimension, many of which we have discussed on these pages before: incarceration, early learning, parenting,schooling, attitudinal racism, employment - the list goes on. There has been progress, too, of course. But one thing is clear. An inescapable requirement for building an opportunity society is improving the life chances of black Americans.

Breakin’ Down Whiteness in Antiracist Teaching: Introducing Critical Whiteness Pedagogy

Breakin’ Down Whiteness in Antiracist Teaching: Introducing Critical Whiteness Pedagogy
By: Cheryl E. Matias & Janiece Mackey
Published online: 17 December 2015

Copyright: Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 

Abstract: Because of the changing nature of race the role of antiracist teaching is a forever-evolving process. Acknowledging that the majority of the U.S. teaching force, from K-12 to teacher education in institutions of higher education, are white middle-class females, it becomes imperative to unveil pedagogical applications of critical whiteness studies. Unwillingness to do so maintains the recycled nature of the hegemonic whiteness that dominates the field of education. This reflective paper examines the implemented pedagogies of a teacher education diversity course which begin to break down the whiteness ideology embedded in teacher candidates (i.e., pre-service teachers). Although the course’s application of critical whiteness studies was in no way complete, it framed a pedagogical strategy for self-interrogation of whiteness, one that can be implemented in other teacher education courses across the nation. Adding to the existing field of research, this paper provides concrete teaching strategies about how to employ critical whiteness studies in teacher edu- cation, and examines the implications of such pedagogies in relation to the roles of racial justice and antiracist teaching. By including feedback from teacher candidates themselves, this paper demonstrates how effective the pedagogies were in preparing a majority of white female teacher candidates for urban teaching.

Keywords: Critical race theory 􏰀 Whiteness 􏰀 Teacher education 􏰀 Antiracist 􏰀 Pedagogy 􏰀 Teaching

Introduction: What’s This About Whiteness in Antiracist Teaching?

For their part in combating racism, critical race educators continue to find new pedagogical approaches toward antiracism. The use of critical race pedagogies (Lynn 1999), culturally-responsive teaching (Gay 2010), critical multicultural education (Banks and Banks 2009; Nieto and Bode 2008), culturally-relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995), whiteness studies (Picower 2009), and other critical theories on race have been put into practice throughout the teaching pipeline, from K-12 classroom training (Matias and Liou 2014) to teacher preparation (herein ‘‘teacher education’’). Although they provide frameworks on how to engage in racially-just teaching, the inclusion of pedagogies specific to critical whiteness studies have yet to be articulated. Beyond acknowledging white racial privilege (Howard 2006; McIntosh 2001), how might educators engage in racially-just teaching when it comes to critical whiteness studies? What do critical whiteness studies embody and how does understanding the theory, and pedagog- ically implementing it, impact antiracist efforts?

This article reflects on strategies used in a U.S. urban teacher education course specifically designed for preservice teachers, many of whom are middle-class white females who have rarely experienced relationships with people of color, yet hope to teach in U.S. urban schools rich with students of color. These teacher candidates are of great interest because they have chosen to matriculate in an urban-focused teacher education program, one explicitly designed for urban education and social justice. With this in mind, the test as to what pedagogical strategies best support the curricular inclusion of critical whiteness studies began.

To frame the project, we begin with identifying ourselves. Author 1 is a tenure- lined professor and the only female professor of color in the urban teacher education program in question; she is a former classroom teacher in both Los Angeles Unified School District (South Central) and New York City Department of Education (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn). Her commitment to urban education and antiracist approaches stem not only from her professional training, but from her experience as an urban student of color (brown-skinned Pinay) who grew up in Los Angeles’s public schools. Her own children attend the local urban public school in the large urban metropolis where she lives. Author 2 is a graduate student earning her masters in social science and education. Her work with urban youth in high schools across the metropolitan area is highly-recognized in the non-profit sector. She was the graduate teacher assistant for the course in question and also has her children enrolled in the local urban public school. As an African American educator who grew up in public schools, Author 2 is also committed to approaches that affirm the identities of marginalized students.
Because of our dual experiences as both urban school students and female educators of color, we feel it is critical that our white female students first understand why diversity and culturally-relevant approaches have been suppressed in U.S. teacher education. The hegemony of whiteness has so naturalized itself within the field of U.S. education that it goes undetected, despite the major implications it imposes on the educational equity of students of color (Leonardo 2009; Sleeter 2001; Solomona et al. 2005). If racism is the symptom, then enactments of whiteness that uphold white supremacy is the disease; to cure such a disease we cannot simply apply antiracist approaches without thoroughly under- standing the disease itself. In order to completely teach diversity and antiracist theories in our course, we first committed ourselves to teaching the manifestations of whiteness that lie underneath the mere recognition that whites hold racial privilege.

Critical Whiteness Studies Deconstructed

Although not new, critical whiteness studies continue to have profound impact in the field of race studies and education (Allen 2001; Gillborn 2006; Leonardo 2009). From the original works of Dubois (2005) to Baldwin (1963), Black scholars have been interrogating the operations and prevalence of whiteness in American society for some time. Fanon (1967) argues that whiteness leads the white man to believe he is the ‘‘predestined master of the world’’ (p. 128), a process that corrupts the ‘‘soul of the white man’’ (p. 129). Hooks (1994) claims that naturalizing whiteness and Otherizing people of color leads whites to believe that ‘‘there is no representation of whiteness as terror or terrorizing’’ (p. 45), a blatant falsity considering history. If, as Ignatiev and Garvey (1996) argue, ‘‘treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity’’ (p. 10), then loyalty to whiteness pulls one’s soul away from humanity. Therefore, critical whiteness studies uses a transdisciplinary approach to investigate the phenomenon of whiteness, how it is manifested, exerted, defined, recycled, transmitted, and maintained, and how it ultimately impacts the state of race relations. Whiteness need not be only indicative of white folks since people of color can inhabit whiteness ideology—albeit for different reasons; yet, whiteness is indeed most prevalent in whites themselves.

In a field like U.S. education in which almost 90 % of the teaching force is white, middle-class, and female (NCES 2012), it is imperative that we investigate how the overwhelming presence of whiteness (Sleeter 2001) continues to manifest itself. Critical whiteness theory provides a framework to deconstruct how whites accumulate racial privilege beyond the na ̈ıve acknowledgement that Band Aids only come in light-beige (McIntosh 2001). For example, the teacher candidates in our teacher education program claim awareness that being white indicates racial privilege. Yet, when asked what this racial privilege has accumulated for them, they are at a loss of understanding. By drawing from critical whiteness studies, teacher candidates learn this answer, i.e., how whites have accumulated material wealth (Oliver and Shapiro 1997), economic power (Roediger 2005), housing and real estate superiority (Brodkins 2000). Further, they learn how they actively operationalize whiteness via investments and false claims of racial ignorance (Lipstiz 2006; Mills 2007). These become essential building blocks for cultivating antiracist teachers committed to racial justice, educators who acknowledge there will be emotional discomfort in this type of work but nonetheless refuse to give up. Essentially, they must learn the foundations of race first before doing the work of dismantling white supremacy. For how can one commit to antiracist teaching if one does not understand the underlying reason for why it is needed in the first place?

White teachers, and teachers of color who have internalized whiteness ideology for the purpose of surviving a white world, need to understand how race impacts us all. Without examining this issue, these educators cannot successfully bind their racial liberation to that of their urban students of color. Instead, they may problematically assume the ‘‘white savior’’ role, hoping to liberate urban students of color without realizing their own racial culpability in maintaining whiteness as (perhaps unwitting) subscribers to white savior mentality (Matias 2013).

Thus, critical whiteness studies become a framework to deconstruct the material, physical, emotional, and political power of whiteness. Used in conjunction with other critical theories of race, critical whiteness study provides a ying to the yang studies of race. In understanding how race and racism impact people of color—a knowledge set that can be applied to teaching urban diverse student populations— the study of critical whiteness provides teachers, many of whom are white, with a process of learning their own whiteness and how the exertions of whiteness create a violent condition within which people of color must racially survive. Choosing to ignore this knowledge set gives a partial understanding of racial justice, one that cannot fully allow for commitment to racial justice.

Pedagogizing Critical Whiteness Studies

In the 2011, our School of Education conducted a program-wide evaluation of the urban teacher education program. The findings suggested that the program’s teacher candidates were indeed learning racially-just terminology, but at times used them to either emotionally refute antiracism or reinforce whiteness. For example, one respondent claimed she learned a lot about race and racism but claimed that her white identity played no role in teaching urban students of color. Thus, the authors set out to explicitly inject critical whiteness studies and emotionality studies into the curriculum while testing out critically self-reflective pedagogies for the teacher candidates to engage in. In discussing ways to enable students to self-discover their own whiteness, we realized we needed to tread lightly because, as according to the literature, when female professors of color point out whiteness they are harshly contested (Matias 2013; Williams and Evans-Winters 2005). To avoid this white resistance (Rodriguez 2009), the authors decided to use various self-reflective tools to guide their teacher candidates in an honest yet painfully-critical self-reflection of their own emotions, behaviors, thought processes, and reactions to the readings, the professors, and the course’s concepts.

We also needed to consider our state’s teacher preparation standards when developing our self-reflective pedagogies. Per the standards, teacher candidates are expected to utilize technology, formative assessments, and self-reflect on their own teaching and learning. Thus, we included different technological modalities (i.e. Jing videos, digital stories, online threads, and social media), a pre-/post-course survey, session reflections, and other assignments that were deliberately created to gauge the learning process. These are in no way the only ways to address a pedagogy of critical whiteness studies; rather, they serve as beginning tools for which others can apply to their own teaching.

Using a critical self-reflective approach to our own teaching process, this section describes some of the pedagogical strategies we implemented, the rationale with respect to critical whiteness studies, and teacher candidates’ responses to each pedagogical strategy.

Emotionality (Emotional Investment): Feeling and Owning Our Feelings

As Ahmed (2004) suggests, emotions are not merely ‘‘bodily sensations’’; rather, they are enveloped in cultural politics that, when read critically, can be performative expressions, which describe the intricate process between individual and collective bodies. Emotions then can be read as text, carrying meaning via semiotic signs that ‘‘stick’’ onto bodies. Instead of confining the definition of emotion as an individual’s innate performance, emotions can be better read as social performances that interplay with one’s personal and social identity situated within social hierarchies. As such, emotions are a ‘‘site of social control’’ (Boler 1999, p. 3) and ‘‘until we develop pedagogies that invite emotions as part of critical and ethical inquiry, our resistance to Western discourses of emotions may well remain embryonic’’ (p. 23).
Thus, we opted for an emotional-based approach to our project, one that explicitly identifies and defines emotionality, addresses the emotions that will be felt in the course, and included lectures on theorizations of emotions. Like Matias and Zembylas (2014), the goal was to delve more deeply into why white teacher candidates continue to express pity (the socially-acceptable emotional display) to people of color while still exhibiting guilt, anger, and defensiveness when learning antiracist pedagogies (the commonly-expressed emotions in whiteness). If one is not emotionally-prepared to undertake antiracist teaching practices, then it stands to reason s/he will not be emotionally secure enough to engage in long-term racial justice in her/his teaching. Knowing that antiracist teaching is essential to creating socially-just urban teachers, the inclusion of emotional literacy (Winans 2012) was pivotal.

To engage emotions in class we used a transdisciplinary approach drawing mainly from the works of feminists of color. As Hooks (1994) asserts, it was imperative that our syllabus included only authors of color and of other marginalized groups. We strategically selected readings that invoked emotions in order to illustrate to our predominately middle-class, heterosexual, white female teacher candidates what racism, sexism, and heterosexism feels like. Using the works of Williams and Evans-Winters (2005), Haj-Ali (2006), de Jesu ́s and Ma (2004), Matias (2013), and others, our students were able to illuminate the pain of race, sex, and heterosexism in tangible ways:

When we were talking about pain and happiness, I wrote down ‘‘their pain becomes our pain, as well as happiness because it is a bond of humanity’’ and I especially want to be able to have that bond with my students (white female teacher candidate).

This teacher candidate used emotional words to contextualize a lecture on race and whiteness and thus revealed an emotionality we feel is essential to recognizing whiteness.

Course Organization

We organized the course into three emotional phases:
1) Understanding social complexities: getting emotionally-invested
2) Sharing the burden: expectations, strategies, and moving beyond basic
3) Visions of humanity: demonstrations of a loving education


In the first phase, we laid out the social context of urban education in a larger system of race, class, gender, and heterosexism through examining the works of scholars of color and critical whiteness studies. Embedded in this first phase were two community field trips to Five Points (an low-income African American community) and Cherry Creek (a wealthy white community) during which our students deconstructed how their emotions to each space had been cultivated prior to the visit and the applied those emotions to how structural racism segregated each community.

During the ‘‘Sharing the Burden’’ phase of the course, teacher candidates were asked to ‘‘own the emotional burden’’ of race, class, gender, and homophobia. From our previous experiences, students too often invoked the ethos of learning, then personally purged responsibility, a concept aligned with Helms’s (1990) and Howard’s (2006) notions of reintegration, a process whereby whites racially-regress after learning about the systemic realities of race. Tatum (1997) argues that not only do feelings of guilt or denial get projected onto people of color in the form of anger and fear, but this projection ‘‘relieves the white person of all responsibility for social change’’ (p. 101). If teacher candidates could not learn to take ownership of their own emotional responses to learning about race, racism, white supremacy, and whiteness, then we feared this reintegration would likely occur and stand as a roadblock to our goal.

The third emotional phase brings the teacher candidate into the role of teacher. After learning the social context, feeling the burden, and taking responsibility for their privilege, the teacher candidates learn how to apply these concepts to a more humanistic education. Using the political power of emotions (Boler 1999), this phase moved students into a space of self-advocacy and self-agency.

Multimedia Approach: Text, Text, and More Texts

Because race is multidimensional (Leonardo 2013), it must be understood and analyzed through a variety of texts. Instead of subscribing to a strict definition of texts, meaning ‘‘textbooks,’’ texts refer to any medium that transmits language, ideas, and/or conveys meaning. Therefore, the inclusion of media—social media, music, YouTube clips, popular culture, art, and other symbolic representations of society—as texts is critical so as not to ‘‘truncate[s] cultural studies’’ (Kellner 1995, p. 37). Each pedagogical activity and text was given space for reflection on part of the teacher candidate’s learning journey.

For example, the first day of class students deconstructed a Barbie commercial using the social categories of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation (see ‘‘Shopping Barbie,’’ 2007). Employing this text, the students were able to understand that these social categories go beyond the textbook and live in our realities. Another text, the ‘‘marshmallow activity,’’ was used as a metaphor about urban education and the erroneous belief that equity means equal. Teacher candidates were so impressed with this lesson that it was referred to again and again in their reflections, online course discussions, and final digital story project:

The main things I will remember from today’s class [is] the marshmallow activity. I found it to be very helpful in educating me on the concepts of urban schools. It gave me a visual representation of the urban education system. My perception has now been changed after doing the marshmallow activity. This showed me that, like Prof said, ‘‘You can’t just erase the past’’ and start over without considering the ramifications of the past (white male teacher candidate).
Another text used was a Facebook challenge to demonstrate how whiteness and patriarchy still operate under the guise of ‘‘liberal’’ online avatars (see Giroux 1988). Teacher candidates were instructed to post the following statement on their Facebook page: ‘‘I’m taking a class on race, class, and gender, and can finally see why a woman of color may experience the U.S. differently from a white male.’’ However, before they posted the statement, we collectively thought about counterarguments that would address the hegemonic whiteness and patriarchy expressed in colorblind racist rhetorical diminutives (see Bonilla-Silva 2006). The results of the lesson were fascinating: one teacher candidate said Facebook management deleted her post because two or more of her ‘‘friends’’ found the statement ‘‘insulting,’’ and another teacher candidate said a few of his white friends and family members unfriended him. Although such race traitorship (Ignatiev and Garvey 1996) does mean losing white friendships that were held together by fictive white racial kinships (Fordham 1988; Thandeka 1999), the students gained other ‘‘friends’’ throughout the course via our networks, field trips, participation in lecture series about race, and joining campus organizations like the Research Advocacy in Critical Education (R.A.C.E.) and Students for Equity and Social Justice (S.E.J.E.).

Most importantly, these strategies began a process of racial communication. Some of our students spurred critical discussions about whiteness on their Facebook walls and thus began emotionally interrogating their own whiteness: There’s no excuse in saying ‘‘I didn’t own slaves; this isn’t my fault,’’ and ‘‘the past is the past.’’ I have to realize that, even though things that happened aren’t directly my fault, I have to be one to make a change and to start moving forward (white female teacher candidate).

I have never heard of this term (‘‘semantic moves’’) before until I read it in Bonilla-Silva’s article. It is an expression used by white people to express their views on racism in a coded way. Specifically, my grandparents will say, ‘‘Now I’m not prejudiced but...,’’ before they say something offensive. I now know the term for all the coded talk people use to make themselves feel better when stating something racist (white male teacher candidate).

Another text utilized was the ‘‘Heterosexual Survey,’’ a simulated quiz designed to unveil the hegemony in heterosexism and heteronormativity. It had a profound impact on how students saw dominance as natural:

The survey was really uncomfortable for me to take, and when I realized that this was a survey that is typically given to gays and lesbians, I was shocked [at] how awkward these questions seemed. While it gave me a little insight into how queer people may be feeling, I still have a lot to learn, as my heterosexual privileges have been invisible to me (white female teacher candidate).

Although this text was not specific to race, we also incorporated the ‘‘Chorizo Test’’ (Cabrera and Cabrera 2008), which explicitly reveals the racial and cultural biases embedded in testing materials. Some of the teacher candidates’ responses to this text was revealing.

This course has continued to show me where those stereotypes are born and where they live. I am shown that white privilege is not only in the context of society but also in the sub-context of society. I think the Chorizo Test was a helper in that realization. I have always been taught that the way I do things is the ‘‘correct’’ way and not just my way (white female teacher candidate).

Since the class was designed to demonstrate how all these systemic isms operate in the same dehumanizing manner, and to explicate systemic isms by emotional phases rather than separating them, the class was able to see (in a Freirian sense) the ‘‘humanity’’ in all these systemic oppressions. These oppressions work in similar ways that hurt humanity, the same wayadhering to whiteness ideology keeps us away from humanity (see Ignatiev and Garvey 1996).

Pre/Post Course Surveys: Employing Formative Assessment Practice for Teacher Candidates

In order to gauge the learning journey of the teacher candidates, we implemented pre- and post-course surveys that used racially coded terminologies and ideologies to ferret out how our students were responding to race. That is, we used critical whiteness studies to predetermine often-employed rhetoric of whiteness, such as colorblind discourse, whiteness as natural and normal, difference being about non- whites and not of whites themselves, affirmative action assumptions, etc. The teacher candidates were issued a welcoming email and asked to complete the survey before our first class session. At the end of the course they were then asked to use the ‘‘track changes’’ function of MSWord to modify, edit, add, or delete their answers so that we could decipher the changes to their answers. To ensure participation, this lesson was a part of their ‘‘Active Classroom Participation’’ grade.

Since whiteness ideology is not indicative of white people and thus can be internalized in the mindsets of people of color for the purpose of survival in a white supremacist society, there were some teacher candidates who, at the beginning of the course, exuded whiteness ideology. A specific example is a Latina student who early on demonstrated an internalized whiteness—throughout the semester we witnessed the breakdown of this internalized whiteness, a humanizing process that helped her love herself as a person of color (see Fanon 1967). When asked ‘‘Have you ever had a teacher/professor of color? Describe. Did she/he have an impact on you? Why or why not?’’ she responded:

Pre-survey: Only once have I had a teacher of color, but he didn’t have any profound impact on me.
Post-survey: But, this semester I had two professors of color who had an impact on me. They delivered a curriculum that changed my life. Prior to this class, I had a very individualistic outlook on life. Seeing how they worked in tandem changed my ‘‘I think, therefore I am’’ mentality to Brayboy’s ‘‘We are, therefore I am’’ mentality. This is extremely important, because now I will have this kind of belief with my students.

Exemplified in this change of answer is the teacher candidate’s new outlook on race. Instead of adhering to colorblind ideology, a manifestation of whiteness, she claims that the acknowledgement of race allows her to be more humanistic in her life and, therefore, with her future students of color.

One white female teacher candidate was transparent in acknowledging her personal experiences with colorblind racism. She came to the class not seeing or wanting to understand race, yet her post-survey responses reflect not only her acknowledgement of race, but a depth of understanding as to why it should be acknowledged:

Pre-survey: The first time I had a teacher of color was when I was a freshman in college. She was a literature professor and what I remember most about her was that she was always talking about the struggles of black people. I felt that she wanted to push her ethnicity on us, even the literature books we read were either written about a black person, or written by a black person. It was a bit overwhelming (white female teacher candidate).
Post-survey: As my teachers, you both really opened up my eyes to how I have been blinded by race and especially my white privileges. I have also learned how histories have been marginalized and I plan to move forward and bring these marginalized stories into my own classroom so students may hear about them (white female teacher candidate).

The experience of this white female teacher candidate confirms Hooks’s (2003) basic affirmation of the need for educators of color; further, the candidate’s responses reveal that critical whiteness studies is a conduit to humanization for counternarratives.

Sharing the Burden Project: Carrying the Weight of Race

Matias (2014) states, ‘‘because racism hurts, it is imperative that I reintroduce how to emotionally invest in antiracist work’’ (p. 17). The purpose of our ‘‘Sharing the Burden’’ assignment is to cultivate humanization within our future educators and for the students of color they will teach. Many of our students come in with underlying assumptions about people of color, which they transfer onto their future urban students. They believe that this course will supply them with some fictive cultural checklist they can use to become culturally-responsive teachers. In order to mitigate this, the ‘‘Sharing the Burden’’ project requires students to deepen their knowledge of issues they have not been exposed to due to the dominant narrative. For example, Author 1 recognized she had to teach in an ‘‘ethnic studies and women’s studies manner,’’ i.e., using marginalized histories and stories of people of color and women such as the Tuskegee syphilis vaccination, or the police beating of activist Dolores Huerta. Many white teacher candidates in years past did not recognize events such as these. Instead of simply lecturing on these topics and figures, Author 1 challenged them to ‘‘look it up yourselves’’ because this is the same process exacted on people of color, women, and any other marginalized person experiences Euro- and male- centric curricula.

Our course syllabus stated that research topics should be chosen based on things student educators did not yet know because dominant culture marginalized this perspective, history, voice, story, etc. This helped teacher candidates elevate marginalized counterstories, while reflecting on the systemic consequences of racism. The combination of reflecting upon counterstories and systems of oppression, and deepening their knowledge of a marginalized community helped them understand critical whiteness and colorblind racism. Teacher candidates were able to self-actualize an example of literacy building through a critical theoretical lens. Garcia (2013) states, ‘‘In their 1987 text, Freire and Macedo describe literacy as a process of ‘reading the world and then reading the word’’’ (p. 34). As such, embedding a Sharing the Burden project forced the mostly privileged teacher candidates to read the world behind the words that were written under the pretext of race, class, gender, and heterosexism. Literacy building through a critical theoretical lens was cultivated because teacher candidates acknowledged literature that amplified the narratives of marginalized groups and rationalized why these stories were silenced. Some of the topics they presented included: Japanese internment camps, the Tuskegee experiments, transgender communities, Black cowboys, and Juneteenth. Some terms used to reflect their knowledge and counter-narratives were: testimonio, double burden, white privilege, racial microaggression, propaganda, segregation, sexism, etc. Some of the scholars utilized to share the burden of knowledge were: Audre Lorde, Isabel Allende, Cheryl Matias etc.

The Share the Burden assignment allowed them to take that first step that educators before them may not have taken. Utilizing marginalized perspectives in their future classrooms will allow for the daily racialized experiences of their students to be humanized and made relevant, rather than dehumanized and deemed irrelevant. Teacher candidates appreciated the opportunity to share in the burden of raced curriculum in their session reflections (see below).
...now I really have a beginning understanding on how curriculum can be Euro-centric and how I can add to it subversively to make sure that it’s not, to the best of my ability, in the future as a teacher (white female teachers candidate).

Session Reflections: A Critical Teacher’s Must-Do

In order to continually have the teacher candidates self-reflect on their emotional journey of understanding race—inclusive of whiteness—we implemented concrete questions, which focused on their cognitive and emotional development. The teacher candidates underwent this mental conditioning to create the ‘‘conscienti- zation’’ (Freire 1970) necessary to validate the existence and the racialized experiences of their future students of color. Matias (2013) writes: ‘‘Only when society rightfully redistributes the burden of race off People of Color’s shoulders and to those who benefit from our subjugation, can pain be alleviated’’ (p. 5). The teacher candidates were informed of this self examination process through this syllabus statement:

Your reflection should make specific reference to the activities your professor pedagogically implemented in class AND the course readings for that week. This work intends to encourage your personal reflective practice thus developing your inquiry stance, a major component of the program. It also helps you identify both content learning and specific pedagogy that helped you learn so that you can replicate it when you teach.

This is a critical part to the teaching and learning of the teacher candidates because they will 1 day require their future students to demonstrate the knowledge they acquired, as well as allow their students to reflect personally and authentically on how their pedagogy affected their learning. In light of this, it was necessary to have the teacher candidates reflect upon what style of pedagogy helped them emotionally invest in their learning. Allowing the teacher candidates to critically engage in a self-examination contextualized with pedagogical strategies, models how we humanize counternarratives while deconstructing whiteness ideologies. Matias (2013) writes: ‘‘Managing dialogues of race inside the K–12 classroom becomes an arduous task, despite the overwhelming possibilities it has for creating humanizing projects of race’’ (p. 189).

Our students also witnessed the difference between critical pedagogy versus pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire 1970). Because of the emotional nature of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other isms, we utilized race metacognition (Matias 2013) as a technique to build race literacy through pedagogically teaching about whiteness. The effectiveness of the session reflections as a conduit toward the development of critical pedagogues can be seen:

I want to remember the posters and the silent comments on each reading. I liked this type of activity because it allowed me to reflect on the readings in my own mind... (white female teacher candidate).


When we were asked to think of a specific moment in our past [when] we made a decision to be ‘‘anti-racist’’ was pretty thought provoking. It was interesting because I can think of moments where I have displayed my principles of equality throughout my life but it was a different thing to think of a specific moment where the decision was conscious (white female teacher candidate).

A common thread throughout each quote was the realization that racialized experiences should be validated. Netcoh (2013) noted, ‘‘Though race is fluid and unfixed, it produces real effects in the social world’’ (p. 12). The session reflections also provided us as teachers of color to enrich and reflect upon our pedagogy. Building trust with the teacher candidates plays an integral role in the development of their critical consciousness. The positivist realist view of ‘‘what you see is what you get’’ (Neuman 2011) must be broken down within the minds of the teacher candidates to allow their hearts and minds to be open to critical pedagogy and critical whiteness studies. A student reiterated this:

I want to remember Memoirs of Race Discourse in Teacher Education by Dawn G. Williams and Venus Evans-Williams because it opened my eyes to what it would be like for our professors. I never actually thought about what kinds of backlash they might receive being a teacher of a class like the one we are taking now because, although a lot of the information was hard for me to accept at first, I never felt any ill feelings towards them because I understood that the information being taught to me was valid and true and not some lesson being taught by scorned POC [person of color] who wanted to get back at me for being white (white female teacher candidate).

In order for teacher candidates, particularly white teacher candidates, to be effective critical pedagogues, they must able to see and believe that a person of color’s racialized experiences are a wealth of capital rather than a narrative of bitterness. As teachers of color we demonstrate that we are not a monolithic group and have contingency in identity and emotion. This is how critical whiteness studies liberates and empowers not only us as educators of color, but teacher candidates from their privileged backgrounds.

Jing Videos: Reflecting in the Technological Age

‘‘Jing videos’’ are ‘‘[online] digital tools [that] allow for new forms of participation and engagement’’ (Garcia 2013, p. 32). Our teacher candidates utilized different multimedia technologies to create their individual videos as a means to engage with each other toward action. As the syllabus stated:

The video should respond to the following prompt: reflect, synthesize (NOT SUMMARIZE), and apply the assigned readings by 1) applying the key concepts to your lives by reanalyzing an event from your past or from society, and 2) attempting to answer the course’s essential questions:
1. In what ways is my identity socially-constructed and how is it enacted? 
2. How do I unveil and disentangle the complexity of my identity in order to emotionally self-invest in becoming a critical and self-reflexive teacher in urban and diverse contexts?
3. How do I utilize the knowledge gained from this course to enact change in myself and others and pursue knowledge further?

Through Jing videos, teacher candidates shared their emotional investment in their learning and a future pedagogy with their peers. We ensured them that we were not concerned with the style in which the information was presented, but rather the ‘‘why and how’’ the information was presented. Using Leonardo and Porter’s (2010) Fanonian analysis of race dialogue, Matias (2013) acknowledged the importance of allowing for space in which educators can freely share their reflections and thought processes. ‘‘Teachers must employ a humanizing violence that ‘shifts the standards of humanity by providing space for the free expression of people’s thoughts and emotions that are not regulated by the discourse of safety’’’ (p. 188). Examples of this were seen in the discussion thread created in which students could react to each other’s videos:

I relate to you in that I will also be a white teacher, teaching a diverse class. I also looked at my survey and realized that the way I said things was from a white diss-course stand; without even realizing it...I don’t think I would have paid as close attention as I do now because I wasn’t knowledgeable about terms and language to create a dialogue that I now am starting to build (white female teacher candidate).
...I am glad you understand that this class is not against you but instead about the system...I think that we all need to reevaluate the system and try to break it when we become teachers (Latina teacher candidate).

The idea of discussing race-repercussions for whites versus people of color was very powerful. We so desperately want to remain comfortable, but the tangible repercussions people of color face are much stronger deterrents and yet as white people we feel being uncomfortable is enough of an excuse to avoid the discussion (white female teacher candidate).

These students showed the importance of using technology in a communal manner. Ball (2013) upholds the effectiveness of learning through student response as a way to engage them in a non-traditional method: ‘‘Judging by student responses to the examples, these debates are an exciting break from the norm’’ (p. 57). Peer-to-peer learning decreases the feelings of shame and guilt, and allows for authenticity and transparency in their learning. Garcia (2013) speaks to the importance of this combination of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards: ‘‘[Pedagogically teaching critical whiteness] envelops students in opportunities to engage with extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. It allows youth to speak back to the content and see work in dialogue’’ (p. 33). For example, some of the intrinsic rewards can be seen in the responses made by students above. From wanting to develop better language to combatting discomfort these are examples of how our teacher candidates found the teaching and learning of whiteness intrinsically valuable. Some examples of extrinsic rewards are expressed when the teacher candidates claim they want to dismantle the system and acknowledging the ‘‘repercussions people of color face.’’ Jing videos then became a medium for dialogue that give teacher candidates an opportunity to engage in the internal external rewards of learning about whiteness. This taps into the potential to create and cultivate a future teacher workforce that will not only teach from a critical theoretical lens, but will approach the profession with a willingness to interrogate internalized whiteness, sexism, racial battle fatigue, etc. 

Digital Stories: Counter-Storytelling Our Life’s Learning

By implementing new forms of media and pedagogy, critical thinking increases as promulgated by Ball (2013): ‘‘Students can gain interest or find involvement in critical, even radical, thinking’’ (p. 51). We asked students to address three main areas with their digital stories—social complexities, Sharing the Burden, and ‘‘Love for Humanity’’—as a final project, allowing for students to demonstrate the process of learning they experienced throughout the semester and their lives. On the last day of class students shared these digital stories and discussed what they heard from their peers in a day of sharing, participatory learning, and celebration.

As educators of color, witnessing the growth of our students is a healing of our own psyches, ‘‘because the hardening of our souls and hearts protects us from the trauma incurred by the endless barrage of racial and gender microaggressions’’ (Matias 2013, p. 4). As educators of color who embody a pedagogy of ‘‘othermothering’’ (Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2002), we watched our students’ digital stories through tears of empathy and pride, a process that finally healed the callousness within us. In that moment we saw all of our students, regardless of the micro-aggressions we experienced as educators of color, as co-authors in our learning environment. Our emotional investment was rewarded through responses such as:

Thank you, for the incredible class! I learned more than I ever could have hoped (white female teacher candidate).
You bring an air of confidence, joy, and determination that I find truly refreshing—and hope to one day emulate (white male teacher candidate)

Lastly, the digital stories provided a space for participatory engagement and amplification of how they’ve come to understand social complexities, sharing the burden, and love for humanity. A Latina student marked the end of her digital story as depicted in below:

This type of participatory culture (Garcia 2013) is demonstrated when ‘‘young people may be able to challenge existing power structures and dominant narratives via social tools’’ (p. 32).

However, this is most effective only when ‘‘the focus of literacy from individual expression [is] to community involvement’’ (p. 32). The above-mentioned Latina teacher candidate showed her peers that she as an individual has a responsibility to be a future educator, and that her peers do too.

Implications for Teacher Preparation and Beyond: A Small Hope Realized

Our pedagogical applications expanded the learning of critical whiteness studies by our predominantly-white middle-class teacher candidates and represent an essential process in breaking down the overwhelming presence of whiteness in teacher education (Sleeter 2001). By generating concrete pedagogical strategies specific to whiteness, antiracist teaching has a better chance for prolonged investment. Although these pedagogical applications are in no way complete, they do provide a beginning framework on how to begin breaking down hegemonic whiteness in education. Without such an honest roadmap, teaching and teacher education are left with archaic strategies in which whites do not first confront their own whiteness.

Another implication this has for teacher education is to emotionally prepare teachers for the arduous task of antiracism and racial justice. People of color have been surviving the permanence of race (see Bell 1992) and thus have developed a sense of healthy callousness in order to live in a racist society (Lorde 2001). In doing so, teachers learn to develop emotional ovaries to engage in prolonged racial justice. Teachers who experience an emotional-based curriculum and pedagogy focused on deconstructing their own emotionality move beyond discomfort, guilt, sadness, defensiveness, and anger. Without doing so, they can easily revert to whiteness and thus reinforce the racist educational system. In the end, a teacher must develop emotional fortitude in antiracist teaching, for how can one commit to racial justice if she or he cannot withstand the emotional burden of being antiracist her or himself?

Finally, there is a hope whenever a new path is traveled. This is just a beginning path down pedagogical applications of critical whiteness studies that aids in how teacher candidates deconstruct their own whiteness through assignments that force them to self-reflect on their own racial privilege. We hope that for the future of racial justice and antiracist teaching others apply new pedagogical strategies to critical whiteness studies. If, as Freire (2004) suggests, ‘‘without hope there is little we can do’’ (p. 9), then we hope that in offering these pedagogical approaches, a more humane world will be freed from the shackles of racial domination.

Conclusion: A Small Hope Realized

Often asked in predominantly white teacher education is how can whites do this? How can they engage in racial justice by deconstructing their own whiteness? As two teacher educators of color, both of whom grew up in urban public education predominant with white teachers, the answer is simple. Burden yourself and not your students, meaning, the hopes of dismantling white supremacy in education should not rely solely on the shoulders of students of comments. Instead teachers, many of whom are white, should begin to shoulder some of the burden of race. In shouldering some of the racial responsibility teachers have a greater likelihood to stop emotionally projecting their feelings of guilt or discomfort onto students of color. As Helms (1990) puts it, those who want to engage in racial identity work ‘‘will first have to take the journey herself’’ (p. 219). But this cannot happen until teachers undergo the emotional preparation needed to engage in a prolonged investment to antiracism. By incorporating these pedagogical strategies, our teacher candidates underwent that emotional preparation because they learned how to take racial responsibility of whiteness. Instead of viewing themselves as white saviors, they translated their identity to become racial justice advocates. In the end, beyond white saviority there lies hope for humanity. This humanity is one that recognizes racial harmony. However, until we, as teachers, are willing to break down whiteness, the hope of racial justice and anti-racism become a faint balloon rising beyond the horizon and drifting away from reality.

Acknowledgments To my co-author, Dr. Cheryl Matias, mentora, a dynamic educator who taught me how to reach and teach to the soul and minds of youth and how to navigate ‘‘Breakin’ Down Whiteness.’’ 

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