Rote Against the White Book: Disrupting the Epistemological Ignorance of African American Educational History

• In Event: 14.044 - Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: 14.044-22 - Epistemological Frontiers: Disrupting Curriculum Theory

Abstract

This conceptual piece overlays epistemologies of white ignorance, the “delusion of racial superiority” (Mills, 2007, p. 19), with dominant discourse about African American education. Considering economic, political, educational, and philosophical sources from over one hundred years, I examine the salience of race in education, a fundamental epistemological tool that maintains white supremacy. Utilizing Foucault’s (1980) concept of continual war, I examine why Brown vs. the Board of Education did not redress educational inequities, but rather maintains “continued disequilibrium” (Foucault, 1980, p. 90), differential distribution of power and advantages based on race. I argue white epistemologies, including through the U.S. educational system, erase and shroud inequities (Mills, 2007; Torre & Fine, 2011), perpetuating white supremacist ideologies behind individual beliefs and practices.

Author

• Tara Meister, Pacific University