"Daniel Was Racist": Individualizing Systemic Racism During the Civil Rights Movement

• In Event: Challenges in Teaching Complex Histories

Abstract

Drawing on data from a qualitative case study, this paper analyzes how racism came to be represented as an individual rather than systemic phenomenon in three 11th grade US history classes. Using sociocultural analysis (Wertsch, 1991, 1998, 2002) as a theoretical framework and method for analyzing the enacted curriculum, I demonstrate how segregation laws and racially discriminatory practices were represented as significant in shaping the prejudices and racist beliefs of individuals, but not in revealing a history of structural and institutional racism in the US. I argue that this individualizing of racism enables an ideology of color-blindness (Bonilla-Silva, 2010) and undermines the role of history education in outfitting students to contribute to positive social change.

Author

• John S. Wills, University of California - Riverside