A Divergence of Interests: Critical Race Theory and White Privilege Pedagogy

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: Whiteness and White Supremacy in Education: Pedagogy and Power in K–12 and Higher Education

Abstract

The authors critique the use of White privilege as a pedagogical tool for fostering antiracist dispositions in pre-service teachers. While noting extant critiques of White privilege pedagogy (WPP), they offer a more foundational, historical, and structural appraisal of the shortcomings of WPP. The critique is rooted in critical race theory and in the fraught history of racial reform in the United States. Drawing from critical race scholarship, the authors argue that contemporary uses of WPP fail in teacher education for many of the same reasons that racial reforms of the civil rights era failed to dismantle the racial hierarchy in the United States.

Authors

• Ryan M. Crowley, University of Kentucky

• William L. Smith, The University of Arizona