"Why Can't I Feel Good About Being White?" Race Space Critical Professional Development, Vulnerability, and Omnipresent Whiteness

• In Event: Critical Professional Development and Vulnerability: Centering the Holistic Needs of Educators Committed to Social Justice

Abstract

Objective and Framework

If we continue to discuss racism without exposing the toxicity of Whiteness, then students of color will continue to be harmed in schools, no matter how committed their teachers are to social justice. Picower (2009) argued that White teachers are protective of White supremacy when learning about racism and employ the following tools of Whiteness to do so: emotionality, ideology, and performance. With the theoretical underpinnings of critical race theory in education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), Third Space (Gutiérrez, 2008), and Bakhtin’s ideological becoming (Freedman & Ball, 2004), I conducted a ‘race space’ critical professional development (CPD) (Kohli et al., 2015) for in-service urban teachers who self-reported a commitment to social justice. ‘Race space’ CPD understands Whiteness as a social construct that benefits White people regardless of gender, class, ability, sexuality, etc. (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Sullivan, 2014). Furthermore, the emotionality of Whiteness (Matias, 2016) is unpacked. I argue that as educators of color facilitate such vulnerable spaces, they broker their own vulnerability and must also have outside support. My research questions are:
What does a multimodal interactional and critical discourse analysis of a teacher learning exercise tell us about racial vulnerability?
What does it mean for a Black woman educator to facilitate a vulnerable ‘race space’ CPD for Black and White teachers committed to social justice?

Methods and Data Sources

This research project consisted of an ethnographic case study of the ‘race space’ CPD and an embedded multiple case study of teacher participants. Participants included three in-service urban middle and secondary teachers. I employed a multimodal interactional analysis (Norris, 2004) and critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 2001) of a 20 minute critical exercise. During this exercise, teachers read the following scenario: ‘“White people hate Black people,” said a Black second grader.’ Then, they discussed how they felt, their positioning, and how they would respond. I created this scenario after observing one White teacher participant’s problematic response to a similar statement made by a Black student. My primary data sources include: two videos from altering angles, one audio recording, transcripts, and one analytical memo.

Findings
The body movements and gazes of White teachers during the exercise suggested their discomfort with the scenario. In addition, White teachers distanced themselves away from the “type” of White person that the student may have been describing. White teachers also took the statement personally and became protective of Whiteness. Gigi, a community activist, stated “Why can’t I feel good about being White?” (Race Space 7, 2017). Shay, a Black teacher, and I, as a Black facilitator, attempted to explain the student’s rationale while simultaneously brokering our own vulnerability.

Significance

Even when teachers self-report that they are committed to social justice, they need to be stretched to think deeply about their racial identity and feelings in the context of teaching social justice units to students of color. Moreover, the emotional toll of vulnerability at the expense of educators of color who facilitate such spaces must be considered.

Author

• Tiffany M Nyachae, Buffalo State - SUNY