A Fantasy of Dirt: Antiracism and White Administrators

• In Event: 63.049 - Whiteness at the Table: Whiteness and White Racial Identities in Education

Abstract

Objectives or purposes

Our objective is to enhance our understandings of who white administrators are and how to help them learn what they need to learn, so they can consistently be forces against white supremacy and for racial justice within schools.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

Our chapter is grounded in Frankenberg’s (1993) account of the “evolving history of discourses on race difference” (p. 13) in the U.S., as well as the Reverend Thandeka’s (2001) and sociologist Katerina Deliovsky’s (2010) analyses of how the desires of white women for people of color are policed and punished, are of particular importance. Given the importance of smell in Meghan’s story, we also consider what psychiatrist and social critic Joel Kovel (1970) described as a fantasy about dirt—a fantasy that he thought was a significant part of white people’s racial thought and feeling.


Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry and Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

Drawn from a larger study with white administrators, this chapter focuses on a story that Meghan, a white high school principal, told about a racial experience she had when she was a high school student. Meghan said that she first realized that black and white people were different when she had given her friend, Bob, who was black, a ride in her car and thought that he smelled differently than a white person would. We develop two different interpretations or readings of Meghan’s story, and argue that what seems a fairly straightforward example of racist thinking and feeling is actually both such an example and something more complicated and telling.

Scholarly Significance

Meghan’s story and our readings of it suggest at least two areas of crucial concern that need to be taken up in work on race with white future and practicing administrators and educators. Meghan was a highly-educated person and perceived as a successful associate principal by colleagues and the larger white community expressed a belief in the biological basis of race difference. It is critical to continue to debunk this myth of race.

Second, more attention must be paid to all the ways that these white women have already been trained, through fear of being ostracized or punished by their white community, to violate or resist a key aspect of culturally relevant practices: The need to build bonds of respect and affection with, the need to get close to, the Othered children and families and communities with whom they work (Delpit, 2006).

References
Deliovsky, K. (2010). White femininity: Race, gender & power. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.

Delpit, L. (2006). Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: The New Press.

Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

Kovel, J. (1970). White racism: A psychohistory. New York: Pantheon.

Thandeka. (2001). Learning to be white: Money, race, and God in America. New York: Continuum.

Authors

• Bryan Davis, Columbus WI Public Schools

• Timothy J. Lensmire, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities