Toward an Ethic of Hospitality: Critical Examinations of Whiteness in Predominantly White Catholic Schools

• In Event: Complicated Conversations in Catholic Education

Abstract

Discussions of race and segregation in education have long concentrated on achieving equity in traditional public schooling. Many scholars (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Gay, 2000; Paris, 2012) have focused on researching and articulating teaching practices--e.g. culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies--that consider the assets and needs of students who have been marginalized by public schooling. More recently, scholars in Critical Whiteness Studies have contended that for too long the responsibility for eliminating racism has fallen on the shoulders of those who experience the direct, harmful effects of racist practices and policies. In particular, DiAngleo (2018) argued that white people rarely see themselves as raced beneficiaries of a racialized society where whiteness is the invisible norm, making it difficult for them to engage in conversations about systemic racism. While racial inequality has been interrogated in public education, traditional Catholic educational discourse largely focuses on the benefits that Catholic schools have brought to marginalized immigrant and minority communities (e.g. Brinig & Garnett, 2010; Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993). This paper contributes to the small body of scholarship (e.g. Burke & Gilbert, 2016) that explores whiteness in Catholic education.
In this paper, I describe findings from an authoethnographic study of my experiences both as a white elementary school student, and more recently, a white teacher, in two, almost entirely white Catholic elementary schools. To frame my authoethnography, I draw on Derrida’s ethic of hospitality. According to Derrida & Caputo (1997), hospitality “means to invite and welcome the ‘stranger’ (l’etranger), both on the personal level--how do I welcome the other into my home?-- and on the level of the state--raising socio-political questions about refugees, immigrants,...minority ethnic groups etc.” (p. 110). I ask the following questions: To what extent do some white Catholic schools interrogate their own positions as those who are able to offer hospitality, not only to their students, but to the greater community? How do some white Catholic schools construct the subject of the stranger? To what extent do some white Catholic schools create space for the stranger, the other? My data sources for analysis include personal memories and self-reflective data relating to how systemic racism and white racial identity are discussed (or not) in instruction across content areas, school community activities, and conversations with colleagues.
My findings from this autoethnographic study suggest that Catholic schooling spaces are not exempt from the ways in which a dual schooling system has always operated in America (i.e., rich/poor; white/black). By focusing on teaching students to be kind and loving to those in their immediate, familiar spaces and refraining from interrogating the existence of whiteness, some Catholic school practices “leave no room for the other, for the radical otherness of the other, for the radical singularity of the other” (Derrida & Caputo, 1997, p. 14). When thinking about teaching practices in some, mostly white Catholic schooling spaces, we might begin working more towards an ethic of hospitality, which aligns with the teachings of Jesus, who welcomed the stranger (Caputo, 2007).

Author

• Kaitlin Wegrzyn, Immaculate Conception St. Joseph School