Accepting Responsibility for White Supremacy Culture in a Methods Course Framed by Social Justice Pedagogy

• In Event: White Supremacist Ideologies and Culture in Teacher Education

Abstract

Taking an antiracist stance in our research and practice necessitates assuming responsibility for the ways in which white supremacy culture has functioned within our teacher education courses. These data are drawn from an English Language Arts methods course framed by social justice pedagogy during the 2016 Presidential election. We demonstrate the presence and function of white supremacy culture within this “well-intentioned” course. The teacher education students’ either/or thinking led them to ignore counternarratives. Consequently, they focused solely on their own fears about loss of privilege and livelihood and thereby neglect the fears Black secondary students expressed for their own lives. We similarly explore how becoming antiracist has required us to rethink taken-for-granted aspects of our own research and teaching.

Authors

• Briana Asmus, Aquinas College

• Heather L. Hurst, Frostburg State University