When and How Does Critical Whiteness Work Become Too White?

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

“Accepting educational responsibility” requires an indepth critical understanding that the US educational system and society have always been systemically interwoven with white supremacy since the Europeans arrived. One accountability response to white supremacy in education has been critical whiteness work, which is scholarship focused on critiquing and confronting white supremacy. While individuals and communities of color have been confronting white supremacy, and thus doing critical whiteness work, since European arrival, now twenty-eight years after the first critical whiteness work by white scholars appeared in education, critical whiteness work is at a fraught intersection. Accordingly, this session provides a panel discussion by scholars of color and white scholars engaged in critical whiteness work with the discussion structured around three critical questions.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Chair

• James Joseph "Jim" Scheurich, Indiana University - Indianapolis

Papers

• Enough With the Knapsack: Toward a Critical Study of Whiteness Not Rooted in White Narcissism - Cheryl E. Matias, University of Kentucky

• Taking Education Responsibility by Disrupting Color Blindness, Liberalism, and Meritocracy in Teacher Education: A Critical Race Theory Perspective - Cleveland Hayes, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• White Co-Opting of Critical Whiteness Studies: Authentic Disruption or Maintenance of Whiteness? - Erin Sanborn, Indiana University - IUPUI

• In Support of Critical White Supremacy Studies - James Joseph "Jim" Scheurich, Indiana University - Indianapolis