Maintaining Whiteness in the Midwest: An Analysis of Shame, Race, and Education Policy

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: Truth and Lies: Critical Policy Analyses Around Race and Equity in Education (Table 13)

Abstract

To better understand how emotional attachments to whiteness are produced and protected, this paper analyzes the relationships between race, education policy, and emotion. Using emotion discourse analysis, this research explores how shame is expressed in and in response to recent education policies on teaching about race. Findings demonstrate how shame is put to use to identify taboo topics and police teachers’ pedagogical decision making. Exploring how emotion discourses work via education policy makes visible connections between personal experiences of race and the structures and systems that produce and uphold the existing racist social order.

Author

• Maia G. Sheppard, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author