Interrogating Educator White Complicity: Notions of Racism, Racial Justice, Responsibility, and Accountability

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: Journeys Toward Antiracist Praxis and Disrupting White Supremacy (Table 4)

Abstract

Abstract: Grounded in calls to interrogate white complicity in racial oppression, we examined data collected during the summer of 2020 via an online book club for educators for The Racial Healing Handbook. We analyzed 386 posts contributed by 42 unique participants, most of whom were white. We specifically attended to how racism and racial justice were defined/operationalized through the discussions as well as what perspectives of responsibility and accountability were expressed and/or absent. Through these interrogations we teased out the complexities of various complicit actions that sustain white supremacy. Further, we drew connections to the impacts on racially minoritized students, colleagues, families, and communities and suggest the importance of notions of responsibility and accountability to shift white complicity in racism.

Authors

• Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Alexa Yunes-Koch
  Presenting Author

• Peiwen Wang, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Brandon Heinz, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Brooke Jambor, Lincoln Public Schools
  Presenting Author