Whiteness in Blue Bubbles: Testimonies of Antiracist Teachers in Liberal Spaces

• In Event: Commitments Across Contexts: Working Through the Politics of Whiteness With Educators

Abstract

Context and Purpose
This paper draws from a qualitative study centering the contexts, motivations, and negotiations of teachers who are engaging in antiracist work. Though the call for participants was not geographically-bound, the teachers who were interviewed all lived in politically “blue” bubbles, in either metro or suburban areas of Colorado or in the Bay Area of Northern California. None of the participants in the study worked in school districts facing macrolevel political attacks on antiracist teaching. However, all of the participants described resistance to their antiracist work at the microlevel of their school sites, mostly from principals or fellow teachers. This serves to clarify that whiteness is in fact ubiquitous across educational spaces in the U.S. (Leonardo, 2009), manifesting in different ways in different contexts, but still present across geographies. While there are critical analyses needed for the specificity of how white supremacy manifests in various geopolitical contexts, I argue that we must also refuse the allure of false dichotomies that position “red” states against “blue” states, for the risk of doing so allows for “liberal” white teachers to position “conservative” teachers as racist scapegoats, without examining the many ways whiteness thrives in liberal and conservative spaces alike (Mills, 2017).

Methodology and Theoretical Framing
This qualitative study utilized questionnaires and in depth, semi-structured interviews in order to create narratives about the experiences of teachers doing antiracist work. In order to ground the study in the material realities of the endemic nature of white supremacy in schooling (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness studies (CWS) were utilized as the theoretical framework. This was used, especially during the data analysis, to understand how teachers identified the problems of racism and white supremacy in their own schooling and teaching experiences. To understand and critically interrogate how teachers described their antiracist praxis, Bettina Love’s (2019) work on abolitionist teaching was also used in the theoretical framework to understand the relationality and positionality of the participants within their communities, a praxis of “freedom dreaming” and Black joy, and a politics of refusal.

Findings and Scholarly Significance
The findings of this study underscore that while the political pressures in “blue” spaces might be different than in “red,” there remains much to navigate in regards to how whiteness is proliferated through schooling processes everywhere. For example, teachers from these “blue” geopolitical bubbles described fights they had to wage in order to teach Ethnic Studies and/or culturally responsive curricula that would center the needs of their students of color; they described battles against racist dress codes; against racist coworkers; against resistances to professional development that centered antiracism; and against the systemic underfunding of programs meant to serve low-income students of color. This strongly suggests that in teacher education programs, and for those leading professional development for in-service teachers, antiracist praxis must be at the forefront, just as the myth of the “good white liberal” (Sullivan, 2014) must be disrupted.

Author

• Pete M. Newlove, University of Colorado - Denver
  Presenting Author