Researching My Whiteness: Using Racial Literacy to Examine White Discourses in an ESL (English as a Second Language) Classroom

• In Event: Necessary Exhaustion: Whiteness, Racism, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in Schools

Abstract

Using the frameworks of racial literacy and whiteness studies, this paper presents an examination of how being a white female educator impacted my Discourses and interactions with ESL students. Autoethnography and discourse analysis served as primary methodologies for this study. Three findings emerged from the analysis: students reading me as a symbol of whiteness, reading students’ responses through white discourses, and using myself as a stand-in to refute discourses of white hegemony. This study has broader implications for encouraging pre-service white teachers to continually interrogate the influence of their whiteness on their classroom interactions with racially and linguistically minoritized students.

Author

• Nicole R. Misra, University of Missouri - St. Louis