Color-Evasive Racism in Teacher Preparation: Disrupting the Discourse

• In Event: Pursuing Racial Justice Through Intersectional Inclusive Education

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to first illuminate the color-evasive discourse employed by pre-service (special) educators (henceforth, “students”) in their educational and university exchanges, and second, to understand student learning and disruption of color-evasive discourse. Defined as the reproduction of white supremacy by deliberately ignoring the impact of racism under the pretense of racial liberalism (Annamma, 2017), color-evasiveness derives from Gotanda’s (1991) articulation of color-blindness. Overall, this study asks, how do students engage in color-evasive discourse, make sense of it given their identities, histories, and learning opportunities, and ultimately engage in race talk for equity within educational spaces?

Theoretical Framework
I draw from Bonilla-Silva’s (2018) work identifying discursive tools of color-blind racism. For example, to shield white interests while presenting as non-racist. Annamma and colleagues (2017) proposed the term color-evasiveness to resist the ableist metaphor equating blindness with ignorance and emphasize the deployment of color-evasiveness as. Hence, the avoidance of race fails, purposefully, to address the multimodality of racism and ableism and its consequences.

Method
In this study, student discourse emerging from course activities functions as the site of analysis (Staudinger, 2017). To do this, I employ a critical discourse analysis (CDA; Van Dijk, 1993) of student written and spoken communication (e.g., journal entries, discussions). Participants are 50 majority-White women undergraduate special education majors and minors at a midwestern university. Specifically, all participants are enrolled in my course on family and community partnerships, the course from which discursive data is collected. Discourse analysis engages a multi-phase process including unitizing, categorizing, defining, and applying codes (Saldaña, 2013). Additionally, curricular decisions and instructional activities are systematically evaluated for impact on student learning (Berk, 2018).

Results
Preliminary results indicate that students understand color-evasive racism to be multi-modal and active in a) messages they receive from school and society, b) their online and media experiences, and c) themselves. Significantly, in the absence of direct communication from school/university entities regarding race and racism, students respond in ways that align with those power structures–entities from which they gain valuable life resources (e.g., degrees, employment). Expanding student opportunities to engage with practical applications of theoretical tools (e.g., the language of color-evasive discursive) may provide pathways to greater collaborative learning between universities and students. Ultimately, this study shows why intersectional interpretations of student discourse are important to illuminating the nuance of discursive decision-making, especially for the purpose of racial equity in special education.

Significance
This study addresses racism directly in higher education classroom spaces–engaging theory with student learning about their own behavior. This work seeks to better prepare educators to confront the status quo of color-evasiveness in U.S. schools. As White women continue to make up over 75% of our nation’s educators while our student population continues to become more diverse racially, linguistically, and ethnically, attention to these skills and understandings is crucial in teacher preparation. Thus, this study sustains a commitment to racial equity by centering the learning of pre-service educators in an area of discursive decision-making for racial equity.

Author

• Courtney L. Wilt, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater