Unforgetting the Emotionalities of Whiteness: Rectifying the Racial Harms in Teacher Education

• In Event: Looking Back, Envisioning Forward: Teacher Educators of Color Unsettling Whiteness for Collective Liberation

Abstract

Objectives
Although it may seem like eons since Sleeter’s (2001) revelation of the overwhelming presence of whiteness in teacher education and her subsequent echoes of its continued presence (Sleeter, 2017), whiteness still manifests within teacher education. But what is the cost of leaving whiteness intact in teacher education? Da Costa (2024) explicates how whiteness causes damage, “reduc[ing] the possibility for white people to think relationally in ways that…help build transformative relationships” (p. 30). Efird et al. (2024) further contend that whiteness emotionally and mentally harms White people in ways that will not “promote health equity for all people” (p. 69). Essentially, hurt people hurt others. Such is the case for teacher educators of Color who have also been harmed by whiteness in teacher education (Author 1, 2019; Author 2, 2013 & 2023; Author 4, 2024; Johnson, 2019; Yoon, 2019). Instead of relaying more stories of harm, this paper shifts the trauma porn toward how one teacher educator of Color reconstructs a new vision for education that unforgets the racial trauma and transforms it to racial activism.

Theoretical Framework
The theoretical paper employs a critical study of whiteness (Author 2, 2023) because this framework properly identifies the exact enactments of whiteness that harm people of Color. By revealing how whiteness violently operates in teacher education and merging the work of Judith Herman’s (1992) Trauma and Recovery, the paper theoretically parallels how that violence is traumatically similar to situations of domestic abuse and political terrorism, necessitating recovery as a political project “involv[ing] a conscious choice to face danger” (p. 197).

Methods & Data
Methodologically, critical race theory’s counterstorytelling counters dominant majoritarian stories and, more importantly, “can help strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance” (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32). Thus, the data will be counterstories but analyzed using critical race hermeneutics (Allen, 2021). The paper theorizes how one teacher educator of Color operationally faced political danger in ways that promoted her need for health and recovery from it. The following research question guided the inquiry: What were the mental shifts she had to undergo to find commonality--a necessary factor in one’s recovery from domestic abuse and political terrorism?

Results
As this is a theoretical argumentation, the “results” identify the parallelity of trauma and violence in whiteness in teacher education, whilst showing how that trauma gets translated into activism and healing.

Scholarly Significance
Like the conference theme to unforget and reconstruct yesteryear’s racial traumas and inequities, this paper attempts to do so at a micro-level, hoping it serves as but one model for others who also face the violence of whiteness in teacher education. If we solely adhere to stories of harm, we, as race researchers and educators, may not be able to construct a new vision for that which makes us survive and thrive amidst it. As Derrick Bell (1997) reminds us in Afrolantica, we deserve generative futures. Therefore, unforgetting is an option for envisioning anew.

Author

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of San Diego