Relearning Positionality Through Teaching Anti-Blackness: A Critical Autoethnography from a Middle Eastern Educator

• In Event: “Asian and Latinx Anti-Blackness in Schools and Communities: Complicity and Resistance” Book Discussion Symposium 2

Abstract

This paper explores how teaching about anti-Blackness as a Middle Eastern, Iranian woman in a U.S. higher education context prompted a profound transformation in the author's understanding of socio-cultural identity, positionality, complicity, and resistance. Through critical autoethnography, this book chapter investigates how racialized ideologies, including Persian Exceptionalism, Aryanism, and proximity to whiteness, shape and are shaped by diasporic Middle Eastern experiences. It interrogates how authoritarian curricula and nationalist frameworks in Iran, alongside U.S. racial hierarchies, construct complex systems of oppression that educators must navigate. The paper argues for a critical reexamination of positionality as a tool for cultivating anti-racist pedagogies and multiracial solidarities.
Grounded in Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, the chapter employs a transnational critique of liberalism and racial neoliberalism. Drawing on the works of Mojdehi (2019), Baghoolizadeh (2018, 2023), and Said (1979), the framework critiques dominant ideologies that render Middle Eastern bodies as “adjacent to whiteness” through the model minority myth, thus reproducing anti-Blackness while simultaneously masking their own racial marginalization. The concept of “color-evasiveness” is used to unpack how racial discourse is deflected or silenced in both Iranian and U.S. educational contexts. The paper also incorporates global justice movements,particularly the Woman, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi; زن، زندگی، آزادی) uprising,as catalysts for intersectional, internationalist solidarity.
Using qualitative critical autoethnography (Boylorn & Orbe, 2021; Holman Jones, 2016), the paper draws from the author's personal teaching experiences, reflective journaling, and engagement with students and colleagues in predominantly white institutions. The analysis is both narrative and theoretical, mapping the intersections of race, gender, nationality, religion, and geopolitics across multiple cultural contexts. Through storytelling, the author critically interrogates her own assumptions, pedagogical choices, and transformation.
Data Sources, Evidence, and Materials:
The analysis is based on lived classroom experiences, co-teaching dialogues, journal reflections, and ongoing engagement with literature on racial formations and transnational feminism. These materials serve as both personal archive and pedagogical evidence, documenting the internal and external negotiations the author underwent while teaching topics on social justice including race, racism, and anti-Blackness.
Findings reveal that Middle Eastern educators often occupy a dual space of marginalization and complicity, caught between being racialized as “not white enough” in the U.S. and upholding racial hierarchies at home. The narrative uncovers how positionality is re-learned through discomfort, confrontation, and solidarity-building. The chapter calls for dismantling myths such as Persian Exceptionalism, critiquing anti-Blackness in global and diasporic contexts, and embracing intersectionality as a practice,not just a theory,for both personal and institutional transformation. By confronting internalized biases and color-evasive pedagogies, educators can reshape classroom spaces into sites of justice and collective healing.
This work powerfully aligns with the AERA 2026 theme by illuminating how historical racial ideologies travel across borders and time. It contributes to research on transnational racial justice, the politics of knowledge production, and educator identity. The chapter models how critical self-reflection can become an act of resistance and a roadmap for imagining anti-racist futures. Through the vehicle of lived experience, it invites educators to engage in future practices that are rooted in historical accountability and collective liberation.

Author

• Haniyeh Kheirkhah, Pennsylvania State University