"The Symbolic Violence of Whiteness in Teacher Education": Death by a Thousand Words

• In Event: Beyond Epiphanies: Critique of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Society by Women of Color

Abstract

Objectives
Per Bourdieu (2003), language has discursive practices that reifies power in symbolically violent ways. In fact, Shannon and Escamilla (1999) decry how symbolic violence targets Mexican immigrants in U.S. schools claiming, “the negative sanctions necessary to enforce an English-only policy exemplify the symbolic violence that Bourdieu talks about” (p. 349). Inasmuch as symbolic violence can be found in the educational practices of bilingual students or Black high school students (see Coles and Power, 2018), it too, can be found in how teacher education operates, especially within the overwhelming presence of whiteness in teacher education (Sleeter, 2001). That is, daily practices, rhetoric, and even the wording in policies within teacher education--ones which are also replicated throughout society--though well meaning and normalized, can oftentimes become forms of symbolically violent enactments of whiteness. Notwithstanding this, this conceptual paper investigates how might symbolic violence operate within the hegemony of whiteness, using teacher education as a unit of analysis.

Theoretical Framework
Though initially drawing upon Bourdieu’s initial conceptualization of symbolic violence, this theoretical paper employs an amalgamation of critical theories of race such as BlackCrit, Critical Race Theory, and a Critical Study of Whiteness to interpret how might whiteness, left intact, enacts symbolic violence on people of color in and out of teacher education. Furthermore, the paper particularly cites scholarship and theories made by scholars of color to serve as an exemplar of how Critical Whiteness Studies remains true to not centering white perspectives.

Modes of Inquiry
Allen’s (2021) critical race hermeneutics (CRH) provides an interpretative method that critiques the “ontological presence of white supremacy” (p. 22). Meaning, instead of viewing white supremacy and its corollary, whiteness, as subjective forms, they are indeed also objectively constructing white supremacy with white subjectivities. This un-normalizing that which is oftentimes seen as normal will aid in stopping the manifestations of whiteness as symbolically violent in teacher education and society.

Scholarly Significance
In the forever hopes for racially just teaching there must be ways in which we investigate what constitutes normality in a field that is not only populated by a majority of white educators, but also imbued with hegemonic ideologies of whiteness. As such, this paper critically interprets how might seemingly normal operations within teacher education, and in society, also be manifestations of violence, which, if left intact, thwarts hopes for racial justice.

Connection to Conference Theme
Equity in education for the 21st century demands new approaches, studies, and ways to think anew especially since the evolving dynamics of race, racism, and white supremacy continue to mutate for today’s contexts. For example, society is moving beyond colorblindness and into a color consciousness, though, at times, operating in false ways. To get ahead of these mutations the educational research community must entertain new ways of seeing that which refuses to be seen.

Author

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of Kentucky