The Layered Toll of Racism in Teacher Education on Teacher Educators of Color

• In Event: Racism and White Supremacy: Confrontation, Conflict, and Curriculum

Abstract

To systematically explore the structural racism that teacher educators of Color endure across contexts, this article uses critical race theory to analyze the findings from qualitative questionnaires with 239 Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American teacher educators who work in diverse universities across the U.S. Through our analyses of the data, we learned that many of the participants in our study were hired to teach race and racism amongst race-evasive colleagues and white students who are enabled to protect and leverage their whiteness. As we analyze their experiences, we find that teacher educators endure racial stress and harm in ways that are emotionally and professionally taxing, and that teacher education programs are, in fact, structured to facilitate this harm.

Authors

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

• Marcos Pizarro, San José State University