"I Muted Myself": Examining Whiteness in White Educators Using Post-Intentional Phenomenology

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Whiteness and the "Workforce"

Abstract

Using Post-Intentional Phenomenology (Vagle, 2018), White educators reflected on and confronted issues of Whiteness in their respective professional educational spaces in the late summer and fall of 2020. Through a process of creating and examining phenomenological materials in this research study, instances of Whiteness as property (Cabrera et al. 2017; Harris, 1993), color evasiveness (Annamma et al. 2016; Bonilla-Silva, 2018) and White immunity (Cabrera, 2017) are illuminated. Along with a discussion of findings, this paper shows how a Post-Intentional Phenomenological approach can be a starting point to push White educators to own and confront their own mindsets regarding Whiteness in order to “disrupt bias in classrooms, schools, and colleges” (Nasir et al., 2021, para. 1).

Authors

• Ben Marcy, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Kristen J Cypret, The University of Kansas

• Caolfionn B Yenney, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Shelagh Gamble, K-12 Public Education