Gendered Whiteness in the Classroom: Exploring White Teachers' Engagement with Racial Positionality as Teachers of Race

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 29. Gender, Schooling, and Society pt. 1

Abstract

While previous research has explored white teachers’ emotional stances toward race talk, less is known about how they make sense of their racial positionality as teachers of race, especially when leading classrooms predominantly comprised of students of Color. Motivated by white racial identity development theory and previous research examining white teachers’ approaches to race and racism, we explore how white teachers make sense of their racial positionality when teaching about race, as well as how this meaning-making informs their broader orientation to the work. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with white social studies teachers in the Chicagoland area, we find that the gender identities of teachers play a pivotal role in how they make sense of their racial positionality and teaching orientation toward race. We find white men to be more upfront with their students about their racial positionality, with many viewing this as a component of allyship. White women are not as transparent with their students about their racial positionality and often express a self-consciousness around how they speak about race and are perceived when doing so. Theorizing these findings through Bauer’s (2017, 2021, 2022) conceptualization of benevolent whiteness, we explore how whiteness as a gendered logic differentially shapes the experiences of white men and women teaching about race in the classroom. The findings from our study illustrate how centering gender as a category of analysis can help further parse out the ways that white men and women may approach and experience the teaching of race differently, which can help teacher educators support white teachers across all gender identities in problematizing their whiteness in productive ways.

Author

• Victoria Lauren Isaac, University of Illinois-Chicago