Whiteness and Imperial Orientations in the Everyday Classroom: Race, Space, and the Phenomenology of Pedagogy

• In Event: Critical Readings of Whiteness, Race, Space, and Identities

Abstract

This paper explores the effects that space has on everyday antiracist pedagogy. Using data from a six-month long case-study of a ninth-grade geography classroom this study illustrates the relational character of space and its capacity to draw out racializing comportment. Through an analysis of a phenomenological narrative depicting a mundane classroom interaction this paper illustrates imperial orientations that subtly expose students of color to the dehumanization of whiteness across the minutia of a workaday classroom. In response, I advocate for an ambiguous ethic of practice through which to pay attention to the whiteness of space in general, and the collateral e/affects of it going unengaged, as well as the radical potential to cultivate a space oriented to social justice.

Author

• Gardner R Seawright, University of Utah