Peeling Back Layers of White-Centric Understandings of Students and Teaching: White Educators on Reimagining Education

• In Event: From Exploring Antiracist Praxis to Reimagine Education Policy: Educators' Calls for Structural Change

Abstract

When it came to the white educators who had attended RESI and immersed themselves in anti-racist education work, they tended to fall into two camps: 1. Those who were entirely new to this work and were grappling with these issues for the first time, and 2. Those who had embraced the work of antiracist education and were trying to take their deconstruction of the views they had grown up with to a new level of critique that would inform their praxis. One of the many powers of RESI is to help white educators see for the first time the white-centric understandings they had been raised to believe in and accept as the universal “norm” and to recognize these “norms” as just one way to view the world, one way to view and interpret “good” and “bad” students and their behaviors. Once these white educators have looked beyond and stepped outside of their “norms” it is difficult for them to every go back to their prior conceptions of what is normal. Thus, what we see in the second group of white educators is the drive to take the work of antiracist awareness and understanding further, seeking a deeper layer of understanding beyond just deconstructing what they knew before. These educators talked about the multiple layers of whiteness that they felt like they were peeling away to better understand schooling from the perspective of their students or colleagues of color. It is this second group of educators who feel better prepared to write their own lesson plans and take on leadership roles around racial equity work in their schools and districts. But they also note that had they not taken up the initial racial identity and racial literacy work at the beginning they would not be able to unpeel the layers of whiteness in their thinking and praxis that they have done in their 2nd and 3rd time working on this.
Thus, similar to the work of Pichor and other scholars of whiteness and whiteness fragility (Diangelo), we see that the educators we interviewed taught us that the work of excavating de-centering whiteness in their own way of understanding the world requires returning to the work several times to dig a little deeper and see their biases more fully. These white educators also note how important it is for white educators to do this work and how they see their role in supporting other white educators and white students to better understand white privilege. They refer to RESI as life-altering work.
Like the educators of color, the white educators also seek the support of the RESI community and the solidarity they feel there working alongside educators of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Another interesting theme to emerge is that queer white educators are especially drawn to this work having experienced bias, discrimination and exclusion based on their sexual orientation or gender identities, which helps them more fully understand what it means to be marginalized or perceived as “less than” due to race.

Authors

• Dianne Delima, University of California - Irvine

• Maja Pehrson, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University