“A nice white lady”: critical whiteness studies, teacher education, and city schools

Abstract

Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) can be a significant tool to dismantle white supremacy in educational contexts. However, the authors argue that without attending to the forms of curriculum as they are entangled across systems of schooling, CWS can reinscribe the very forms of whiteness it seeks to disrupt. Identifying as a queer, Brown assistant professor of education and a Black undergraduate student who recently finished her studies, this paper uses a duo-ethnographic approach to examine what the authors call an “enacted curriculum of whiteness.” Through their respective narratives, the authors explore how students and faculty bracketed CWS, often identifying CWS as a part of the formal curriculum while using the enacted curriculum to defend and maintain normalized racism. The authors argue that alongside CWS in teacher preparation, an emphasis on curriculum studies is critical to resisting the “nice white lady” phenomenon that often infects teacher preparation and, eventually, K-12 schools.

Keywords:

• Curriculum theory
• critical whiteness studies
• duo-autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The use of intra, rather than inter-actions is intentional. While not the focus of this paper, our intent is to attend to how subjectivities and agency emerges from the connections and events that happen between people and nonhuman bodies. In other words, our ability to act and be is always already emergent, coming from within events, not outside them. For more on this theory, see Karen Barad’s (2007) work, Meeting the Universe Halfway.

2 All names are pseudonyms.

3 It is important to note that during the member check process, one peer opted out of having their name and ideas included in any publication and is therefore not present in my summary of the texts or analysis of the events for fear of how her perspectives might reflect on her as a future teacher. Those ideas are therefore absent from my interpretation of the texts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Boni Wozolek

Boni Wozolek is an Assistant Professor of Education at Penn State University, Abington College. Her work considers questions of race, genders, and sexual orientations through qualitative inquiry.

Ameena Atif

Ameena Atif is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. She is currently studying international education development and curriculum design.