Tales from the darkside: Negotiating whiteness in school arenas

By adopting a narrative method approach, this paper investigates how Black respondents negotiate whiteness in educational arenas. The focus is on the 'practice' of whiteness and how this practice impinges upon the lives of Black students and teachers. Drawing on the life-histories of Black people who have recently left school, or are currently teaching, this paper explores how they identify the normativity of whiteness. Moreover, it shows how Black participants are involved in a series of positioned engagements with whiteness and have acquired a complex and varied repertoire of strategies to negotiate the demands of White society. It is suggested that an analysis of the techniques deployed by Black respondents to 'manage' whiteness, may provide crucial insight into how whiteness can be usefully engaged in school contexts. By viewing whiteness as an 'activity', it is indicated that White students and teachers have the potential to reconfigure their identities through daily interaction.