ABSTRACT
White discourse is a discourse that functions to support white supremacy. Based on an ethnographic study in a U.S. elementary school, this article analyses how white teachers use appeals to discomfort as a form of white discourse to resist school-based racial equity work. It also examines how equity coaching – an approach to professional development rooted in critical race theory – can be used to augment the voices of teachers of colour, reframe narratives of discomfort, and disrupt the power of white discourse.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. I use the first person to indicate my own complicity, as a white person, in whiteness. However, I maintain the third person in quotes and paraphrases.
2. All names other than that of the author are pseudonyms.
3. I was previously a teacher in the district and had conducted racial equity trainings at various schools in the region since 2007.
4. I share specific examples of how we used these concepts to analyse daily practices in another piece (Blaisdell Citation2017). Here I focus on how CRT specifically helped us resist white discourse.