Dear white teacher: this black history month, take a knee

Abstract

U.S. education is built upon a system of Whiteness, entrenched in White supremacy culture, and defended by White fragility. Within this framework, even a publicly-recognizable event intended to center Blackness, the celebration of Black History Month, reinscribes White supremacy. Through the decontextualized presentation of select Black heroes and the use of pedagogies that position White teachers as authority figures who regulate the presence of Blackness, and without drawing attention to the White supremacist cultural norms that are the foundation for U.S. society, students can walk away from Black History Month with a reinforced belief in White supremacy. In order to disrupt White supremacy, White teachers must be grounded in the principles of critical race theory. White teachers must take a knee against normative Whiteness and develop as ‘abolitionist teachers’. Those teachers who choose to persist with pedagogical approaches that devalue Blackness and support White supremacy cannot claim good intentions; choosing to center and celebrate Blackness is the path to racial justice.

Keywords:

• Abolitionist teachers
• white supremacy
• pedagogy
• critical race theory

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this paper, the words “White” and “Black” will be used as shorthand to represent a number of concepts. “White” will be used to signify both a racial group most easily described as anyone not identified with a race in U.S. society, as well as a cultural construct intentionally designed to perpetuate the continued power and privilege of those with the racial identifier of “White.” “Black” is used to denote those descendants of the African diaspora, without regard to questions of multiracial identity or most recent origin. In the eyes of Whiteness, “Black” is “Black.” Both terms will be capitalized throughout this paper, with brackets indicating when quoted material has had capitalization changes made for consistency of reading.

2 “Good intentions” is used to indicate the espoused desire of teachers to successfully teach all learners, regardless of the identities of their learners. Because learning cannot exist absent the identities of learners (or, for that case, of teachers), decontextualized good intentions result in colorblind approaches which serve to further perpetuate societal inequalities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brandelyn Tosolt

Brandelyn Tosolt is Associate Professor in the College of Education at Northern Kentucky University. Her teaching and scholarship amplify the voices of folx from historically-marginalized groups and seek to disrupt normative patterns of Whiteness in teacher education and educational leadership.