‘Hacking at our very roots’: rearticulating White racial identity within the context of teacher education

Abstract

When teaching about race and racism and how we as ‘Whites’ are implicated in the discursive practices that sustain racism, we are indeed ‘hacking at the very roots’ of the ways in which students have conceptualized their identity in terms of being non‐racialized and at the same time non‐racist. In this paper I focus on the challenges and possibilities of working with teacher education students—most of whom are White—to critically deconstruct Whiteness as part of the larger project of anti‐racism. While I draw on students’ comments, in quite fundamental ways this paper is about my own—rather than students’—learning experiences. After a decade of re‐evaluating my pedagogy, the anecdotal evidence as well as results from more formal evaluations would suggest that my strategies have become increasingly effective in assisting students to work through their resistances. It is the paper’s conclusion that ‘teaching against the grain’ is likely to continue to be unpopular with some students but that education that purports to have an anti‐racism focus must incorporate an experiential component despite the discomfort this may cause.

Notes

1. Aboriginal and multicultural education is a compulsory course within my university’s teacher education program. It is a large course with annual enrolments of around 250 students.

2. Beginning in 1995 when I began to teach Aboriginal and multicultural education, the university’s Teaching and Learning Centre has carried out anonymous student evaluations each year. This includes qualitative as well as quantitative data. Where I have cited work from students’ journals, this has been done with the permission of the students concerned.

3. Taken from Roger Simon (1992).

4. Susan’s reflections are taken from her reading journal. All names used throughout are, of course, pseudonyms.