Whiteness in/and education

Abstract

This article discusses my interactions with the teacher in whose classroom I conducted my doctoral research. That project was concerned with using transformative Drama pedagogy to reconceptualise cultural identity in multicultural curricular policy. The participants in my study comprised of 15 Grade Nine Drama students and their teacher at ‘May Valley High School’, located just outside of Toronto, Canada. During the Fall semester of the 2004–2005 academic year, I observed the students’ performances (both in and out of dramatic role) of their gender, sexuality, racial and ethnic identities. Using a performative lens to analyse the connections between their ‘fictional’ identity performances, and their ‘actual’ ones, I showed how, in this particular classroom, those connections often served to reinforce rather than challenge hegemonic constructions of social identity and identification. I suspected that this had much to do with their teacher’s pedagogical orientations and practices, with respect to multiculturalism and ethno‐cultural difference. In this article, I tease out how the ‘Whiteness’ embedded in his pedagogy served to perpetuate institutional racism at the school.

Keywords:

• whiteness
• multicultural education
• drama education

Notes

1. All names and other identifying details of the research context have been changed, in order to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of the participants.

2. Elsewhere (Rivière 2005, 2006b), I have described the particular colonial heritage of May Valley, and how they coexist with the town’s continually increasing, visible, ethno‐cultural diversity. Suffice to say, this provides an interesting ‘visual disjuncture’, one that I hope to analyse in the future.

3. Goldberg (1993, 265) defines this as ‘those social groups or fractions of social groups that are, or traditionally have been, deeply excluded from social powers, rights, goods, or services in racial terms or on racial grounds’ (original emphasis).

4. Defined, I presumed, as an increase in visible ethno‐cultural differences among the student population.

5. A male student whose parents had immigrated to Canada from India. He was not part of the participant group in this study.

6. I have since realised that expecting Varun to use a Southeast Asian accent only when the dramatic situation demands it was problematic, because it implied that ‘ethnic’ accents needed a specific context in order to be considered appropriate. I think many of Mr M.’s students shared this bias, which is why they found Varun’s accent to be so amusing: it didn’t really belong in a ‘normal’ (read: non‐ethnic) scene.

7. Travis described his cultural heritage as English and Scottish.

8. As mentioned, Travis is White and of English and Scottish heritage. Aaron is of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, and Joe’s parents are originally from India. Of the two other boys in the group, one is White, and the other is a Black student who had recently moved to Canada form Africa.

9. I actually did make an attempt to share my work with him in the Spring of 2006, shortly after I had successfully defended my dissertation. In an e‐mail, I asked him whether or not he would be interested in reading some or all of my work. Upon receiving an affirmative response from him, I sent him a copy of my dissertation’s table of contents, so that he could decide which sections he would like to read. However, he never responded to that message.