The Maintenance of Whiteness in Urban Education: Explorations of Rhetoric and Reality

ABSTRACT

Told from the perspective of two early career professors teaching courses in elementary education diversity, this study uses purposive sampling and qualitative methodologies to examine how white students with impervious dispositions that would likely not qualify them to work with diverse children at this point in their lives present us with opportunities to better understand the deeply rooted and complicated nature of whiteness in teacher education candidates and teacher education programs. We found that among white students who seemed challenged most by course content in our classes, a recurring narrative was that many seemed to think they were being indoctrinated into anti-American values. Through interrogation of their own experiences in school, some found their personal experiences with discrimination made them less open to accepting the legitimacy of the lives of marginalized peoples. In some ways, they felt the values they were taught from their families and communities were being threatened by an overt attention to diversity in the class. Our aim is to disrupt the notion of the single caricature of an angry, resistant white student and search, rather, within the roots of white identifications and learn what our deeper understandings reveal in terms of our ability to more effectively teach courses such as these.

Notes

1. For example, see information regarding Emory’s Liberal Arts programs http://emorywheel.com/visual-arts-journalism-educational-studies-p-e-and-russian-econ-spanish-grad-programs-suspended-ila-to-be-downsized/

2. Helms (2008) updated her model to change the word “stages” to “schemas” to better reflect the fluidity of ones progression through white racial consciousness.