Because of the changing nature of race the role of antiracist teaching is a forever-evolving process. Acknowledging that the majority of the U.S. teaching force, from K-12 to teacher education in institutions of higher education, are white middle-class females, it becomes imperative to unveil pedagogical applications of critical whiteness studies. Unwillingness to do so maintains the recycled nature of the hegemonic whiteness that dominates the field of education. This reflective paper examines the implemented pedagogies of a teacher education diversity course which begin to break down the whiteness ideology embedded in teacher candidates (i.e., pre-service teachers). Although the course's application of critical whiteness studies was in no way complete, it framed a pedagogical strategy for self-interrogation of whiteness, one that can be implemented in other teacher education courses across the nation. Adding to the existing field of research, this paper provides concrete teaching strategies about how to employ critical whiteness studies in teacher education, and examines the implications of such pedagogies in relation to the roles of racial justice and antiracist teaching. By including feedback from teacher candidates themselves, this paper demonstrates how effective the pedagogies were in preparing a majority of white female teacher candidates for urban teaching.
Drawing on one of the author's experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion studies, it is shown how whiteness ideology erroneously translates disgust for people of color to false professions of pity or caring. This phenomenon is particularly interesting because care, sympathy, and love are emotions that are routinely performed by teacher candidates (who are predominantly white females) and embedded in teacher education. Yet not much literature theorizes how these performative emotions are not exempt of whiteness ideology. To engage in a genuine process of antiracism, we argue that the emotions that undergird teachers' dispositions need to be critically and sensitively unpacked. We end with implications for teacher education, particularly in relation to pedagogical ways of identifying and interrogating narratives of caring-as-hidden disgust and cultivating critical compassion.
The emergence of social media has greatly influenced 21st-century student activism. It has also given rise to the birth of "slacktivism," an online form of self-aggrandizing, politically ineffective activism. This theoretical article delves into the conceptualizations of what constitutes student activism versus slacktivism in a digital age. While there are distinctions between the 2, we highlight how most discussions of activism describe how activism is done as opposed to what it is. Within this context, we offer 10 theoretical underpinnings of activism and slacktivism to serve as conceptual points of self-reflection that student activists can use in order to explore whether or not they are truly engaging in activism. This examination, we argue, is critically important as the distinction between slacktivism and activism becomes increasingly muddied. For student activism to realize its democratic and developmental potential, students need to be clear about whether they are engaging in activism or slacktivism.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) revolutionized how we investigate race in education. Centralizing counter stories from people of color becomes essential for decentralizing white normative discourse-a process we refer to as realities within the Black imagination .Yet, few studies examine how whites respond to centering the Black imagination, especially since their white imagination goes unrecognized. We propose utilizing Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) to support CRT to aid in deconstructing the dimensions of white imaginations. Our findings describe how the white imagination operates inside the minds of white teacher candidates, namely through their (a) emotional disinvestment, (b) lack of critical understanding of race, (c) resurgence of white guilt, and (d) recycling of hegemonic whiteness, all of which negatively impact their role in anti-racist teaching in urban schools. ReIntroducing the Black Imagination Embedded in the Black 1 imagination is an emotion of terror from experiencing and witnessing the realities of racism (Bell, 1987; hooks, 1995). An example of this is hooks (1995) description of a terrifying childhood event: not knowing if acts of white supremacy would transpire from the many door-to-door white salesmen who entered her Black home. Despite their obvious racial discomfort in being inside a Black home, she admits that "their presence terrified me" because she could not distinguish between the white men who sell products from the white men who "enact rituals of terror and torture" (p. 39). One way that this terror currently manifests is in witnessing the murder of Black people in America (e.g., Oscar Grant, Travyon Martin, James Byrd, and Chavis Carter). The result is the formation of a collective Black imagination that does not intend to essentialize Black identity, but rather recognizes that terror, like other feelings, intuitions, and behaviors, are rational responses to experiencing the terrorism in white supremacy.
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