This essay interrogates the seeming diversity paradox of multicultural teacher education and its connection to the White world of education. Applying a critical race methodology and concepts from critical whiteness studies and the Black radical tradition, the authors draw from their combined lived experiences as teacher educators at institutions located across the U.S. as an important source of critical knowledge about the White world of education to highlight specific, representative moments of practices typical in many U.S. teacher preparation programs. The authors' purpose is to critically examine these moments of teacher preparation practices as one way to better understand and push toward ameliorating the mechanisms and modus operandi of Whiteness in teacher preparation and expose how equity-oriented aims are daily sabotaged; it is not to blame individuals or programs or to promote White defensiveness or guilt. For multicultural teacher education to realize its equity-oriented goals, the realities of active complicity in protecting the Whiteness embedded within teacher preparation must be exposed and challenged. The persistent Whiteness in education is not accidentally or coincidentally [re]created behind the backs of individuals and programs-as if it were a kind of "who done it" mystery, despite historical collective cries of [White] innocence.
Using the critical race theory methodology of counter-storytelling, the authors provide narratives of their experiences as teacher educators to consider why and how the racial power of Whiteness continues to derail teaching and learning for social justice in US teacher preparation programs, despite the democratic intentions, hard work and good will of many teacher educators. Contending that Whiteness serves as a hidden referent structuring interactions and activity within US teacher preparation programs, the authors draw on their narratives to highlight and analyze moments in time when teacher educators actively and fully participate in and enact the obstruction of social-justice-oriented educational endeavors, thus ensuring that future teachers will not be prepared to teach all students.
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