“I Don't Want to Hear That!”: Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools

Abstract

In this article, I examine the ways in which silences around race contribute to the maintenance and legitimation of Whiteness. Drawing on ethnographic data from two demographically different schools, I highlight patterns of racially coded language, teacher silence, silencing students' race talk, and the conflating of culture with race, equality with equity, and difference with deficit. These silences and acts of silencing create and perpetuate an educational culture in which inequities are ignored, the status quo is maintained, and Whiteness is both protected and entrenched. [silence, Whiteness, race] Silence is golden.-AnonymousIf you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.-Anonymous

Passing as hybrid: Arab-Palestinian teachers in Jewish schools

“…The book silences issues such as Palestinian history, the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Nakba. Silencing refers to the formal and informal ways that schools control who can speak, what can and cannot be spoken, and whose discourse must be controlled (Castagno 2008). School-based silencing precludes official conversation about controversy, inequity and critique (Fine 1991, 33).…”

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“…While discussions of race and racism are often discouraged in schools, it is imperative that adolescents are provided spaces to participate in open conversations about race and encouraged to develop new understandings of how it functions in society (Lewis, 2001;Castagno, 2008). Hip Hop can serve as a vehicle for such dialogue in secondary and post-secondary schools as it affords counternarratives to America"s dominant racial discourse and stereotypical racial representations that are ripe for critical deconstruction.…”

The USA's qEducation Equityq under Its Official Discourse Framework ---Based on the Critical Discourse Analysis of President Obama's Speeches and Remarks

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