Professionalism and Parents: A New Frame for Color-Blind Racism in Schooling

Abstract

This study deconstructs the racial dimension of teacher resistance to parent authority within the shared social institution of education. More specifically, we examine how teachers responded to a teacher evaluation policy that included a parent-based component to assess teacher quality. Using framing theory, this study illustrates the use of professionalism as one mechanism connecting teachers’ individual actions to broader sociocultural experiences of privilege and oppression. To illustrate the anatomy of color-blind framing, we deconstruct three tactics teachers used when framing their resistance to parents: minimizing professional responsibility for engaging parents, masking racist perspectives through geographic and social distance, and misdirecting attention away from parents’ rights to judge education as a public good.

One of the Good Ones: Rhetorical Maneuvers of Whiteness

“…They are also embedded in the way racial minorities and immigrants are praised (Estrada et al, 2019). In addition, they are used as a defensive tactic to explain away oppression, legitimize racist practices, and delegitimize social justice efforts (Armenta, 2017; Delgado, 2018; Kleinman et al, 2021; LeChasseur et al, 2020; Sumerau and Grollman, 2018). These forms of racial stupidity were the by-products of all the wrong lessons being taken from the civil rights movement (Fleming 2018).…”