Reifying and Resisting Racism from Early Childhood to Young Adulthood

Abstract

This article explores parallel findings from two critical ethnographies (Miller in Whiteness, discourse, and early childhood: an ethnographic study of three young children's understandings about race in home and community settings. University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2012; Nash in Blinded by the white: foregrounding race and racism in a literacy course for preservice teachers. University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2012) of white early childhood teacher educators using a critical race stance as they researched race and racism in two contexts: an early childhood education course and home and community settings with the author's own three young children. In each context, the researchers/authors found that participants used discourse to both resist and reify racism. The authors share these findings, offering implications and questions for critical reframing of the socially and historically located meanings of race and racism in early childhood education and teacher education.The teacher education field is rife with promises and commitments to challenging inequities and promoting teaching excellence in diverse, urban settings. Current accreditation and licensure policies mandating attention to issues of diversity have resulted in a sprinkling of courses in urban education, culturally relevant pedagogy, revisions of mission statements, and increased attention to diverse field placements

Critical racial literacy in homes, schools, and communities: Propositions for early childhood contexts

“…The first proposition illustrates the notion, confirmed in multiple findings, that racial identity socialization occurs early on in a person’s lifespan and is learned over time as we move in and out of present and past temporal spaces (Boutte and Johnson, 2013; Guinier, 2004; Howard, 2015; Nash and Miller, 2015). The fluidity of such movements can make racial literacy difficult to frame, so we propose that the development of critical racial literacy requires memory work in an effort to “re-member” or “reconnect knowledge about the past that has been torn apart by Eurocratic narratives” (King and Swartz, 2015: 1).…”

“…The data that we have discussed in this article reveals how entrenched young children, early childhood teachers, and pre-service teachers were in their feelings of black as bad and white as good—all participants “drew in the racist discourse from their worlds, altered it to make sense out of their own racial experiences, and recycled those messages in interactions with others” (Nash and Miller, 2015: 191). Altogether, the three propositions work in tandem to build understandings and interventions in critical racial literacy in early childhood education.…”

Challenges and Coping Mechanisms of Whites Committed to Antiracism

“…A university institutional review board provided consent for the study protocol. Semistructured questions (Seidman, 2013) were developed that build upon the literature and research on antiracism and advanced White racial identity development (Ganter, 1977; Hardiman, 2001; Helms, 1995; Linder, 2015; Nash & Miller, 2015; O’Brien, 2001; Todd & Abrams, 2011; Warren, 2010). Broadly, participants were asked to (a) define and explain the meaning of their racial identities, (b) describe their racial identity development, and (c) indicate how lifestyle choices (e.g., relationships, career and housing decisions, daily behaviors) were affected by personal racial identities.…”

Strategies Used by Whites to Address Their Racism: Implications for Autonomous White Racial Identities

“…According to Helms's (1990, 1995) WRID model, the participants’ cognitions and behaviors described in this study could be seen as autonomy‐specific IPSs, which are characterized for Whites in the autonomy status as flexible and complex (Helms, 1990, 1995). Scholars have noted the use of coping mechanisms such as defensiveness, avoidance, and color blindness in Whites at earlier racial identity statuses when managing personal racism (Nash & Miller, 2015; Todd & Abrams, 2011). The coping strategies discussed by participants in this study demonstrate how the lived experience of racism for Whites with a dominant autonomy status differs from those at other statuses and also reflects the kind of dialectic movement found by Todd and Abrams (2011).…”