The Burden of Teaching Teachers: Memoirs of Race Discourse in Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper presents the views and educational experiences of two African American female scholars, from a critical race and black feminist theorist perspective, teaching in the area of social justice to predominantly white female pre-service teachers. These testimonies reveal the struggles encountered by these scholars when engaging students in a historical and contemporary examination of race, privilege, and systemic inequalities. The objectives of this paper are to expand on the literary dialogue of such resistance and attempt to bring awareness into the arenas that need the most exposure, i.e. departmental, faculty, and tenure review meetings. It is commonly written and verbalized that institutions are interested in attracting and retaining faculty of color. We argue that the ways we are supported must shift. This problem of student resistance, who they resist and why, should become open for discussion on college campuses across the nation.KEY WORDS: black feminist; critical race theory; teacher education; white privilege; social justice teaching higher education.All over the country, the Black world was thrusting its girls and boys into the white world to represent the race. Intellectual inquiry became both our weapon and a political act requiring great courage because there were absolutely no role models or books and nothing to sustain us except the training and encouragement we received from our families and communities (Omolade, 1994, p. xi).

Creating Community on the Margins: The Successful Black Female Academician

“…There is also consensus among many Black feminist theorists that the voices and experiences of Black women are valuable and represent a legitimate source of data for consideration (Collins 2000;Takara 2006;Williams and Evans-Winters 2005;Willis and Lewis 1999). Collins (2000) refers to the knowledge created by Black women as subjugated knowledge.…”

Breakin’ Down Whiteness in Antiracist Teaching: Introducing Critical Whiteness Pedagogy

“…Thus, the authors set out to explicitly inject critical whiteness studies and emotionality studies into the curriculum while testing out critically self-reflective pedagogies for the teacher candidates to engage in. In discussing ways to enable students to self-discover their own whiteness, we realized we needed to tread lightly because, as according to the literature, when female professors of color point out whiteness they are harshly contested (Matias 2013;Williams and Evans-Winters 2005). To avoid this white resistance (Rodriguez 2009), the authors decided to use various self-reflective tools to guide their teacher candidates in an honest yet painfully-critical self-reflection of their own emotions, behaviors, thought processes, and reactions to the readings, the professors, and the course's concepts.…”

“…We strategically selected readings that invoked emotions in order to illustrate to our predominately middle-class, heterosexual, white female teacher candidates what racism, sexism, and heterosexism feels like. Using the works of Williams and Evans-Winters (2005), Haj-Ali (2006), de Jesús and Ma (2004), Matias (2013), and others, our students were able to illuminate the pain of race, sex, and heterosexism in tangible ways:…”

Beyond Ethnic Tidbits: Toward a Critical and Dialogical Model in Multicultural Social Justice Teacher Preparation

“…This raced, gendered, and classed view of knowledge production and the role of schooling erases diverse histories (Salazar, Martinez, & Ortega, 2016) and subtracts the funds of knowledge that diverse students bring to schools (Dabach & Fones, 2016;Valenzuela, 1999). Left unchallenged cultural assimilation, traditional liberal citizenship, and meritocracy enable White preservice teachers to resist critically examining how views of "legitimate" knowledge are embedded within the sociopolitical contexts of an exclusionary society (Castro, 2010;DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2010;LaDuke, 2009;Haviland, 2008;Sleeter, 2008b;Williams & Evans-Winters, 2005).…”