Teachers Initiating Conversations About Race and Racism in a High School Class

This qualitative study explores the techniques, materials and processes of a Black teacher and a White teacher who introduced issues of race and racism in their team-taught high school class. The teachers explicitly put the issues of race and racism on the table, asked questions that challenged students to think about the topics, and used race-related curricular materials and assignments. The teachers' initiative encouraged the students in the class to speak out about the language and meaning of race and racism.     

Constructions of Race Among Religiously Conservative College Students

The “Whites as victims” motif in conversations about race has been well documented in recent decades. When discussing affirmative action hiring policies, a common belief expressed by Whites is that people of color have been permitted to progress unfairly at the expense of harder working Whites. Whites using this discourse see themselves as victims of a political process that ignores individual responsibility and caters to people of color who are not willing to work toward their own success. Using students’ Blackboard discussion forum postings, the author analyzes ideas about race expressed by students in education classes at a small denominational Christian college in the northeastern United States, and compares these students’ constructions of race to those analyzed in previous research using Whites as subjects in both religious and non-religious settings. The author argues that these students do not differ in their constructions of race and racism from other Whites in non-religious settings. Further, with more complete education and intentional conversation about the history of racism in the United States, these students are able to incorporate understandings of deeper structural causes of racial inequality.     

Examining the World Around Us: Critical Media Literacy in Teacher Education

This article presents findings from action research conducted in a graduate level course with practicing K–12 educators. In this article, I consider the usefulness of critical media literacy in the graduate classroom as I engaged students in discussions about multicultural issues including race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Through an examination of student presentations and field notes collected over the course of the semester, I found the graduate student participants were typically quite savvy at evaluating the messages they receive from media. Further, I found the incorporation of popular media into the classroom helped students grapple with typically foreign and often theoretically dense concepts like unconscious racism and heteronormativity, as well as theories like critical race theory, intersectionality, and queer theory. The graduate student participants were able to see deep connections between text/theory and media and often used various media to illustrate theory in quite complex ways. Lastly, engaging with texts of everyday life and using visual representations helped students interrogate the concepts explored in the course and provided students access to theory otherwise regarded as inaccessible.     

Discourses about race in the United States: A thematic analysis of short essays

Conversations around race have come to the forefront of public discourses in the United States with incidents of police brutality leading to movements such as Black Lives Matter and its opposition, All Lives Matter. Although there is substantial psychological literature focusing on racial attitudes and intergroup relations, much of this research is experimental, failing to capture diverse and evolving viewpoints of people in the United States. In the present study, our aim was to understand folk definitions and diverse perspectives about the role of race in the United States in participants’ own words. We thematically analyzed submissions to The Race Card Project (n = 913), a publicly available platform, and responses from a sample of college students describing perspectives on race (n = 1092). A total of 27 identified themes were organized in four domains: opinions about race, race-based interactions, race and identity, and emotions. Opinions about race ranged from color-blind ideology to racial equality, race as divisive or providing community, and excessive focus on race. References were made to historic and current race relations, assumptions based on skin color, prejudice and discrimination, White privilege, and “reverse racism.” These findings contribute to evolving scholarly understanding of race in the United States, with implications for informing initiatives to promote race relations and reduce experiences of discrimination for individuals of color.     

Overcoming Cultural Racism: The Promise of Multicultural Education

The author argues that cultural racism undergirds both individual and institutional racism, and, thus, it is the driving force behind racist policies and practices in educational institutions and in society. Because both liberal and conservative agendas operate within an ideology of White supremacy, both have been inadequate in addressing cultural racism. A multicultural movement that explores the concept of "Whiteness" and that encourages educators and students to take an antiracist stance can provide an important response to cultural racism.     

Teaching for Social Justice: Resources,Relationships, and Anti-Racist Practice

Fear and bigotry have spread through schools on the heels of a presidential campaign that promoted divisiveness grounded in racism and discrimination. This article describes the need for and a path toward explicit anti-racist teaching and anti-racist action to counteract this surge of hate speech. In addition, to create a more equitable and just education system and society, the article outlines actions needed to change key aspects of institutionalized racism and intolerance that are embedded in our schools: a) Correcting the unequal resources leading to inequitable opportunities, programs, teacher and leader distribution; b) providing equal opportunity for the kind of deeper learning demanded in the 21st century: A curriculum that supports critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and applications of knowledge to real-world problems; c) developing social/emotional as well as academic skills; and d) supporting personalization and relationships so that students feel cared about and cared for and experience culturally responsive, engaging, and empowering learning opportunities in contexts that provide supportive relationships and community.     

Engaging White College Students in Productive Conversations About Race and Racism: Avoiding Dominant-Culture Projection and Condescension-Judgment Default

Conversations about racism and White privilege are rarely easy, but are necessary in order to have a more equitable society. Through honest and properly facilitated dialogues, people can work through their prejudices toward other people. In this article the author explores two ways in which White preservice educators inadvertently halt classroom conversations about racism.     

Outside/Inside/Between Sides: An Investigation of Ashkenazi Jewish Perceptions on Their "Race"

This study investigated perceptions of differing generations of Ashkenazi Jewish Americans regarding the concept of their "race," and also their understanding of their "White privilege." In labeling their race, participants constructed an overall spectrum of terms, some reflecting a chosen ethnoracial identity and some reflecting a given ethnoracial assignment. The majority of participants found it extremely difficult to position themselves on the racial binary as currently constructed in the United States in which White is located on one side and "persons of color" on the other. Most participants expressed the belief that Ashkenazim have White privilege vis-á-vis persons of color. This privilege, however, is limited to Jews who can "pass" as White gentiles. To most participants, the categories Jew and Judaism not only confound the U.S. racial binary but also expose the fact that race as a concept is a social construction (often arbitrary) reflecting historical, social, economic, and cultural contexts.     

A Culturally Responsive Alternative to “Drill and Kill” Literacy Strategies: Deep Roots,Civil Rights

This article describes two approaches to improving literacy in a high poverty, diverse urban high school. One curriculum program, “Striving Readers,” included a prescribed course of study for students reading below grade level along with schoolwide strategies. This approach did not improve targeted students’ reading scores or motivation to read. The alternative approach, “Deep Roots: Civil Rights,” was a culturally responsive curriculum that had a strong impact on the identified students’ academic development as well as their understanding of racism in this country. An examination of “Striving Readers” and “Deep Roots: Civil Rights” projects provides insight into the impact of the curriculum on student achievement and motivation. At a time when many schools are implementing the Common Core State Standards, this article is a reminder that a compelling, rigorous, culturally responsive curriculum best serves all our nation's schoolchildren. Projects such as “Deep Roots: Civil Rights” provide an effective alternative or complement to prescribed reading programs.     

White Counseling Supervisees’ Experiences Working with Latino Youth: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of White counseling students who facilitated a group intervention with Latino adolescents. A phenomenological approach revealed several challenges experienced by the counselors in working across race and culture. Two major themes that emerged from the analysis included counselors’ lack of cultural knowledge and the presence of White racial bias. These experiences engendered the counselors’ self-doubt regarding their abilities to work effectively across culture. Suggestions for training and supporting future professionals in work across race and ethnicity are included, with examples of supervisory responses to learner’s biased statements.     

Linguistic Privilege: Why Educators Should be Concerned

Awareness of privilege and the unearned power that it brings those who have it is a crucial aspect of becoming a multicultural educator. For some time White and male privilege has been a topic of discussion among educators and people concerned about social justice. All aspects of privilege need to be understood and articulated in order to continue our work to provide equitable educational opportunities for all. This article focuses on Standard native English speaker's linguistic privilege and how educators can increases their awareness of it in order to more equitably educate students learning English.     

Effective Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Across Disciplines

Resistance to multicultural curriculum transformation has long been assumed to be a function solely of faculty racism, sexism, classism, and so forth, especially in the fields of "advanced" mathematics and "hard" sciences. Although this may account for a percentage of that resistance, it is a small percentage. In fact, most faculty are interested in multiculturally transforming their curriculum. The problem is that few know how to go about doing it. Until recently, few, if any, doctoral programs included coursework on how to teach one's discipline, much less how to teach it from a multicultural perspective. Faculty need opportunities to learn how to develop multiculturally oriented curricula content, pedagogical approaches, and methods of evaluating student learning and teaching effectiveness. Faculty also need opportunities to learn how to build positive relationships with increasingly diverse bodies of students, and how to create more supportive educational environments for that interaction to occur. This article provides faculty with an overview of effective approaches to multicultural curriculum transformation, applicable across disciplines vis-á-vis content, pedagogy, evaluation, relationship building, and environment creation.     

“Is caste race?” Discourses of Racial Indianization

This paper investigates how the official discourse of race and caste are constructed in response to the Dalits’ claims that casteism is racism and caste should be included in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Xenophobia (WCAR held in Durban in 2001). The research question driving this project probes into discursive strategies and logics, which deny any association of caste with race in the Indian context and the significance of race denial. The paper also questions whether the denial of association of race and caste is indicative of racial Indianization. I argue that in India, race lives through the category of caste as a form of racial Indianization.     

Black Like Who?: The Class of 2014 Considers Race in Dear White People

Modern educational institutions were associated with the separation of children from ordinary people and of the schoolhouse from the ordinary world, creating an educational subculture and a minority population of schoolchildren. Passage through this subculture became a universal shared experience. Higher education grew at the same time into an experience that separated those who went to college from those who did not, becoming a basis for the modern class system. Popular culture reflects this split as the college movie, a genre that addresses only part of the movie audience. As in other American institutions, there is also a split between the worlds of Black and White colleges. Only the mainstream White version of college appeared in movies until recently. The African-American-themed college movie was pioneered in School Daze. Dear White People followed that lead. The movie concerns a generation of Black college students whose perspectives rest on a familiarity with more than a half century of ideas about race in America.     

When Multicultural Education Is Not Enough

In the face of rising white nationalism, multicultural education is simply not enough. In addition to suggestions for curriculum and instruction, in this article the author suggests that teachers, parents, administrators, and students need to be organizing to push back against this tide of racism, sexism, and xenophobia and find ways to concretely support their students and communities.     

Naming a Personal “Unearned” Privilege: What Pre-service Teachers Identify After a Critical Multicultural Education Course

This qualitative study systematically documents pre-service teachers' responses to a writing prompt asking them to name a personal “unearned” privilege on an end-of-term final assessment. Findings suggest that typical White/European heritage pre-service teachers can name privileges that have advantaged their own lives, even after one 14-week critical multicultural education course. Categories reveal patterns in participants' responses about their own privilege that are traditionally attended to in critical multicultural education curriculum, such as White privilege. However, student responses show that students are most comfortable talking about inherited privileges related to social class and race is named at a lower rate. Other responses show a range of privileges that students can draw on when they reflect on the structured nature of privilege in society. Overall, our findings suggest that when opportunities are created for students to grapple with complex, personal, emotional concepts, the vast majority of students are willing and able to perform this type of reflection and analysis. This work begins a discussion of what kinds of social privilege are more easily discussed in a high stakes assessment after experiences in critical multicultural education. Our findings provide nuanced understandings of how typical pre-service teachers name their own personal unearned privileges and deconstruct their experiences of privilege. Our findings suggest that attention to privileges associated with social class could provide powerful entry into examinations of other personal privileges in critical multicultural education.     

Strategies for Incorporating "Racism" Into a Multicultural Education Foundations Course

A primary component of any course in multicultural education must be the issue of racism. However, strong consideration must be given on how best to approach this topic. Although there is no "one best way" to help preservice teachers begin to understand and confront the issue of racism, this article provides an overview of the approach used by the authors in a required course on multicultural education at the University of Nebraska. Key aspects of the approach include establishing a safe learning environment based on the principles of effective dialogue, cultural immersion tactics, and specific resources. Several strategies are shared to generate discussion and to help preservice teachers understand the many dimensions of racism and the ways in which it has been perpetuated.     

Using Music as Historical Text in Teaching European History

ABSTRACT

With a greater emphasis on understanding how meaning has been constructed by past societies, historians and university students have in recent years become familiar with using a wide range of historical sources. This article considers practical ways in which music – of different kinds – can be used as source material for historical investigation in university teaching. It suggests that by relating musical examples to categories of analysis already widely used in history, such as class, race, gender and citizenship, music can profitably be integrated with and used alongside other kinds of historical evidence, for example literary sources and visual images.     

The Responsibilities of White Teacher Candidates and Teacher Educators in Developing Racial Literacy

This article aims to help teacher educators consider how to build racial literacy in their White teacher candidates, providing guidance through pedagogical strategies and approaches based on our and others’ research. In addition, much of the pedagogy that we developed in working with our White teacher candidates can be translated to teachers working with White students at other levels, and it can also help teacher educators develop their own racial literacy.     

Embodied inter-referencing: encounters with and among “Asian” students in the Australian classroom

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the pedagogical practice of referencing my experiences as a transnational Korean American woman in the classroom and considers how it opens up space for domestic and international students of East, Southeast, and South Asian backgrounds to reflect on their different identities, histories, and cultures. In particular, it focuses on how this practice enables Asian students to share their experiences of and insights about racial difference, racism, and whiteness in Australia and other parts of the world. Building on the concept of Asian “inter-referencing” from Chua Beng Huat (2015), I coin the term “embodied inter-referencing” to describe the strategic ways I use autobiographical narrative to create an inclusive, interactive, and mutually respectful learning space. I centre here on how some Asian students respond to this strategy by telling their own stories and in the process, create transnational, diasporic, and inter-Asian affective communities inside and outside the classroom.