Abstract
Though popular belief and social science analyses often assert the racial tolerance and liberality of institutions of higher education and the white students who attend them, our research reveals young, educated white students’ everyday lives are anything but racially neutral. We pull back the curtain on these “post-racial” assumptions by presenting journal data collected from white students around the U.S. over many years. Our data documents that racist performances are a normal, habituated part of most white students’ social worlds. Nonetheless, we also find that asking students to research and write about their own lives in the context of instruction that addresses the critical realities of systemic racism can be a powerful educational tool. We explore the limits of mainstream educational and multiculturalism approaches in probing the deep realities of systemic racism; address the challenges of confronting our white students’ deeply embedded racial framing; and characterize strategies progressive, antiracist educators should consider in developing a race critical pedagogy for white students.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A number of reports have documented, for example, mock Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday parties (e.g., “Ghetto-Fabulous” at Clemson University; “Bullets and Bubbly” at University of Connecticut law school).
- 2.
All names represent pseudonyms.
- 3.
- 4.
Moore (2007) offers an excellent analysis of how whites construct institutional spaces as “white spaces,” which effectively function to exclude people of color (even as they may gain access to such institutions) by normalizing white political, social and economic power.
- 5.
For a full conceptual elaboration on the white racial frame see Feagin (2013).
- 6.
As Mueller et al. (2007) document, white students are often explicit about their beliefs that Halloween is a specially marked socio-space-time where they can behave in more racially “unacceptable” ways in public, providing further support for this point.
- 7.
A full description of this exercise and data on student responses is described in Mueller (2013b).
References
Allen, R. L. (2005). Whiteness and critical pedagogy. In Z. Leonardo (Ed.), Critical pedagogy and race (pp. 53–68). Malden: Blackwell.
Apollon, D. (2011). Don’t call them ‘post-racial’: Millennials’ attitudes on race, racism and key systems in our society. Full Research Report, Applied Research Center, New York.
Bell, D. (2004). Silent covenants. New York: Oxford University Press.
Blauner, B. (2001). Still the big news: Racial oppression in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (1997). Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation. American Sociological Review, 62, 465–480.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists (2nd ed.). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Bonilla-Silva, E., & Forman, T. A. (2000). ‘I am not a racist but…’: Mapping white college students’ racial ideology in the USA. Discourse and Society, 11(1), 50–85.
Collins, P. H. (2009). Another kind of public education: Race, schools, the media and democratic possibilities. Boston: Beacon.
Conley, D. (2001). Decomposing the black-white wealth gap: The role of parental resources, inheritance, and investment dynamics. Sociological Inquiry, 71, 39–66.
DiTomaso, N. (2013). The American non-dilemma: Racial inequality without racism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Doane, A. (2006). What is racism? Racial discourse and racial politics. Critical Sociology, 32, 255–274.
Douglas, W. O. (1968). Concurring opinion. In Jones et ux. v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409.
DuBois, W. E. B. ([1920] 2003). Darkwater: Voices from within the veil. New York: Humanity Books.
Elisaoph, N. (1999). ‘Everyday racism’ in a culture of political avoidance: Civil society, speech, and taboo. Social Problems, 46, 479–502.
Feagin, J. (2010). Racist America (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Feagin, J. (2013). The white racial frame (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Feagin, J. R., & Vera, H. (2008). Liberation sociology (2nd ed.). Boulder: Paradigm.
Feagin, J. R., Vera, H., & Imani, N. (1996). The agony of education: Black students at white colleges and universities. New York: Routledge.
Frankenberg, R. (1996). ‘When we are capable of stopping, we begin to see’: Being white, seeing whiteness. In B. Thompson & S. Tyagi (Eds.), Names we call home: Autobiography of racial identity (pp. 3–17). New York: Routledge.
Freire, P. (2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed. 30th Anniversary edition. New York: Continuum.
Gallagher, C. (2003). White reconstruction in the university. In M. S. Kimmel & A. L. Ferber (Eds.), Privilege: A reader (pp. 299–318). Boulder: Westview Press.
Gatson, S. N. (2006). Living, breathing, teaching sociology: Using the micro to illuminate the macro. In C. Stanley (Ed.), Faculty of color teaching in predominantly white institutions (pp. 153–165). Bolton: Anker Publishing.
Goldsmith, P. A. (2006). Learning to understand inequality and diversity: Getting students past ideologies. Teaching Sociology, 34, 263–277.
Gramsci, A. (1971). In Q. Hoare, & G. N. Smith (Eds. & Trans.), Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Haddad, A. T., & Lieberman, L. (2002). From student resistance to embracing the sociological imagination: Unmasking privilege, social conventions, and racism. Teaching Sociology, 30, 328–341.
Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106, 1707–1791.
Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Hooks, B. (2010). Teaching critical thinking: Practical wisdom. New York: Routledge.
Johnson, H. B. (2006). The American dream and the power of wealth. New York: Routledge.
Katznelson, I. (2005). When affirmative action was white. New York: W. W. Norton.
Keister, L. (2000). Wealth in America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leonardo, Z. (2005). The color of supremacy: Beyond the discourse of ‘white privilege. In Z. Leonardo (Ed.), Critical pedagogy and race (pp. 37–52). Malden: Blackwell.
Leonardo, Z. (2009). Race, whiteness, and education. New York: Routledge.
Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Moore, W. L. (2007). Reproducing racism: White space, elite law schools, and racial inequality. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mueller, J. C. (2013a). The social reproduction of systemic racial inequality. PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.
Mueller, J. C. (2013b). Tracing family, teaching race: Critical race pedagogy in the millennial sociology classroom. Teaching Sociology, 41, 172–187.
Mueller, J. C. (2008). Further student accounts of cross-racial costuming during Halloween. Unpublished research, Texas A&M University, College Station.
Mueller, J. C., Dirks, D., & Picca, L. H. (2007). Unmasking racism: Halloween costuming and engagement of the racial other. Qualitative Sociology, 30, 315–335.
Oliver, M. L., & Shapiro, T. M. (2006). Black wealth/white wealth (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Picca, L. H., & Feagin, J. R. (2007). Two-faced racism: Whites in the frontstage and the backstage. New York: Routledge.
Picca, L. H., & Feagin, J. R. (2008). Experiences of students of color. Unpublished research, University of Dayton, Dayton.
Royster, D. (2003). Race and the invisible hand: How white networks exclude black men from blue-collar jobs. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Shanks, T. R. W. (2005). The Homestead Act: A major asset-building policy in American history. In M. Sherraden (Ed.), Inclusion in the American dream: Assets, poverty, and public policy (pp. 20–41). New York: Oxford University Press.
Shapiro, T. M. (2004). The hidden cost of being African American. New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Danley, L. L. (2007). ‘Assume the position. You fit the description’: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51, 551–578.
Yosso, T. J., Smith, W. A., Ceja, M., & Solórzano, D. G. (2009). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate for Latina/o undergraduates. Harvard Educational Review, 79, 659–690.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mueller, J.C., Feagin, J. (2014). Pulling Back the “Post-Racial” Curtain: Critical Pedagogical Lessons from Both Sides of the Desk. In: Haltinner, K. (eds) Teaching Race and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7101-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7101-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7100-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7101-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)