Cheryl E. Matias

‘When saying you care is not really caring’: emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education

Drawing on one of the author’s experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion studies, it is shown how whiteness ideology erroneously translates disgust for people of color to false professions of pity or caring. This phenomenon is particularly interesting because care, sympathy, and love are emotions that are routinely performed by teacher candidates (who are predominantly white females) and embedded in teacher education. Yet not much literature theorizes how these performative emotions are not exempt of whiteness ideology. To engage in a genuine process of antiracism, we argue that the emotions that undergird teachers’ dispositions need to be critically and sensitively unpacked. We end with implications for teacher education, particularly in relation to pedagogical ways of identifying and interrogating narratives of caring-as-hidden disgust and cultivating critical compassion.

What Is Critical Whiteness Doing in Our Nice Field Like Critical Race Theory? Applying CRT and CWS to Understand the White Imaginations of White Teacher Candidates.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) revolutionized how we investigate race in education. Centralizing counter-stories from people of color becomes essential for decentralizing white normative discourse—a process we refer to as realities within the Black imagination. Yet, few studies examine how whites respond to centering the Black imagination, especially since their white imagination goes unrecognized. We propose utilizing Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) to support CRT to aid in deconstructing the dimensions of white imaginations. Our findings describe how the white imagination operates inside the minds of white teacher candidates, namely through their (a) emotional disinvestment, (b) lack of critical understanding of race, (c) resurgence of white guilt, and (d) recycling of hegemonic whiteness, all of which negatively impact their role in anti-racist teaching in urban schools.

“Tending to the Heart of Communities of Color: Towards Critical Race Teacher Activism”

Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies assert colorblindness flourishes when most urban teachers who are White feel emotionally uncomfortable to engage in dynamics of race in the classroom. Colorblind ideology distorts urban teaching because it presumes (a) many White teachers are missionaries trained to save and (b) urban schools are pathological deficits that need to be saved. We propose a community of color epistemological approach that draws from emotional strengths found inside urban communities of color and supports the pedagogical and emotional investment needed to (a) operate critical race activism inside urban classrooms and (b) disrupt the normalcy of Whiteness in schools. We present a counterstory of how one urban teacher engaged in critical race teacher activism.

“Why do you make me hate myself?”: Re-teaching Whiteness, abuse, and love in urban teacher education

Teacher educators are constantly trying to improve the field to meet the needs of a growing urban populace. Inclusion of socially just philosophies in the curriculum is indeed essential, yet it can mask the recycling of normalized, oppressive Whiteness. This reflective and theoretical paper employs critical race theory and critical Whiteness studies to deconstruct Whiteness, abuse, and love in teacher education. Using an interdisciplinary and emotion-based approach to understanding Whiteness, this paper examines how denying race during white childhood via a color-blind ideology leaves lasting emotional scars, impressions that perpetuate the institutional silencing of race in teacher education. This “abuse” is projected onto urban students of color and, more broadly, people of color. This paper asserts that until teacher education programs make confronting and exploring Whiteness a priority, they cannot truly love their urban students of color as complete beings and so deny humanity full and just consideration.

Digital Storytelling as Racial Justice Digital Hopes for Deconstructing Whiteness in Teacher Education

Teacher education is replete with an overwhelming presence of Whiteness, a presence that if not explicitly interrogated indefinitely recycles hegemonic Whiteness. Needed are pedagogical strategies that expose the hegemonic invisibility of Whiteness. This critical reflection examines the utilization of digital storytelling by teacher educators of color to pedagogically deconstruct Whiteness in a predominately White, urban-focused teacher education course—a necessary deconstruction if these teacher candidates are to effectively teach urban students of color. Particularly, this article deconstructs four academic years of digital stories produced in a mandatory diversity course in an urban teacher education program and illustrates how digital storytelling itself promotes a critical self-revelation that confront Whiteness in White teacher candidates. The preliminary analyses suggest that digital storytelling is a racially just way of having White teacher candidates self-reflect on their own Whiteness in a multitude of ways, by (a) ending emotional distancing, (b) debunking colorblindness, (c) engaging emotions, and (d) sharing the burden of race.

White Skin, Black Friend: A Fanonian application to theorize racial fetish in teacher education

Abstract In Black Skin, white masks (1967, Grove Press), Franz Fanon uses a psychoanalytic framework to theorize the inferiority-dependency complex of Black men in response to the colonial racism of white men. Applying his framework in reverse, this theoretical article psychoanalyzes the white psyche and emotionality with respect to the racialization process of whites and their racial attachment to Blackness. Positing that such a process is interconnected with narcissism, humanistic emptiness, and psychosis, this article presents how racial attachment becomes racial fetish. Such a fetish reifies whiteness by accumulating fictive kinships with friends of color; hence, the common parlance of ‘But I have a Black friend!’ The article, then, overlays this theoretical interpretation onto the subject of teacher education in the US, specifically urban teacher education programs that are predominantly comprised of white middle-class females who claim a desire to ‘save’ urban students of color. Ending with the dangers and hopes of a more humanistic friendship, this article offers emotional ways one can self-actualize the racialization process.

Critical Race Parenting: Understanding Scholarship/Activism in Parenting Our Children

Parenting is often discussed in the field of education, but frequently in terms of family or community deficiency, rather than strengths (Bonilla Silva, 2006; Few, 2007), particularly when communities of color are being examined. In this conceptual article, we advocate for the use of critical race theory (CRT) in discussions of parenting and utilize counterstorytelling to validate the lived experiences of parents like ourselves, who are critical race scholars as well as mothers of children of color. Our counterstories will be embedded throughout the discussion as a way to highlight the relationships between academic research and lived experience. Through reviews of academic research and counterstorytelling, we explain the relevance of critical race parenting and the ways in which the inclusion of CRT can support more historically situated, contextual, and complex engagements with the interplay between race and parenting of children of color.

“Tears Worth Telling: Urban Teaching and the Possibilities of Racial Justice”

Silencing race dialogue in urban classrooms is painful for students of color. The author of this article, an urban teacher, documents her resistance to colorblind racism by strategically including race in daily classroom practices. She argues that acknowledging emotionality and Whiteness are essential steps that teachers must take to reinvest in prolonged racially-just projects.

Better the Devil You See, than the One You Don't: Bearing Witness to Emboldened En-Whitening Epistemology in the Trump Era.

Abstract Critical scholars of race maintain that racism that is not clearly seen every day is the most dangerous kind. Notwithstanding ‘invisible’ racism qua racism without racists—per some race scholars—explorations on mechanisms of Whiteness in the Trump era must be had. One mechanism is perpetuating epistemological racial ignorance. However, that epistemological moment has passed. Instead, US society is returning to an emboldened en/whitening epistemology characterized by perverse re-appropriation of civil rights terminologies—once used to support People of Color—to instead strengthen White nationalism. Towards racial justice—dismantling White supremacy—we unveil how Whiteness incites an en/whitening epistemological moment so captured in today’s mindsets. Methodologically employing critical hermeneutics, specifically, metaphors, to forever remind Whiteness as dehumanization, this paper identifies the devil of Whiteness so to facilitate the futurity of humanity.

Activism or Slacktivism? The Potential and Pitfalls of Social Media in Contemporary Student Activism

The emergence of social media has greatly influenced 21st-century student activism. It has also given rise to the birth of “slacktivism,” an online form of self-aggrandizing, politically ineffective activism. This theoretical article delves into the conceptualizations of what constitutes student activism versus slacktivism in a digital age. While there are distinctions between the 2, we highlight how most discussions of activism describe how activism is done as opposed to what it is. Within this context, we offer 10 theoretical underpinnings of activism and slacktivism to serve as conceptual points of self-reflection that student activists can use in order to explore whether or not they are truly engaging in activism. This examination, we argue, is critically important as the distinction between slacktivism and activism becomes increasingly muddied. For student activism to realize its democratic and developmental potential, students need to be clear about whether they are engaging in activism or slacktivism.