Timothy J. Lensmire

Ambivalent white racial identities: Fear and an elusive innocence

This article examines the complex social production of white racial identity. Specifically, the author theorizes white peoples fear of people of color and make a case for conceiving of white racial identities as profoundly ambivalent. Drawing from a larger ethnographic interview study conducted in a small, rural, white community in the Midwest of the United States, and grounded in critical whiteness studies, this article explores how Delores, an elementary school teacher, experienced being white, and how being white for Delores was very much intertwined with ways of thinking and feeling that she had learned growing up in this rural community. The purpose is to describe and theorize white identity and whiteness in ways that avoid essentializing them, but that also keep in view white privilege and a larger white supremacist context. A growing number of researchers and educators argue that our previous conceptions of white identity have too often hurt rather than helped our critical pedagogies with white students. This article, then, contributes to a more nuanced and helpful portrait of white racial identity that we might draw on in our social justice efforts.

What Teacher Education Can Learn From Blackface Minstrelsy

Research on the racial identities of White future teachers has assumed and circulated an overly simplified, and ultimately unhelpful, conception of White racial identity. An alternative is needed, which the authors develop with reference to scholarship that explores White people’s participation in blackface minstrelsy. They argue that at the core of White racial selves is a profound ambivalence that must be accounted for if future research is to better illuminate what the racial identities of White future teachers mean for their development as educators.

Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies A Review of White Teacher Identity Literatures From 2004 Through 2014

In this study of White teacher identity literatures, we historicize, define, and advance second-wave White teacher identity studies in education research and teacher education. First, we provide a discussion of methodology used to conduct this study called the synoptic text. Second, we provide an historical account of White teacher identity studies that situates our review of literatures. Third, using the methodology of the synoptic text, we provide a systematic review of White teacher identity studies between 2004 and 2014. Situated within an account of a developing field, we develop the notion of second-wave White teacher identity studies. In our discussion and conclusion, we articulate the pedagogical implications of second-wave White teacher identity studies for education research and teacher education.

How I became white while punching de tar baby

Abstract Drawing on critical whiteness studies, I examine a performance I did over 25 years ago in high school, in which I told a story at an awards program. I interpret my performance as later-day blackface minstrelsy—one without blackface, but with a black folktale and with ways of speaking and moving that my audience recognized as “black.” I build up my interpretation in three layers: the first treats my performance as grounded in a rural sensibility and closeness to the land; the second explores how white working folk created a black “other” who embodied what they longed for and despised; and the third recovers the (surprisingly) hopeful early moves of blackface minstrelsy—moves later abandoned, perverted, in the pursuit of money and respectability. In contrast to typical renderings of white racial identity in educational theory and research, the conception developed here assumes that the social production of white identity involves more than race and that a profound ambivalence exists at the core of white racial selves.

Appropriating others' words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader's writing

Mikhail Bakhtins notion of appropriation is a potentially powerful way to conceptualize discourse development in children. Typically, studies of discourse development have emphasized structural aspects of text. However, children appropriate not only forms, but also words, themes, purposes, and styles. From a developmental point of view, the concept of appropriation raises at least three questions: What is it that children appropriate? Where do they get their material? And what do they do with that material? In an attempt to make sense of appropriation as a developmental construct, we examine one third-graders writing: Suzannes book, The missing piece . We find that Suzanne appropriated material from two major sources: (a) adult-authored text – Margaret Sidneys novel, Five little Peppers and how they grew – and (b) the meanings and values of a stratified local peer culture. We conclude by discussing the significance of this work for future research on childrens discourse development. (Discourse development, Mikhail Bakhtin, peer culture, social context of writing, childrens writing, appropriation)

Defense of the romantic poet? Writing workshops and voice

W E HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSONS from French theorists such as Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, about how traditional, and often Romantic, ideas of the author and writing mystify the workings of language and texts and power. And we have been laboring to revise received ideas of writers and writing in ways that would help us think about school writing and student writers more powerfully. Bakhtin and Dewey, among others, have been and continue to be especially helpful in this work. It turns out, though, that these Romantic ideas are very important to progressive approaches to the teaching and learning of writing in schools. In fact, we often find ourselves thinking and sounding as if Romanticism is good-as in good for imagining and transforming the teaching and learning of writing in schools in support of a critical and creative democratic education. We are not talk-

A Critical Pedagogy of Race in Teacher Education: Response and Responsibility

We teach in a land-grant university located in an urban setting, but it is not an urban university. Rather than reflecting the cultural and linguistic diversity of the metropolitan area and schools, students who attend the university and enroll in our courses for preservice teachers are predominantly white. This context creates a specific set of challenges related to our work as critical educators. We have found that a critical pedagogy of race with white preservice teachers needs to position them as “responsible” without necessarily positioning them to feel “guilty.” While the challenges of doing this work are complex, in this chapter we share texts and pedagogies we have used to constructively address them.

Second-wave white teacher identity studies: toward complexity and reflexivity in the racial conscientization of white teachers

Abstract In this article, we introduce our special issue, ‘Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: Toward Complexity and Reflexivity in the Racial Conscientization of White Teachers.’ We characterize white teacher identity studies as a developing field with important implications for education research and teacher education. Early work in this field focused on documenting, how white teachers denied and evaded the significance of race and white privilege in their work and lives. The articles in this special issue exemplify a second wave of white teacher identity studies which builds on and responds critically to this earlier work. Crucial concerns of this second-wave work include attending to the nuances and complexities of white racial identities, as well as examining the pedagogical, curricular, and institutional contexts within which these identities are taken up.

White anti-racists and belonging

Abstract Grounded in critical whiteness studies and informed by the practices and goals of autoethnography, this article narrates and analyses two stories for what they might teach us about problems of belonging for white anti-racists. In the first story, I recount a verbal attack by a white person against another white person during a conference. I interpret the attack as a scapegoating ritual meant to secure the attacker’s identity and belonging as an anti-racist, and then explore how this attack is a repetition of the kinds of scapegoating engaged in by white people against people of colour. In the second story, I narrate a heated argument I had with my mother during George W. Bush’s second term as president of the U.S. I use the story to consider white people’s fears of abandonment and how these fears might undermine anti-racist pedagogies.

Response to Angel Lin's Review of When Children Write

I remember reading a book on the art of the novel, and remember being enraged by some of the authors comments on Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath. He said that the book should have been the Great American Novel, but was not, because it was fatally flawed. It was fatally flawed because it was unbalanced. It was unbalanced because Steinbeck had not portrayed the rich with the same sort of detail and complexity that he had the poor. Across time, I have tried to figure out why I was so angered by this criticism. In part, I think I simply did not want anything bad said about a book I loved. (I am sure I loved it, in part, because Steinbecks heroes were familiar-I grew up in northern Wisconsin, not Oklahoma, and my family and neighbors were certainly better off than the Joads. But they were recognizable: rural, farming, persevering.) But even more, my anger was fueled by the fact that this critic seemed to assume some sort of equal treatment of rich and poor in all the novels and books and movies that came before Grapes of Wrath. My question for the critic was: Why should Steinbeck lavish attention on the wealthy? They have received more than their fair share.