White Women Getting Real About Race - 9781579224585

“The women writing the chapters of this volume are so different, one from the other, so intricate in their knowledge and understanding, and so open in describing their failures and mistakes, that they present us with a panoply of experiences. And from this panoply we take a selection of lessons learned. We extract from each chapter things we can take with us and incorporate into our lives and teaching. Each of these women is a self-reflective person. Perhaps, more than anything else, the cumulative effect of being in the presence of such willing self-reflection and the innovation that comes from it, is the most important lesson to be learned here. It is through such reflective work that change is made, that progress happens. These White women show us how it can be done."?Julie Landsman, speaker and consultant, with extensive teaching experience in Minnesota Public School and Universities

For many White women teachers and teachers in training – who represent the majority of our teaching force today – the issue of race is fraught with discomfort. It may challenge assumptions, evoke a sense of guilt, or give rise to a fear of making mistakes or saying the wrong thing.

This book presents the first-person stories of White women teachers who tell us not only how they have grappled with race in diverse classrooms, but how they continue to this day to be challenged by issues of color and privilege.

These are no stories of heroic feats or achievement of perfection, but stories of self-disclosure that lay bare their authors’ emotions, ideas, curiosity, vulnerability, and reflections as they engaged with race, and challenged practices of color blindness and empathetic distance. Avoiding abstract educational lingo, these teachers come clean about the emotional cost of dealing with racism, White privilege, and fear of being racist in our rapidly diversifying schools.