by Bree Picower
After learning more about the history of racism through readings, activities, and workshops, most of my preservice teachers, of all races, have a hard time believing all the things they never learned. One student lamented, “So many things were omitted from my primary education, but I was also blatantly misled in my learning of the history of America.” Some point to specific laws or policies that they hadn’t known about such as “that the GI Bill segregated returning veterans by assigning jobs based on their function during the war, or that many Blacks were excluded from college because they could only attend historically Black colleges and universities, which were oversubscribed or located too far away.” The cognitive dissonance of seeing history from a totally new perspective was enough to force most of my White students to make ideological reframes. As one preservice teacher illustrated: “It is dizzying to try to follow, especially when you first try to see the whole picture. I felt almost as if the curtain had been pulled back to show an entire other world which I had never seen before, even though it was right in front of me. Adjectives like foolish, naive, stupid, and blind poured through my thoughts.” While this process can be painful and uncomfortable, it is an important step for making the huge cognitive reframes required to change White worldviews.
As my students worked through the deeply personal journey of realizing that their understanding of the world was based on a Eurocentric perspective, they began making connections to contemporary inequality. As one preservice teacher demonstrated, “It was intriguing to learn about laws that were put in place in the early colonization of America—laws that limited interactions between groups of people based on skin color, laws that discouraged and ultimately prohibited interracial marriage, and laws that initiated the idea of a racial hierarchy that continues to plague our society hundreds of years later.” She went on to make connections to how this continues today: “It is still frustrating to think that these laws and events from several hundred years ago still plague our society on a daily basis.” Connecting the dots between the historical foundations of racism and current inequality is key in being able to make the ideological reframes that are required for understanding systems of racism. Rather than believing in a level playing field in which individual effort is the lever for social change, the teachers began to realize that historical racist policy is responsible for intractable inequality.
IDEOLOGICAL REFRAME: PERCEIVING THAT RACE IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
Another important ideological racial reframe is recognizing that race is a social construction. Due to a lack of historical knowledge about race, many people do not know about how racial categories were created or the political nature of their creation.15 Through participation in a two-day Undoing Racism workshop put on by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a powerful multiracial organization out of New Orleans, my students learned to define race as “a specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (Whites) which assigns human worth and social status using ‘White’ as the model of humanity and the height of achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining power and privilege.”16 Through an overview of scientific racism, students were introduced to eighteenth-century scientist Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy of flora and fauna, Systema Naturae, in which he also classified four varieties of humans: Europeanus (white), Americanus (red), Asiaticus (yellow), and Afer or Africanus (black).17 He placed Europeanus at the top of the superiority hierarchy, categorized as smart, inventive, and ruled by law. At the bottom of the hierarchy, Homo Sapiens Afer were described as crafty, careless, and ruled by caprice. The preservice teachers were also introduced to the Enlightenment-era anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who used the study of human skulls to justify a similar racial hierarchy that identified five human races: Caucasian, Malayan, Ethiopian, American, and Mongolian.
After learning that all humans are genetically 99.9 percent the same—and recognizing that what had been passing as “scientific” or “biological” categorization of race was a social construction used to justify European colonization and slavery—students reframed their understanding about how baseless the concept of race actually is. Learning that race is a socially constructed concept is a critical ideological reframe. As one preservice teacher expressed, “I was most on my growing edge when confronted by the idea that race is a social construct rather than an objective reality. I did not know that much of what we perceive as race is based on a classification system developed in the 1700s by White men who placed themselves at the top of a racial hierarchy.” Understanding this history clears up many misconceptions about what race is. As one preservice teacher explained, “I have always thought of race as being based on skin color, hair color, and facial features but am becoming aware that identity is much more subtle and nuanced than that.”
One potential pitfall some White people might make as they become aware that race is a social construction is to then dismiss the idea of racism. But as the popular saying goes, “Race is imaginary, but racism is real.” It was through Natalia Ortiz of the Center for Racial Justice in Education that I first heard a helpful analogy she shared with my students during a Talking about Race in the Classroom workshop. She explained that money is also a social construction—simply a sheet of paper like any other. After she dared the students to rip up a dollar bill, she explained that because we have ascribed meaning to those pieces of paper and structured our society around them, the construction has very real consequences. This story helped my students realize that although race was made up, the consequences it has on our history and lived experiences are certainly real.
By expanding their understanding of how race is constructed and racism is maintained, White teachers can change their role in upholding systems of racism. Another preservice teacher reflected, “I never understood it [racism] as a system driven by ideology and institutions that I didn’t create but could help perpetuate if complacent and neutral. But now that I am starting to [understand], I recognize that by its standards and society’s, I am a White woman in America.” Coming to see our place in the broader system of racism is a critical reframe required of White people who hope to take anti-racist action. This reframe is necessary for breaking down the ideology of Whites as innocent and good that so many of the curricular Tools of Whiteness function to maintain. Using history to discredit this ideology, White teachers can make the reframes that will cause them to be less likely to teach and behave in ways that uphold this foundational ideology of Whiteness.
INTERNALIZED RACIAL REFRAMES
Shifts within the internalization domain focus on how teachers need to apply big picture ideological reframes to reshape their sense of selves. For White people, internalized racism is associated with how we have taken in and enacted messages of superiority and goodness. When explaining the differences in internalized racism between White people and people of Color, I often share a story that came up with a friend during grad school. We were both struggling with SPSS, a computer program for analyzing statistics; however, we placed the blame for our identical struggle in different places. My friend, who identifies as a Black Puerto Rican, was embarrassed because she felt too “dumb” to figure out the program. I on the other hand blamed the program for not being “intuitive” enough. I blamed the machine, she blamed herself.
While race seemingly had nothing to do with this situation, it demonstrates the way White people have been taught to externalize blame—in contrast to people of Color, who have been socialized to internalize shame and self-doubt. For her, not being able to figure out the program just added to the nagging doubt she had previously revealed to me about her identity as a scholar, making her wonder if she had been accepted into the program because of affirmative action. Being confronted with this computer program didn’t trigger me into having imposter syndrome—or, in other words, doubting my place.18 When we realized that we both were having such different responses to the same challenge, we were able to tease out the role that internalized racism had in it. This helped b
oth of us to reframe the range of ways that we have reacted in various circumstances, recognizing the way internalized racial superiority and inferiority impacted so many aspects of the way we saw ourselves in the world. With this new awareness, I began to recognize aspects of my personality that I had thought had nothing to do with race as actually highly racialized. For example, I had thought of myself as naturally confident in my intelligence but came to realize this was in part a byproduct of being taught to externalize blame and internalize success as part of internalized racial superiority.
The creators of the online resource Dismantling Racism Works Web Workbook have developed a list of other ways that White people have internalized racial superiority. These include the following beliefs:
My world view is the universal world view; our standards and norms are universal
My achievements have to do with me, not with my membership in the white group
I have a right to be comfortable and if I am not, then whoever is making me uncomfortable is to blame
I can feel that I personally earned, through work and merit, any/all of my success
Equating acts of unfairness experienced by white people with systemic racism experienced by People of Color
I have many choices, as I should; everyone else has those same choices
I am not responsible for what happened before, nor do I have to know anything about it; I have a right to be ignorant
I assume race equity benefits only People of Color19
These beliefs serve as justifications for using curricular Tools of Whiteness; therefore, reframing these beliefs is a critical step in moving White teachers toward anti-racism. For White people to reframe within the internalized domain, we have to begin with a seemingly obvious but nevertheless challenging step—simply realizing that we have a race: we are White. This section examines some of the ways White people struggle with this step, including the benefits and biases that come with naming our racial identity.
INTERNALIZED REFRAME: OWNING A WHITE RACIAL IDENTITY
Recognizing Whiteness as a social construction begins to help White people see that we have also been racialized. As Dawn from chapter 2 finally acknowledged, “I never realized I had a race-type thing.” Other preservice teachers were able to extend this recognition of White racial identity: “I had never really thought about myself being White and the implications of that classification. I realized that it makes me uncomfortable and guilty for taking this for granted. I am embarrassed that I have had my head in the sand.” This racial reframe is uncomfortable, so it makes sense that we avoid having a White racial identity. Once it is named, we are forced to see how racism ultimately benefits us.
While this preservice teacher was able to get past her avoidance of owning that she was White, many other White people resist this, often by clinging to our national heritage or religion. I remember going to one of my first anti-racism trainings in 1998 called Beyond Diversity, facilitated by Glenn Singleton, an anti-racism thought leader and author of Courageous Conversations About Race. When he asked us to get into racial affinity groups, I went to the White table. However, a significant number of older Jewish participants refused to join us, demanding a racial affinity group for Jews, despite the fact that “Jewish” is not a race. As a Jewish woman, I remember feeling uncomfortable—I wanted to be respectful of my Jewish elders who had experienced anti-Semitism firsthand and whose generation was closer to the Holocaust. But to be honest, I was also tempted to go to their table because I could avoid the discomfort of having to go to the White table. However, something nagged at me that this too was privilege and a way to use my Jewish identity to avoid the responsibility that comes with identifying as White.
My students also identify with using cultural roots to disassociate with White identity. As one explained:
Many White people would prefer to identify with their European cultural roots rather than just “White.” Though I understand why people might want to distance themselves, I feel like it is extremely unrealistic and harmful for me to attempt to distance myself from my Whiteness. I have to own the “distasteful” parts of being a White person, be comfortable and ready to talk about being White, and live in awareness of my privilege.
Through owning their Whiteness, the preservice teachers reframed to see themselves as a part of, rather than separate from, a system of racism. Instead of relying on the way they had only racialized people of Color, they recognized that they, too, have a racial identity and started to notice the ways they resisted their own racialization.
I have found that more recent White immigrants, particularly those for whom English is their second language, struggle the most with this reframe. Unlike White Americans who have been here for generations, recent White immigrants might arrive here speaking another language and live together in close communities similar to Asians, Latinxs, or immigrants from the African diaspora. They have often faced discrimination because of their immigrant status. Therefore, these White immigrants identify more with the experiences of people of Color than with other White people and resist the racial identification.
I learned a way into this conversation through a story that trainer Bonnie Cushing, with the Undoing Racism workshop, shares with our preservice teachers. She talks about her Jewish family’s assimilation into Whiteness and how many of the cultural practices of her family have diminished over time, starting with language and ending with food. As someone in the generation that follows her, I recognize this pattern with my own family. My immigrant grandparents strongly identified as Jewish: their temple was their community, and they spoke Yiddish, read Hebrew, and cooked Jewish foods. While my parents were active in temple in their childhood, as adults, they only attended temple for the High Holidays, fasted for Yom Kippur, lit Chanukah candles, and quickly forgot most Hebrew and Yiddish, except for a few colloquialisms. While I went to Hebrew school weekly until I was twelve, I was not Bat Mitzvahed and would go to temple only for my practicing cousins’ life events like Bats Mitzvahs and weddings. While I have culturally Jewish idiosyncrasies, Bonnie’s and my shared story explains all the cultural practices our families gave up to provide us with a full-access pass to the privileges of Whiteness. For my White immigrant students, recognizing that they are only a generation or two removed from “full-blown” Whiteness sets off a lot of challenging, but productive, self-reflection.
INTERNALIZED REFRAME: RECOGNIZING THE SYSTEMIC BENEFITS OF BEING WHITE
Understanding history, coupled with owning a White identity, supports teachers in recognizing how we are situated personally in the system of racism. One preservice teacher had a profound realization: “I don’t know much about my family history, but I do know that I am related to several of the founding fathers of this country. It hurts to accept that the privileges that my family have were likely earned on the backs of slaves and that the disenfranchisement of people that I hope to work to help were likely caused in part by my own ancestors.” This White aspiring teacher is applying her newly learned historical information to reframe her own original orientation of herself as a helper to one whose position of advantage was created on the backs of people of Color. This allowed her to move from positioning herself in a patronizing savior stance to recognizing the systemic forces that created the different levels on which she and her students are in terms of racial hierarchies.
Like this preservice teacher, understanding where our privilege came from helps us to reckon with ideas about ourselves, some of which may be valid and some of which could be associated with internalized racism. One of my preservice teachers grappled with the idea that race might have supported her outcomes: “In many ways I do feel as though I worked hard to get to where I am today. It was a blow to my own ego to consider that my race influenced my success, but I can now see that as a possibility.” She was able to acknowledge that race played a role in her life outcome and continued, “It is scary to think that I might not be in the position that I am today if I were of a different race, and it is
disheartening to know that others who have worked hard may never achieve to their full potential based on this same notion.” Without this reframe, White teachers’ work will drip with saviorism or charity. By recognizing that our Whiteness has set us up for success and set others up for marginalization, we are more apt to work to change an unjust system, rather than to “help” those who “just happen to be less fortunate.” This reframe allows us to fight for justice by recognizing that injustice is a vertical fight against a system of oppression instead of holding a horizontal pity party for people of Color.
INTERNALIZED REFRAME: REALIZING THE BIASES THAT COME WITH BEING WHITE
One of the ways that the preservice teachers began to oppose racial hierarchies was to identify—even with the shame involved—their own internalized biases about people of Color. This is such an important step in moving away from curricular Tools of Whiteness because without checking our own internalized racist biases, we cannot recognize when our curriculum is reproducing them. By reframing our preconceptions and identifying how a system of racism instilled them in us, we can apply this reframe to all aspects of teaching, curriculum, interactions, family relationships, and so on. This makes anti-racism a stance instead of a box to check off. As one preservice teacher explained this process, she noted that she started to “question some of my underlying more deeply hidden prejudices: that poor people are that way because they are lazy, that people of Color don’t succeed because they don’t take advantage of the opportunities they have and then blame other people.” She applied this thinking to her own outcomes: “Now I am realizing that the way society is set up does privilege me as a White woman and that I need to be aware of that and work to try and challenge systems that do perpetuate inequality.” This critical internalized reframe is helping her to see how her judgments of others were based on false blaming (and lauding) of individuals instead of societal structures. By reframing their understanding of their racial identity and all that comes with owning it, the preservice teachers were able to move away from unquestioned internalized superiority. This allowed them to take responsibility, which prepared them to move toward anti-racism.