Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Doctor of Education
Major
Educational Practice
Date of Defense
7-10-2018
Graduate Advisor
Dr. Matthew Davis
Co-Advisor
Dr. Thomasina Hassler
Committee
Dr. Carl Hoagland
Dr. Timothy Makubuya
Abstract
This paper examines the ways middle-class, white, women, who comprise more than eighty percent of the teaching force in public schools perpetuate white supremacy in public schools, explicitly at looking at how and what middle-class, white teachers say to and about their students of color. I interrogate and analyze my own beliefs and experiences, using autoethnography, revealing my journey from learning about my white privilege to understanding how I perpetuate white privilege in schools. Using the theoretical framework of Critical Whiteness Studies, I will interrogate my own whiteness as I confront and wrestle with whiteness in myself and in five composite characters. I recollect these vignettes in cornerstone stories as they are the foundation to how I have come to understand race in the world around me. I detail and analyze these experiences in four cornerstone stories: But I’m Not a Racist: Colorblind Racism in America, Us and Them: Otherizing Students of Color in Schools, Do Black Lives Matter? The Impact of the Murder of Mike Brown on White Lives, and The Criminalization of Black Youth.
OCLC Number
1076358889
Recommended Citation
Nomensen, Theresa, "Teacher Talk: How Many White, Middle-class, Female Educators Perpetuate White Privilege in School" (2018). Dissertations. 770.
https://irl.umsl.edu/dissertation/770
Included in
Educational Methods Commons, Elementary Education and Teaching Commons, Other Education Commons, Other Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons