Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms

George Yancy is Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University. Maria del Guadalupe Davidson is Assistant Professor of Business Communication and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma.

"In a seemingly post-racial society, ignoring race and denying racism have been the sine qua non of whiteness. Yet the reality of racism continues to persist in subtle and not so subtle ways. Powerfully honest and gripping, the essays in Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms offer a gift of candor and courage by daring to gaze boldly at whiteness. While these testimonies will be painfully familiar to some readers, for others they may be sufficiently disturbing to shatter presumptions of innocence and halt evasions of responsibility. This volume is an indispensable pedagogical tool that can help make social justice education more effective."—Barbara Applebaum, Professor of Philosophy of Education, Syracuse University"George Yancy, Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, and the authors of this magnificent volume have revealed an existential philosophy of praxis that is both critically engaging and pedagogically transformative. It is a courageous book that can help to untangle the tragic and murderous history of race in the United States, and shed a different kind of light on human sociality, one that reveals how together we can create transformative knowledge through critical self-reflection. This book is destined to become a classic."—Peter McLaren, Professor of Urban Education, University of California, Los Angeles and Distinguished Fellow in Critical Studies, Chapman University

• 1 "The Whiteness is Thick": Predominantly White Classrooms, Student of Color Voice, and Freirian Hopes Kirsten T. Edwards2 This Bridge Called My Body: Talking Race through Embodying Difference Antonia Randolph3 Staying in the Conversation Dyan Watson4 Race-ing the Curriculum: Reflections on a Pedagogy of Social Change Kathy Glass5 Teaching White Settler Subjects Antiracist Feminisms Jo-Anne Lee6 Pedagogical Contours of Race and Racism Clarence Sholé Johnson7 A Letter to My Kinfolk on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Emancipation A. Todd Franklin 8 Racialized Consciousness and Learned Ignorance: Trying to help White People Understand Arnold Farr 9 On Why Race Matters: Teaching the Relevance of the Semantics and Ontology of Race Clevis Headley 10 Unveiling Whiteness in Higher Education: Scholars of Color and Double Consciousness Zeus Leonardo 11 Metacognitive RACLaGE Reflection: A Black Professor’s Journey to Use the Master’s Tools to Dismantle His House Karsonya Wise Whitehead12 The Racialized Feminist Killjoy in White Academia: Contesting White Entitlement Benita Bunjun13 Race In(Out)side the Classroom: On Pedagogy and the Politics of Collegiality Nana Osei-Kofi14 Immersion Diversity: Teaching Tourism, Travel Writing and Race from the Inside Out Meta G. Carstarphen15 Pedagogical challenges of "Teaching the Global": Race, Nation, and Transnational feminist praxis Sanjukta Mukherjee16 Teaching Indigenous Classes in Non-Indigenous Classrooms Joe Watkins