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Educated in Whiteness: Table of Contents

Educated in Whiteness

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Whiteness, Diversity, and Educators’ Good Intentions

Niceness and Whiteness in Action

Educated in Whiteness

Niceness as a Mechanism of Whiteness in Schools

Seeing Whiteness through Ethnography

This Is the Place

Birch Secondary School

Spruce Secondary School

Overview of the Chapters in This Book

Chapter One: “Equity Has to Be a Priority”: Converging Interests and Displacing Responsibility

Policy on the Books, Policy in Practice

Displacing Responsibility for Equity to Individual Schools

Site-Based Leadership

Deficit Beliefs about Youth of Color

Perceiving “Need”

When Interests Converge and Equity Is a Policy Imperative

Assessment Services

Language Services

Refugee Services

Converging Interests and Cost Controls

Investing in Whiteness at the Expense of Equity

Chapter Two: Engaging Multicultural Education: Safety in Sameness or Drawing Out Difference?

Multicultural Education as Powerblind Sameness

Learning Styles

Human Relations

Safe Engagement with Diversity

Powerblind Sameness and Whiteness

Multicultural Education as Colorblind Difference

Difference Discourses at Birch

Difference Discourses at Spruce

Colorblind Difference in Practice

Colorblind Difference and Whiteness

The Ambiguity between Sameness and Difference

Sameness, Difference, and Whiteness

Chapter Three: Practicing Politeness through Meaningful Silences

Silencing Race

Racially Coded Language

Teacher Silence

Silencing Students

Some Exceptions: When Educators Do Engage Race

Silencing Sexuality

Homophobia and Heterosexism at Spruce and Birch

A Single Exception

Other Systemic Silences

Thinking through Influence, Intentionality, and Implications

Chapter Four: “It Isn’t Even Questioned”: Equality as Foundational to Schooling and Whiteness

So What Is Equality?

Equality in Action: Ruby Payne and the Culture of Poverty

Distinct Engagement with Equality

Shaping and Maintaining Spruce’s Reputation

The Meaning of Excellence

Normativity in the Presence of Difference

ESL: Seeking Equality while Assuming Deficits

Equality through Assimilation

Accepting Whiteness

Birch’s Contradictions of Success

An Academic Focus to Level the Playing Field

A Standardized Academic Culture

Broaching Systemic Change

Equality, Success, and Whiteness

Chapter Five: Obscuring Whiteness with Liberalism: Winners and Losers in Federal School Reform

Classical Liberalism, the Individual, and Whiteness

SIG Policy: Schools Take Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

Why the School Improvement Grant? Why Now?

The Individual: A Liberal Distraction from Structural Problems

Reifying Whiteness through Policy

The SIG Effort at Birch: Pursuing “Truth” at the Expense of Equity

Contests for Control

The Meaning of Merit (Pay)

Losing Sight of Equity

Who Wins? Who Loses?

Conclusion: Engagement and Struggle within the “Culture of Nice”

Toxicity

A Nicely Bundled Package

Educating against Whiteness

Acknowledgments

Notes

Introduction

1. “Equity Has to Be a Priority”

2. Engaging Multicultural Education

3. Practicing Politeness through Meaningful Silences

5. Obscuring Whiteness with Liberalism

Conclusion

References

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Portions of chapter 2 were previously published in "Making Sense of Multicultural Education: A Synthesis of the Literature," Multicultural Perspectives 11, no. 1 (2009): 43–48, and in "Multicultural Education and the Protection of Whiteness," American Journal of Education 120, no. 1 (2013). Portions of chapter 3 were previously published in "I Don't Want to Hear That! Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools," Anthropology and Education Quarterly 39, no. 3 (2008): 314–33. Portions of chapter 4 were previously published in "Common Sense Understandings of Equality and Social Change: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Liberalism at Spruce Middle School," International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 22, no. 6 (2009): 755–68.

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