Contents
Introduction: Whiteness, Diversity, and Educators’ Good Intentions
Niceness and Whiteness in Action
Niceness as a Mechanism of Whiteness in Schools
Seeing Whiteness through Ethnography
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
Deficit Beliefs about Youth of Color
When Interests Converge and Equity Is a Policy Imperative
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
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
Some Exceptions: When Educators Do Engage Race
Homophobia and Heterosexism at Spruce and Birch
Thinking through Influence, Intentionality, and Implications
Chapter Four: “It Isn’t Even Questioned”: Equality as Foundational to Schooling and Whiteness
Equality in Action: Ruby Payne and the Culture of Poverty
Distinct Engagement with Equality
Shaping and Maintaining Spruce’s Reputation
Normativity in the Presence of Difference
ESL: Seeking Equality while Assuming Deficits
Birch’s Contradictions of Success
An Academic Focus to Level the Playing Field
A Standardized Academic Culture
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
Conclusion: Engagement and Struggle within the “Culture of Nice”
1. “Equity Has to Be a Priority”
2. Engaging Multicultural Education
3. Practicing Politeness through Meaningful Silences
5. Obscuring Whiteness with Liberalism