Abstract
Many become teachers out of a sense of love or a desire to work in a “helping” profession. However, teacher candidates may not anticipate ways in which they may be challenged to probe, confront, and reshape their beliefs of White saviorism, fragility, and innocence. This trio of constructs fits neatly within Critical Race Theory (CRT), which has, of late, been cast as monstrous by those outside of K-12 education. With growing passion, those most fearful or confused by CRT have called for any focus on race to be removed from school settings. Given the recent urgency around the construct of CRT in US educational settings, the authors turn to the primary constructs of this work through which to engage the narratives of White saviorism, fragility, and innocence that have arisen in their classes of teacher candidates. In this chapter, the authors focus in particular on the ontological facet of CRT and seek to map the ways in which their teacher candidates have taken up—and confronted—these interlocking notions.
TopIntroduction: From A Loving Epistemology To A Critical Social Ontology
This chapter is part of a larger project wherein we seek to challenge racial hegemonic structures of privilege and oppression that arise in our classes as teacher educators (Bright & Gambrell, 2016; Gambrell & Bright, 2016). Hegemony transpires when individuals “embrace (and see as normal) the conditions that serve those in power but work against the people’s own interests” (Cranton & Taylor, 2012, p. 9). Similarly, Cordero and Rodriguez (2009) define hegemony as “the deliberate social, political and economic dominance of a particular group that saturates the consciousness of the nation” (p. 139). In a previous phase of this research (Gambrell & Bright, 2016), we analyzed teacher candidates’ epistemologies—or the ways in which they constructed knowledge (Laible, 2000)—about how racial (in)justice is enacted within K-12 schools. As aspiring teachers, this took the form of (in)justices our teacher candidates (TCs) experienced or witnessed as students themselves and as (in)justice they were seeing as TCs looking at the educational system from a new vantage point as teachers (Gambrell, 2018). In contrast to the focus on how an individual forms knowledge in epistemology, ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of existence (Liable, 2000), or what we believe about the nature of reality (Merriam & Kim, 2012). It is this worldview of our teacher candidates—and the role they see themselves in society and schools—that we seek to uncover through this chapter (Gambrell, 2016b).
Through a critical race curriculum, we nudge our teacher candidates from simply understanding the ways racial injustices play out in schools toward actively working to challenge those systems of racial domination (Ladson-Billings & Donner, 2005). We label this a critical social ontology. A critical social ontology is organized around power—who has it and who does not (Bolman & Deal, 2008). From a critical social ontology, students come to understand that governmental, legal, educational, and social systems have been historically designed to reinforce White, male, cisheterosexist patriarchy. Most importantly, a critical social theory perspective requires individual epistemology to be tied to political action (Brookfield, 2012).
In choosing to settle our gaze on the ontological aspects of radical love, Kincheloe (2011) offers valuable insights both in defining what critical ontology can be, and also in providing illumination of some of the larger landscape of the work. Kincheloe explains that a “critical ontological vision helps us in the effort to gain new understandings and insights as to who we can become” (p. 203). Further, he explains:
Key Terms in this Chapter
White Racial Innocence: The positioning of White students as innocent or free from race in educational texts and policies, which frames the student of color as a natural antagonist to this innocence.
Interest Convergence: Interest convergence is the CRT concept that any gains for people of color benefit White individuals equally or more.
Critical Social Ontology: Process through which teacher candidates come to understand their role in society and schools. They come to understand that governmental, legal, educational, and social systems have been historically designed to reinforce White, male, cisheterosexist patriarchy.
White Saviorism: The common media trope that White teachers can “save” or “fix” schools populated by students of color.
Critical Race Theory (CRT): Critical Race Theory is a form of scholarship used to uncover racial inequities in legal and educational systems.
Whiteness, or White Supremacy: Whiteness encompasses the acts, decisions, policies, laws, systems, and institutions that allow racial hegemony to saturate everyday life for people of color.
White Fragility: Because Whiteness is deeply socialized into the collective psyches—including living in relative racial isolation free of race-based stress—of those constructed as White, anger, defensiveness, guilt, argumentation, silence, or frustration often result in discussions about race.
Ontology: The study of beliefs about the nature of reality.
Epistemology: The study of how one comes to know or believe something.