Whiteness encompasses the acts, decisions, policies, laws, systems, and institutions that allow racial hegemony to saturate everyday life for people of color.
Published in Chapter:
Interrogating White Saviorism, Fragility, and Innocence in K-12 Teacher Education: An Ontology of Radical Love
James A. Gambrell (Kennesaw State University, USA) and Anita Bright (Portland State University, USA)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 24
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-9567-1.ch006
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.