Unmasking White complicity/innocence, critical White studies and the implications for rethinking schooling

grantor: University of TorontoIn this thesis I examine the literature in the field of critical White studies and explore the pedagogical implications for rethinking schooling. I argue that an interrogation of Whiteness is vitally important to informing anti-racism theory and praxis. As White educators our task is to dismantle the pervasive power of Whiteness to define normalcy in our educational institutions. This entails a rigorous and critical problematization of Whiteness as systems of domination that not only marginalize racialized "Others" but unfairly privilege Whites. I analyse processes of transforming Whiteness through deconstructing White positionality and Eurocentric hegemony. Developing a White anti-racist consciousness involves probing our own complicity in White supremacy/racism to see how we have been affected by histories of colonialism and imperialism and are vested in systems of power and privilege. In transforming schooling, space must be created for critical pedagogies of Whiteness within an integrative anti-racism framework.M.A