Education Commons^™

When The Teacher Is The Token: Moving From Antiblackness To Antiracism, Manya C. Whitaker

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

In this reflective essay I uncover the difficulties Black teacher educators have instructing a predominately white preservice student body about antiblackness without becoming complicit in antiblackness. So often we focus on students as the token representative of their racial/gender/sexual/linguistic identity; however, we teacher educators are also routinely the “only” in a room of white faces, often as students’ first Black professor. We therefore bear the burden of introducing students to whiteness while wondering if our Blackness is being viewed in opposition to, despite, or because of whiteness. How do I convince them of their future students’ humanity without sacrificing my …