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Full-Text Articles in Education

“When Saying You Care Is Not Really Caring”: Whiteness And The Role Of Disgust, Cheryl E. Matias, M. Zembylas Sep 2015

“When Saying You Care Is Not Really Caring”: Whiteness And The Role Of Disgust, Cheryl E. Matias, M. Zembylas

Cheryl Matias

Drawing on one of the author’s experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion studies, it is shown how whiteness ideology erroneously translates disgust for people of color to false professions of pity or caring. This phenomenon is particularly interesting because care, sympathy, and love are emotions that are routinely performed by teacher candidates (who are predominantly white females) and embedded in teacher …


“Tears Worth Telling: Urban Teaching And The Possibilities Of Racial Justice”, Cheryl E. Matias Sep 2015

“Tears Worth Telling: Urban Teaching And The Possibilities Of Racial Justice”, Cheryl E. Matias

Cheryl Matias

Silencing race dialogue in urban classrooms is painful for students of color. The author of this article, an urban teacher, documents her resistance to colorblind racism by strategically including race in daily classroom practices. She argues that acknowledging emotionality and Whiteness are essential steps that teachers must take to reinvest in prolonged racially-just projects.


“What Is Critical Whiteness Doing In Our Nice Field Like Critical Race Theory?”, Cheryl E. Matias, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Dorothy Garrison-Wade, Madhavi Tandon, Rene Galindo Sep 2015

“What Is Critical Whiteness Doing In Our Nice Field Like Critical Race Theory?”, Cheryl E. Matias, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Dorothy Garrison-Wade, Madhavi Tandon, Rene Galindo

Cheryl Matias

Critical Race Theory (CRT) revolutionized how we investigate race in education. Centralizing counter-stories from people of color becomes essential for decentralizing white normative discourse—a process we refer to as realities within the Black imagination. Yet, few studies examine how whites respond to centering the Black imagination, especially since their white imagination goes unrecognized. We propose utilizing Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) to support CRT to aid in deconstructing the dimensions of white imaginations. Our findings describe how the white imagination operates inside the minds of white teacher candidates, namely through their (a) emotional disinvestment, (b) lack of critical understanding of race, …


“Push It Real Good!”: The Challenge Of Challenging Dominant Discourses Regarding Race In Teacher Education, Kara Mitchell, Cheryl E. Matias, Dorothy Garrison-Wade, Rene Galindo, Madhavi Tandon Sep 2015

“Push It Real Good!”: The Challenge Of Challenging Dominant Discourses Regarding Race In Teacher Education, Kara Mitchell, Cheryl E. Matias, Dorothy Garrison-Wade, Rene Galindo, Madhavi Tandon

Cheryl Matias

Despite efforts to redesign an urban teacher education program for social justice and equity, faculty became aware of racialized issues teacher candidates of color faced in the program. Therefore, this study examined the perspectives of teacher candidates to learn about how race is impacting teaching and learning for pre-service teachers. Overall, we discovered the dominant narratives, often called majoritarian stories (Love, 2004), were extremely difficult to disrupt and essentially remained largely intact for teacher candidates in our program. In addition, we found that majoritarian stories helped to maintain a level of superficiality for teacher candidates regarding issues of race. For …


“Loving Whiteness To Death: Sadomasochism, Emotionality, And The Possibility Of Humanizing Love”, Cheryl E. Matias, Ricky Lee Allen Sep 2015

“Loving Whiteness To Death: Sadomasochism, Emotionality, And The Possibility Of Humanizing Love”, Cheryl E. Matias, Ricky Lee Allen

Cheryl Matias

Although scholars have articulated how whites institutionally, economically, and socially invest in their whiteness, they have paid little attention to white emotionality. By explicating a critical, more humanizing theory of love that accounts for the painful process of sharing in the burden of creating humanity, this psychoanalytic theoretical essay illustrates how the norms and values of white emotionality are premised on a sadomasochistic notion of love. Finally, the authors re-imagine a different set of norms and values through a critical humanizing pedagogy of love, one that can only be realized when whites learn to “love whiteness to death.” That is, …


And Our Feelings, Just Don’T Feel It Anymore”: Re- Feeling Whiteness, Resistance, And Emotionality, Cheryl E. Matias Sep 2015

And Our Feelings, Just Don’T Feel It Anymore”: Re- Feeling Whiteness, Resistance, And Emotionality, Cheryl E. Matias

Cheryl Matias

To effectively deliver racially just projects, we must theoretically understand from where emotional resistance to them stems, why this resistance is regularly expressed, and what role they play in stifling antiracism. This theoretical paper examines how emotional investment in whiteness recycles normative behaviors of white resistance and unveils how they painfully reinforce the supremacy of whiteness. Using a black feminist approach to emotionality and an interdisciplinary approach to critical whiteness studies and critical race theory, this paper begins with positing how the emotions of white resistance are rooted in the shame of revealing a repressed childhood racial abuse. The concern …


Beginning With Me: Accounting For A Researcher Of Color’S Counterstories In Socially Just Qualitative Design, Cheryl E. Matias Sep 2015

Beginning With Me: Accounting For A Researcher Of Color’S Counterstories In Socially Just Qualitative Design, Cheryl E. Matias

Cheryl Matias

To avoid simplification, a methodological process that contextualizes decisions made in qualitative design must exist. Employing Critical Race Theory’s counterstorytelling, I examine how qualitative research void of personal contextualization that informs design, renders simple designs. Since counterstorytelling reveals a nuanced understanding of racism, it becomes an applicable tool that informs racially just research design; thus, counterstorytelling results in complexification, a process rendering research designs more sophisticated. I propose that too much personal distance between researcher and research ultimately masks White hegemonic designs while marginalizing designs brought forth by the contextualization of researchers of color. This paper humbly offers a step-by-step …