Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

“What Is Critical Whiteness Doing In Our Nice Field Like Critical Race Theory?” Applying Crt And Cws To Understand The White Imaginations Of White Teacher Candidates, Cheryl Matias, Kara Mitchell, Dorothy Garrison-Wade, Rene Galindo, Madhavi Tandon

Dorothy Garrison-Wade

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, …