Defining, Defending, & Delusion: White Social Studies Teachers Grappling With Whiteness

This study explores rural white social studies teachers’ understandings of their whiteness and racial identity. In this multiple-case study, four participants engaged with a reader designed to elicit discussion and reflection on whiteness. Over the course of one week, teachers read works by George Lipsitz, Reverend Thandeka, Charles W. Mills, and James Baldwin. Grounded in the work of these scholars and the theory of Critical Whiteness Studies, this study asked participants to reflect on, discuss, and design lesson plans to be implemented in their classrooms based on their understanding of whiteness. Data was gathered in the form of interviews, reader meeting transcripts, reflection journals, and lesson plans. At the time of this study, each participant was teaching social studies in various rural public-school districts in the Appalachian region. Despite having spent a great deal of time thinking about race, participants reported having thought very little about their own racial identities. Participants grappled with the ways they had been socialized into whiteness as well as how they understood whiteness as operating in their social studies classrooms. The four case studies presented here highlight how rural white social studies teachers conceptualize their and others’ whiteness and rurality—discussions centered on culture, personal and institutional responsibilities, history, and comfort. The reader elicited powerful conversations, and each participant cited ways that the readings challenged, solidified, changed, or deepened their understanding of whiteness.