White Faculty Habitus and the Pedagogical Encounter With Race in Criminal Justice and Criminology

Criminology and criminal justice undergraduate programs funnel future employees into the criminal legal system, yet we rarely examine how the (de)racialization of white faculty shapes what gets taught about race and justice. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, deeply ingrained systems of habits, this article explores how 17 white faculty who use a critical approach to teaching about race developed their understanding of race. Through thematic analysis of interviews conducted over a semester, we trace how early deracialized experiences form a primary habitus. Focusing on graduate education, we find that graduate school inculcated an academic habitus that largely confirmed rather than disrupted the primary habitus, leaving faculty with structural awareness of race and racism but experiential distance from it. As a result, in the classroom, this habitus positions whiteness as an asset and a liability. It eases race discussions, facilitates retreat into race-neutral language, and enables faculty to contain student pushback, strategies that feel responsible but leave white students' racialized knowledge intact. We conclude by discussing that good intentions and critical frameworks are insufficient without self-awareness of how deracialized early experiences shape what faculty see as normal, neutral, or risky.