'By Virtue of Being White': Resistance in anti-racist pedagogy

Abstract

This research, which employs post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theories of identity, investigates processes by which white, racialised identities are inscribed as normative constructions in the discourses of white pre-service teachers at a Canadian university. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with white students whose desires for respectability and legitimacy are at odds with the imminent critique of anti-racist pedagogy. The analysis indicates processes by which research participants are able to profess liberal values and innocence from racist acts while accessing discursive repertoires which perform them as racially dominant. The power of dominant groups to resist oppositional pedagogies problematises the potential for whiteness to affirm itself, even as a virtue, in sites of liberal teacher education. The article questions how white pre-service teachers' desires for goodness might be thought in ways which support instability and flux, notwithstanding students' desires for secure identities.

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