“Why Do You Make Me Hate Myself?”: Re-Teaching Whiteness, Abuse, and Love in Urban Teacher Education

Source: Teaching Education, Volume 27, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 194-211

This article employs critical race theory and critical Whiteness studies to deconstruct Whiteness, abuse, and love in teacher education.

Using an interdisciplinary and emotion-based approach to understanding Whiteness, this article examines how denying race during white childhood via a color-blind ideology leaves lasting emotional scars, impressions that perpetuate the institutional silencing of race in teacher education. This “abuse” is projected onto urban students of color and, more broadly, people of color.

This article asserts that until teacher education programs make confronting and exploring Whiteness a priority, they cannot truly love their urban students of color as complete beings and so deny humanity full and just consideration.