Chapter 8: “Nice White Ladies”: Race, Whiteness and the Preparation of a More Culturally Responsive Teacher Workforce

This excerpt from the MADtv sketch titled “Nice White Lady,”¹ though exaggerated, poses an intriguing conundrum. Well-meaning White women enter urban schools armed with visions of teaching divorced from the social, political, and cultural realities of where they teach. Eurocentric notions of success drive their passion to help “disadvantaged,” “at-risk” youth whose circumstances preclude them from any chance at achieving meaningful life outcomes. They are good people whose admirable intentions position them to do little more than maintain systems of White dominance. Not surprising, since the abolition of slavery as a state-supported economic institution in the 1860s, White women (e.g., missionaries) were put in positions to “save” and “civilize” Black youth and children of color (Anderson, 1988). Still, today White women, and most persons preparing to teach in urban settings, are ill-equipped to adopt points of view that support their capacity to negotiate professional decisions that lead to evidence of culturally responsive teaching. At the same time, mainstream images of diverse youth attending urban schools construct them as thugs, uneducable, anti-intellectual, and academically disengaged until a nice White lady comes in to save the day.