Chapter 3: “But I Just Never Knew!”: Theorizing and Challenging the Ideologies of Whiteness in Social Studies

The ideological construction of whiteness begins as early as age three in both white children and children of color (Matias, 2016). This is of particular importance to educators in the social sciences, as no matter the age or race of their students, they will have internalized dominant messages about race. Yet the trajectory of the ideologies of whiteness are only heightened as they become further entrenched by the very process of education itself (Leonardo, 2009). In a nation created by and through settler colonialism and chattel slavery (Tuck & Yang, 2012), such social conditions could only manifest as a culture of white supremacy. Historically proving themselves to be sites of social reproduction rather than transformation systems of education, schools are at the center of civilizational and epistemological racism. In short, white people are “shocked” to learn their own histories of domination and oppression that have been hidden in plain sight—and thus the delusional utterance of denial, “But I just never knew!”