Chapter 12: Mistaking Malice: Rethinking the Challenge of Teaching White Students About Race at a Predominantly White Institution

Teaching about race and racism is a challenging enterprise for any educator. Within any class—specifically a course addressing issues of culture, race, and social justice—there is a range of identities, experiences, and comfort-levels teacher educators must navigate for effective engagement with what are oftentimes complex and emotional ideas. Additionally, all participants in a class—students and educators alike—enter the subject with assumptions and misinformation that have been reinforced over time, creating intellectual and emotional snafus related to identity and experience. When an educator’s racial identity is different from a student’s, this can further complicate the challenge, especially if the students are White while the educator is not (Williams & Evans-Winter, 2005).