RESEARCH
CURRENT RESEARCH
I am most interested in exploring issues of settler colonialism, anti-indigeneity, and anti-blackness as enacted and reproduced by schooling. Specifically, I look at what I call "benevolent whiteness": the gendered enactment of white supremacy under the guise of rescuing and/or recuperating people of color by "well-intentioned" white women teachers beginning in the 19th century. Some of the questions guiding my current work are: What does it mean, and how is it useful, to conceptualize white women as agents and schools as sites of settler colonialism? How does an ideological and historical understanding of gendered whiteness allow for a more nuanced understanding of contemporary raced/gendered relationships in schools? How viable is a theory of gendered benevolent whiteness given the slippery nature of both whiteness and gender? How do Indigenous Feminisms allow a more apt lens through which to view gendered white supremacy, and educational history in general?
I am also currently working on a participatory action research project with Dr. Wanda Watson (Mills College) and a group of Bay Area elementary school teachers. In this multi-year project we are exploring implementation of ethnic studies curriculum in elementary (K-5) classrooms and its potential to foster transformative learning among students of all backgrounds. Our work in progress is shared at www.elementaryethnicstudies.com.
DISSERTATION RESEARCH
Following Anyon (2009), it is my contention that a thorough historical analysis of the discursive inventions of at-risk white womanhood and monstrous/ threatening blackness, along with analysis of the economic, political, social forces influencing this construction, will help us paint a more complete picture of the contemporary relationship between both groups, specifically in schools, which as Althusser (1971) argued are the most dominant ideological state apparatus in mature capitalist social formations. Toward that end, my dissertation proposed a link between the historical implementation of systemic settler colonialism and the contemporary race/gender discrepancies in school discipline by asking, “How, historically, have white female teachers understood their roles in the teaching and disciplining of Black and Indigenous student bodies, and how and why has this role as a “persona” been constructed over time and space in service to the white State?” My aim in pursuing this question was to uncover the ways in which performing what I have termed “benevolent whiteness” requires white female teachers’ complicity in the larger colonial project of maintaining structural hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy, in this case through the disciplining of students of color. This line of questioning asks us to consider the ways in which political, economic, and social events have informed the development of the contemporary white female teacher “persona.” As a result, the project provides a specifically gendered analysis of the contemporary racial discipline gap, with a focus on white women’s roles as agents of settler colonialism, indigenous genocide, and anti-blackness.
Overall, the dissertation provides a genealogy of the imagining of white female teachers as inherently benevolent and heroic, which I argue has resulted in and from their gendered mis/recognition as exempt from complicity in the deeply structural nature of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness in education. I therefore ask how understanding their raced/gendered roles through this lens can allow teachers to better understand the history behind, and the larger ramifications of their disciplinary actions. In its concluding analysis, the dissertation questions under what conditions this mis/recognition can and must be challenged as a necessary first step in addressing the racial discipline gap.
PAST QUALITATIVE RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Lead Researcher 2010-12
Pyramid Schemes: Neoliberal, “Post-Racial” Discourse and the Reification of Whiteness in Schools
Washington Middle School (pseudonym) · Northern California
My first research project as a doctoral student was an ethnographic study of disciplinary trends and teachers’ related understandings of race and racism. As the primary researcher, I spent one school year at Washington Middle School conducting interviews and surveys with students and teachers, observing classrooms and outdoor spaces, and analyzing school discipline data. This project asked two main questions: (1) how do teachers understand and explain the “discipline gap” (80% of students suspended were Black boys, although Black boys made up only 13% of the total school population) at Washington? And (2) how do teachers see themselves and their roles in relation to teaching and disciplining a diverse student population? My research exposed a collective belief that although the discipline gap was an important issue to tackle, teachers found themselves to be in no way at fault or involved in contributing to the disproportionate suspensions of their Black male students. Whereas teachers explained most suspensions as based on “zero tolerance” for violent behaviors, the data clearly demonstrated that the majority of school suspensions were the result of teachers sending students to the office for “willful defiance” (anything from not taking off a hat in class, refusing to spit out gum, or not completing homework). This project served as the impetus behind my dissertation research, which works to address similar concerns from a historical perspective, highlighting the structural racism at the root of school discipline trends regardless of teachers’ “good intentions.”
Graduate Student Researcher 2011-12
Educational Opportunity in San Francisco’s Mission Neighborhood: Assessing Critical Conditions for Children and Youth in Mission Promise Neighborhood Schools.
Center for Latino Policy Research · University of California, Berkeley · PI: Lisa García Bedolla
Graduate Student Researcher 2011-12
Analysis of assessment, placement, and reclassification of English Learners (ELs) in California public schools.
Center for Latino Policy Research · University of California, Berkeley · PIs: Lisa García Bedolla, Rosaisela Rodriguez
CURRENT RESEARCH
I am most interested in exploring issues of settler colonialism, anti-indigeneity, and anti-blackness as enacted and reproduced by schooling. Specifically, I look at what I call "benevolent whiteness": the gendered enactment of white supremacy under the guise of rescuing and/or recuperating people of color by "well-intentioned" white women teachers beginning in the 19th century. Some of the questions guiding my current work are: What does it mean, and how is it useful, to conceptualize white women as agents and schools as sites of settler colonialism? How does an ideological and historical understanding of gendered whiteness allow for a more nuanced understanding of contemporary raced/gendered relationships in schools? How viable is a theory of gendered benevolent whiteness given the slippery nature of both whiteness and gender? How do Indigenous Feminisms allow a more apt lens through which to view gendered white supremacy, and educational history in general?
I am also currently working on a participatory action research project with Dr. Wanda Watson (Mills College) and a group of Bay Area elementary school teachers. In this multi-year project we are exploring implementation of ethnic studies curriculum in elementary (K-5) classrooms and its potential to foster transformative learning among students of all backgrounds. Our work in progress is shared at www.elementaryethnicstudies.com.
DISSERTATION RESEARCH
Following Anyon (2009), it is my contention that a thorough historical analysis of the discursive inventions of at-risk white womanhood and monstrous/ threatening blackness, along with analysis of the economic, political, social forces influencing this construction, will help us paint a more complete picture of the contemporary relationship between both groups, specifically in schools, which as Althusser (1971) argued are the most dominant ideological state apparatus in mature capitalist social formations. Toward that end, my dissertation proposed a link between the historical implementation of systemic settler colonialism and the contemporary race/gender discrepancies in school discipline by asking, “How, historically, have white female teachers understood their roles in the teaching and disciplining of Black and Indigenous student bodies, and how and why has this role as a “persona” been constructed over time and space in service to the white State?” My aim in pursuing this question was to uncover the ways in which performing what I have termed “benevolent whiteness” requires white female teachers’ complicity in the larger colonial project of maintaining structural hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy, in this case through the disciplining of students of color. This line of questioning asks us to consider the ways in which political, economic, and social events have informed the development of the contemporary white female teacher “persona.” As a result, the project provides a specifically gendered analysis of the contemporary racial discipline gap, with a focus on white women’s roles as agents of settler colonialism, indigenous genocide, and anti-blackness.
Overall, the dissertation provides a genealogy of the imagining of white female teachers as inherently benevolent and heroic, which I argue has resulted in and from their gendered mis/recognition as exempt from complicity in the deeply structural nature of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness in education. I therefore ask how understanding their raced/gendered roles through this lens can allow teachers to better understand the history behind, and the larger ramifications of their disciplinary actions. In its concluding analysis, the dissertation questions under what conditions this mis/recognition can and must be challenged as a necessary first step in addressing the racial discipline gap.
PAST QUALITATIVE RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Lead Researcher 2010-12
Pyramid Schemes: Neoliberal, “Post-Racial” Discourse and the Reification of Whiteness in Schools
Washington Middle School (pseudonym) · Northern California
My first research project as a doctoral student was an ethnographic study of disciplinary trends and teachers’ related understandings of race and racism. As the primary researcher, I spent one school year at Washington Middle School conducting interviews and surveys with students and teachers, observing classrooms and outdoor spaces, and analyzing school discipline data. This project asked two main questions: (1) how do teachers understand and explain the “discipline gap” (80% of students suspended were Black boys, although Black boys made up only 13% of the total school population) at Washington? And (2) how do teachers see themselves and their roles in relation to teaching and disciplining a diverse student population? My research exposed a collective belief that although the discipline gap was an important issue to tackle, teachers found themselves to be in no way at fault or involved in contributing to the disproportionate suspensions of their Black male students. Whereas teachers explained most suspensions as based on “zero tolerance” for violent behaviors, the data clearly demonstrated that the majority of school suspensions were the result of teachers sending students to the office for “willful defiance” (anything from not taking off a hat in class, refusing to spit out gum, or not completing homework). This project served as the impetus behind my dissertation research, which works to address similar concerns from a historical perspective, highlighting the structural racism at the root of school discipline trends regardless of teachers’ “good intentions.”
Graduate Student Researcher 2011-12
Educational Opportunity in San Francisco’s Mission Neighborhood: Assessing Critical Conditions for Children and Youth in Mission Promise Neighborhood Schools.
Center for Latino Policy Research · University of California, Berkeley · PI: Lisa García Bedolla
Graduate Student Researcher 2011-12
Analysis of assessment, placement, and reclassification of English Learners (ELs) in California public schools.
Center for Latino Policy Research · University of California, Berkeley · PIs: Lisa García Bedolla, Rosaisela Rodriguez
