Identifying Race and Transforming Whiteness in the Classroom: Fourth Printing (Counterpoints)

As educators, how do we challenge and interrupt the social construction of whiteness in ourselves, in the classroom, in schools, and in the wider society? Coming from diverse backgrounds, the contributors in this volume draw on their own well-examined experiences of race, racism, and whiteness in developing effective antiracist pedagogies and classroom activities that interrupt and contest whiteness. They have explored their own lives from the selective position of their own memories and have traced the ways in which their assumptions – which they use to mediate and interpret the world around them – have been constituted by public ideological forces. They have collaborated with others in building alternative pedagogies and support systems, enabling them to teach, and at the same time, reflect on the assumptions behind and the effects of their teaching. The result is the work collected here.

The Editors: Virginia Lea is a scholar activist with a Ph.D. in social and cultural studies in education from the University of California Berkeley. She teaches critical multicultural, antiracist pedagogy, and social studies education in the School of Education at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. She coordinates Project Quest, an alternative teacher recruitment and preparation program in Vallejo, California, and she is also the President and Executive Director of the Educultural Foundation, a California educational nonprofit organization.
Judy Helfand is a community educator and antiracist activist with an M.A. in American studies and cultural studies from Antioch University McGregor School in Yellow Springs, OH. She teaches in the Humanities Department at Santa Rosa Junior College in California and is director of IMPACT Training (a diversity training and consulting business.) Her previous publications include Understanding Whiteness/Unraveling Racism: Tools for the Journey.