Abstract
Policy makers, school leaders, and teachers enact racial dominance in their daily roles as educators. Unpacking such racism becomes the goal of Angelina Castagno’s (2014) book, Educated in whiteness: Good intentions and diversity in schools. The author depicts how mechanisms of Whiteness—racism—reproduces inequitable disparities in U.S. public schools. Castagno defines Whiteness as an interwoven system of structures, ideologies, and identities that assert one racial group as dominant over another. Through this work, the author challenges the well-intentioned beliefs and behaviors of educators that create and sustain such dominant–oppressive system. Her goal is to “dismantl[e]” Whiteness and understand “where, why, and how” policy makers, school leaders, and educators “reify the very structures” of racial oppression (Castagno, 2014, p. 12). Castagno dissects inequity using two appropriate conceptual frameworks: Critical Race Theory (CRT; which acknowledges that racism is embedded in all aspects of society, making it a normal feature of everyday life) and a Whiteness framework. Using these frameworks conjointly, Castagno examines racial dominance and other power-laden mechanisms (i.e., sexism, homophobia, class oppression) as these perpetuate injustices in education. Focusing on race and racism, the author uses CRT to dissect educators’ daily racial practices that institutionalize “structural hierarchies of domination” (Castagno, 2014, p. 6).
The book contributes to the demystification of complex dominant structures that reproduce educational inequities. Castagno exemplifies the manner in which racial dominance is part of other power mechanisms that together perpetuate Whiteness as a normative ideology and institution. Whiteness, as a dominant ideology and institution, is maintained as an overarching system of oppression allowing racism, sexism, homophobia, and class oppression to “become normal, expected, and rationalized” (Castagno, 2014, p. 8). With a comprehensive analysis of inequity, Castagno illustrates how Whiteness assists nice and well-intentioned educators to streamline diversity policies and practices that, ironically, condone unconscious racism and other forms of oppression. In challenging Whiteness, Castagno introduces niceness (e.g., polite, agreeable) and good intentions as mechanisms through which Whiteness penetrates daily actions of educators tasked to practice diversity-related policies. Overall, Castagno demonstrates how top-down initiatives operationalize the mechanisms of Whiteness; from policy to leadership and into classroom curricula, educators in her study fail to question the language and actions that perpetuate racial dominance in schools.
Castagno applies an ethnographic study to advance the dialogue on educational inequity and problematize educators’ daily racial politics. Specifically, ethnography allowed Castagno to use tenets of CRT and Whiteness to inspect oppressive ideological and institutional factors that preserve racial dominance through educators’ conscious and unconscious daily actions. To accomplish this, Castagno focused in two secondary schools in a Salt Lake City school district. Over a span of 3 years, Castagno conducted a total of 77 interviews, 24 classroom observations, and examined diversity policies and documents. In this manner, she was able to capture the perceptions of a cadre of teachers, leaders, and staff from two socioeconomically and racially distinct secondary schools. Through this qualitative method, the author explicitly connects and analyzes theoretical concepts with the enactment of racialized discourse in educators’ actions. The text consists of five chapters, with an introduction and conclusion, each one exploring Whiteness in education.
A strength of Castagno’s book is in her addition of niceness and good intentions to critical White studies’ (CWS) body of literature. The author defines niceness and good intentions as notions that become deeply rooted in everyday actions of educators. Castagno’s addition may fit in CWS’s epistemology of race ignorance (Mills, 2007), which discusses the production of behaviors that silence discussions of race and racism. Castagno’s niceness enhances the epistemology of race ignorance by operationalizing niceness as beliefs and actions that “avoid uncomfortable or upsetting experiences, knowledge, and interactions” (p. 9). The author exemplifies the way nice behaviors are embodied through ideas of neutrality, equality, and compassion, providing the reader with a clear view of the mechanisms of Whiteness. One of Castagno’s clear examples of nice behaviors lies in her analysis of asset-based approaches that focus on resilience. The larger body of literature shows how these approaches reify individualistic ideologies that perpetuate blame onto minoritized students instead of engaging in systemic, racial politics of student development (Giroux, 2013). Together, Castagno advances the knowledge base on Whiteness by depicting niceness and well-intentioned actions as mechanisms that silence challenging conversations that have the potential to open the door to equitable education.
Chapter 1 focuses on the central office leaders’ and administrators’ interest convergence and displacement of responsibility as they develop diversity policies. The district enacts interest convergence as they draft diversity policies only to fulfill a mandate by the federal government and to receive certain federal funding. Similarly, in analyzing a districts’ diversity policy, “Policy on Multicultural Education,” Castagno demonstrates leaders’ and administrators’ Whiteness as they neglect their power to produce specific procedures that carry out a diversity curriculum in their schools. Instead, the district exerts Whiteness by doing business-as-usual protocols (e.g., site-based leadership, lone-ranger diversity coordinator); concurrently, the district accentuates Whiteness by averting responsibility and blaming the individual schools for the failure of the policy implementation (e.g., discriminatory acts occur, or minority student achievement decreases/stagnant). Castagno’s examples provide a glimpse of Whiteness as a modus of operandi in U.S. educational policy development and implementation. Similar to Castagno’s analysis, López and Burciaga (2014) exhort educational actors to engage in nuanced and specific strategies to combat racial inequity. Furthermore, scholars recommend that educators challenge their interest convergent behaviors, embrace their power, and work responsibly for racial justice for our student (Khalifa, Dunbar, & Douglas, 2013; Spring, 2011). Overall, the chapter sheds light to the nuanced perspective on the self-benefiting actions of district leadership and administrators; these actions become the mechanisms of Whiteness that reify oppressive practices.
Chapters 2 and 3 compose an integral part of the text by demonstrating districts’ inability to enact genuine support for diversity. Castagno integrates the concepts of powerblind sameness and colorblind difference as mechanisms of Whiteness that inherently promulgate niceness and a lack of critical thinking. Powerblindness describes a belief that sameness of learning and skill sets applies for all students, regardless of their sociocultural and historical difference (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality). In Castagno’s study, teachers adopted powerblindness by accepting neutral and inclusive stances on education, declaring it a form of meritocracy and equality in students’ achievement. An example of powerblindness lies in teachers’ attempt for politeness as they silenced conversations they deemed uncomfortable when students needed to speak about their sexuality. In turn, dominance is exerted by regarding human characteristics a choice—“a lifestyle.” Educators use powerblindness by ensuring their heterosexual normativity is not challenged, giving them the ability to name their students’ situation from human trait to human choice. The ability is a form of systemic dominance that has instilled heterosexual values over a sexual difference. Choosing to deny someone from their reality by avoiding an uncomfortable experience is an exertion of power toward a minority group, depriving them, denying, and oppressing their human reality (Hooks, 2014).
While the second chapter specifies powerblindness as institutional domination, the third chapter discusses colorblindness as mechanisms of racial dominance. The author showcases the way politeness and niceness are used to protect the sanctity of Whiteness as a structure of domination. Despite all best intentions, politeness and niceness deprive minority students from having necessary, yet difficult conversations about their lived experience. Niceness and colorblindness show how low SES, language learners, and refugee status receive differentiated classroom instruction and management. Specifically, educators developed a more rigorous curriculum for a White, higher SES, and “more intellectual group,” while a more basic setup for “all the rest” (Castagno, 2014, p. 69). Teachers in the study acknowledged distinct differences (e.g., socioeconomic status, language, refugee status), yet failed to consider the impact race and racism had in students’ performance. Furthermore, teachers silenced students’ discussions about racism or used code words (e.g., language problems, poverty, refugee status) to describe students’ identities; the silence and code words demonstrate an avoidance of deeper discussion on structural racism and oppression. Chapters 2 and 3 are important for educators to deepen the understanding of color and powerblindness, and the manner Whiteness utilizes them to maintain structures of dominance. Specifically, Castagno builds a strong argument on how these mechanisms are protected through good intentions and serve to sustain a system of uncritical, polite actions reinforcing nice behaviors.
Chapter 4 deepens the examination of Whiteness by describing equality and meritocracy as perpetuating inequity through administrators’ and teachers’ everyday actions. This chapter can hold particular significance for educators to understand the difference between equality and equity, and the power that equality has on protecting and reifying Whiteness. Castagno describes equality as the tactic utilized to create an even playing field for students; conjointly, equity is used to create fair and just outcomes by encompassing the contextual and historical knowledge necessary to dismantle marginalizing systems. In this study, educators use equality as the measuring standard to provide what they believed was a fair and equal educational opportunity. An example of neglectful, equality-laden practices is the conversion of one of two high schools created as a magnet school for language learning students to a neighborhood school. Considering the context and historical discrimination in the analyses, more affluent and White, east-side parents of a clearly segregated town—east and west—advocated for a conversion into a neighborhood school to provide “all students with the same educational opportunities close to home” (Castagno, 2014, p. 114). Creating the neighborhood school produced a neglectful, equality-laden practice by preventing students from being bussed to the east side school where they could access qualified educators and resources necessary for their academic support: such services were not offered in their neighborhood schools.
The chapter also shows two different schools utilizing equality and meritocracy to create structures to uplift already successful students. Educators used different tactics (e.g., applying more resources to the excelling group, teaching to the standardized test) with the belief that individual capacity and work ethic are determinants for a successful student—those who fail to meet standards, merit the failure due to their lack of ability and attempt. Educators fail to see the damaging effects of ideological colorblindness, powerblindness, and meritocracy on students. Specifically, Castagno provides a portrayal on how schools utilize equality and meritocracy to create structural supports to uplift already successful students via different tactics (e.g., applying more resources to the excelling group). Castagno succeeds in illustrating Whiteness as protected by the belief that equality and meritocracy are neutral-laden efforts that promote diversity and success in schools.
Castagno uses Chapter 5 to highlight the importance of a larger sociocultural context, liberalism, defined as individualism, egalitarianism, and relentless work ethic. Castagno shows liberalism’s transmission into the actions of the district’s central office down to the in-school leadership. The author describes how liberalism becomes a federal, sociocultural, and political trend that heightens the mechanisms of Whiteness, as it expects and demands individual student and school-based competition to determine merit and success. Castagno focuses on the School Improvement Grant (SIG) as a federal policy created to address diversity and inequality to close the achievement gap. However, developed through a liberal framework, educators critiqued SIG as it reified colorblindness and powerblindness by adhering to individual, student and teacher, responsibility to promote school improvement. The author describes the expectations placed on the school and its students, so they alone transform their educational experience, illustrating how such expectations only protect normative processes (e.g., equality, meritocracy), without building equitable infrastructure. Adding to the discussion of the permanence of racism (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004), Castagno illustrates the force sociocultural expectations have on local educational administrators who remain silent or unaware of “institutional, historical, and structural racism” (Alemán, 2009, p. 196). Notably, the chapter provides a guiding framework for educational preparation programs to showcase how the district’s central office and in-school leadership traditional practices can maintain the status quo, only exacerbating the mechanism of Whiteness (i.e., colorblindness, powerblindness, meritocracy, and equality).
An overall strength in Castagno’s work is in its accessibility. Coupling tenets of CRT and CWS, the author adds nuance to the antiracist dialogue, specifically, as it focuses on the ideological and institutional practices that reify Whiteness. Castagno furthers the conversation on Whiteness by integrating niceness and good intentions to speak against operationalized normativity (e.g., White power, privilege, and oppression). Concurrently, the author explicitly connects theory with the data allowing the reader to visualize racialized practices enacted by educators. In this manner, the author avoids jargon in describing the theoretical concepts, permitting the message of power to be delivered to a wider audience, outside of academic circles. For this purpose, practitioner-scholars in school settings would benefit from this work, and also those in teacher and leadership preparation programs who are encouraged to wrestle with theoretical concepts and consume research-based literature. This book will assist a broad range of educators to move theory into application in their respective educational spaces.
A critique of Castagno’s work lies in her framing of the book. The author sets out to “dismantl[e] whiteness” (p. 12) because it maintains inequitable education, yet her methodology appears to have perpetuated the same whiteness she attempted to undo. Scheurich (2002) contends that ethnographers seeking to disrupt school inequities must challenge “[r]esearch epistemology and methodology, [because] at the level of their deepest assumptions, [they] are racist” (p. 51). When examined under this light, Castagno fails to use critical methodologies or utilize a critical theoretical analysis to deconstruct racist discourses that penetrate educational policy, leadership, and pedagogy (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Castagno did share her identity with the reader. However, she did not challenge her identity, privilege, and positionality. Like this, Dr. Castagno missed an opportunity to showcase how White scholars, “particularly ethnographers, [can] carefully explore how Whites produce, translate, and negotiate Whiteness in their everyday private and public lives” (Twine & Gallagher, 2008, p. 12).
Together, Castagno widens a small window for educators to disrupt the insidious racialized ideologies and institutions that prevent an equitable education from materializing (López & Burciaga, 2014). For this reason, integrating Whiteness in the racial politics will better prepare teachers (King & Chandler, 2016; Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2006) and educational leaders (Khalifa et al., 2013; López, 2003) to confront racism in education. Similarly, educators committed to transforming racialized, inequitable educational spaces (López & Burciaga, 2014) must challenge inquiry practices (Baez & Boyles, 2010; Pasque, Carducci, Kuntz & Gildersleeve, 2012). Specifically, it becomes necessary to disrupt normative methodologies (Brown, Carducci, & Kuby, 2014) to assist in the research for social justice issues. Finally, fair and just school practices will require culturally responsive approaches (e.g., Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016) to combat oppressive ideologies and institutions that reify inequities in education.