The Racial Hauntings of One Black Male Professor and the Disturbance of the Self(ves): Self-Actualization and Racial Storytelling as Pedagogical Practices

Prologue: The Ghosts of Future Present

It was my first time meeting with my 23 ¹ white preservice teachers since the decision was made not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the unjust killing of Michael Brown. I stood in the classroom feeling vulnerable and empty. The conversation I was about to have was pivotal because it reflected many of the class readings and our prior discussions around issues of race, racism, and power. I asked, “By show of hands, how many of you have been following Michael Brown’s story?” When they stared blankly at me, I supplied more information: “You know, the unarmed Black male teenager who was killed by a white male police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri.” A heavy silence came over the room. Only one white female preservice teacher raised her hand to affirm that she had been staying current on the 2014 Ferguson uprising. Immediately, the silence was disrupted by another young white female preservice teacher, who proudly and boldly stated, “I don’t know much about this particular case, but I followed the story of Trayvon Jackson” (as cited in Baker-Bell, Butler, & Johnson, 2017, p. 122).

Dysconscious racism is a type of racism that implicitly accepts whiteness, the normalization of whiteness, and white privileges. King (1991) defines dysconscious racism as “an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things as given” (p. 135). For instance, when I hear dehumanizing comments such as, “I don’t know much about this particular case, but I followed the story of Trayvon Jackson” (it should have been Trayvon Martin) and witness the dysconscious racism, the blank stares, the silence, and the white fragility illustrated from my white preservice teachers, a cacophonic and euphonic disturbance of myself(ves) inevitably emerges (Baszile, 2006). As seen in my teacher education course, the physical and symbolic violence and erasure of Black bodies illustrate the urgency to center discussions and the lived experiences in our teacher education courses around race, racism, and the working of white supremacy. The story above illuminates that even in my own teacher education courses, my Black male body is unsafe (physically, emotionally, and spiritually), and I must continue to create ways to disrupt anti-Blackness ideologies and practices and to illuminate the literacies my Black male body brings to the classroom. Not only do I center the voices and experiences of Black people and people of color writ large, but I also center my voice(s), my experiences, and myself(ves).

My work as a language and literacy scholar for linguistic and racial diversity is deeply rooted in the cultural, racial, and historical past and present of my family and community. As such, these interlocking sets of knowledges and experiences have become part of a pedagogical and methodological process that reflects my multiple identities, which cannot be divorced from who I am as a teacher-scholar-activist. With this being said, my gendered experiences as a Black male are not disconnected from my racialized experiences. To this end, for a number of complicated, structural reasons, irrespective of our positions and professions, Black males encounter racial oppression and dehumanization within educational arenas and society writ large (e.g., police brutality, physical racial violence, mass incarceration, racial aggressions, symbolic violence, and spirit murder). However, oppression looks different for a middle-class Black male than it does for a working-class Black man or even a middle-class Black woman. To this end, I acknowledge that I hold a certain level of privilege as a man, but it is complicated by my racialized experiences. Therefore, my racial and gendered experiences serve as the foundation for my research and teaching. To illuminate, I consider my classroom a contested space. When I witness racist remarks, whether made intentionally or unintentionally, my past childhood self(ves) emerge. It is important to mention that I possess more than just a teacher’s voice/self in my classroom. By this, I mean when I am teaching and I hear deficit comments, my past childhood self(ves) is present and reminds me of my childhood encounters with race and racism. Not only does my childhood self and voice transpire, but also my present self as a Black male emerges. In relation to my racial stories, then, it makes sense to say that the construction of myself(ves) is the construction and dialogue between my childhood and my present and future self(ves).

Teaching in a contested space, for instance, demonstrates that having critical dialogue about race, racism, and whiteness triggers my repressed memories, transmitting me back to various times in the past and to different geographical locations and spaces. Drawing from Black liberatory orientation (Boutte, 2015; Boykin, 1994; King, 2005), I view the past, present, and future through a social time perspective, which Boutte (2015) asserts “is an orientation in which time is treated as passing through a social space rather than a material one, and in which time can be reoccurring, personal, and phenomenological” (p. 19). My conclusion, then, is that time and space are social constructs (see Kinloch, 2010); as a result, I am reminded that the tapestry of racism is constantly being interwoven throughout time and space and throughout our past, present, and future (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Modes of inquiry.

In this article, through a series of stories, I illustrate the familial knowledge and racialized and educational experiences that forge(d) the beginning and the continuing of my past, present, and future selves. I employ five genres: stream of consciousness, personal narrative, free verse poetry, photos, and student-written essays to document my racial hauntings, ghosts, and experiences. To examine these stories, I employ racial storytelling as a theoretical, methodological, curricular, and pedagogical tool to assist me in a deep excavation of myself(ves). Following each racial story, I provide an analysis through the process of self-actualization.

Building from the work of Baszile (2006), self-actualization serves as complex “breakthroughs” and “turning points” that have shaped my worldview. To illustrate, Baszile highlights one of her critical breakthroughs when she states, “Turning point: people whose identities are denied, troubled, invisible-ized must create the medium, the voice through which they become” (p. 95). As such, through self-actualization, I (re)enter these embodied stories to demonstrate how life moments impact how I/we think about racial issues in today’s context.

The questions that guide this line of inquiry are the following: (a) How can educators employ self-actualization and racial storytelling as pedagogical practices? (b) How can language and literacy scholars of Color use the radical (self) imagination as a thought and concept to face our racial ghosts and to analyze our hauntings? This article is organized to respond to these questions through, first, a discussion about the theoretical deployment of centering our past, present, and future self(ves). Then, I discuss the employment of self-actualization and racial storytelling as methodological and pedagogical practices. Following, I provide an in-depth practical application of a racial storytelling assignment that my preservice teachers completed as a course assignment. In closing, I propose the radical (self) imagination as a recommendation for language and literacy scholars of color and language and literacy education.

Theoretical Framework: Past, Present, and Future Self(ves)

Racial storytelling illustrates how my racial encounters from the past situate themselves in the current moment and still haunt me today. I deploy Gordon’s (1997) conception of haunting to describe and illustrate how the past shapes the present and how the past and present structure the possibilities of the future. It is the racial storytelling of these hauntings that can lead us to an understanding of ourselves and to feel empowered and free. Further, racial storytelling allows us to confront our racial hauntings and to work against our own miseducation while moving toward liberation and self-actualization (a more in-depth description of racial storytelling will come in the following section). Indeed, these hauntings illustrate how race has manifested itself within society, historically and in the present moment, and how race is going to directly impact our future. Race is a haunting that is often unseen—a haunting whose presence is not often recognized in most contexts and institutions, a haunting that appears to not be here, but its seething presence is always firmly present. Similarly, I am in agreement with Gordon (1997) when she writes, “to be haunted is to be tied to historical and social effects” (p. 190). As a person who is a Black male language and literacy scholar, I analyze and extrapolate how I am implicated in the historical processes. Hence, my racial hauntings assist me to understand that the ways I construct and produce knowledge are antithetical to the traditional knowledge production deemed acceptable and superior in academic spaces and society writ large.

Racial hauntings are continuous and deeply embedded within our lives and highlight how we carry these hauntings into our research, teaching, and service. It is important to note that these hauntings should not be considered repressed memories of the past; instead, we should use our hauntings as vehicles to help drive our pedagogical and methodological decisions in our classrooms. Confronting our racial and gendered ghosts is important because it is unhealthy and morally unethical to repress our memories (Bell, 1992; Dillard & Bell, 2011; Matias, 2016). Our racial hauntings can serve as an onto-epistemic and humanistic violent tool to dismantle white supremacist patriarchy. In other words, if we do not confront our racial ghosts, then it is an act of repressed and symbolic violence against y(our)self that ultimately continues the narcissism of whiteness and white supremacy (Matias, 2016). Just as repressed memories lead to physical and symbolic violence and protect whiteness, repressed memories block us from remaining human. In sum, then, when these memories (re)surface, scholars of Color (re)enter these experiences. (Re)entering these moments requires a deep level of vulnerability. Therefore, as educators, we have to be willing to own our feelings, particularly because we operate in a world where white rationality, patriarchy, and westernized thought illustrate emotions as a sign of weakness and portray that our emotions are detached from our truth, reasoning, body, mind, and soul (Baszile, 2010). For me, (re)entering these racialized memories often evokes feelings of passion, elation, love, frustration, anger, and rage.

Returning to the prologue, hearing such dehumanizing remarks from future educators oftentimes triggers feelings of Black rage.

When I speak of Black rage I am not by and large referring to violent outbursts directed at White people by Black people. Although Black rage unchecked can lead to such action, I am talking about the feelings of intense frustration—the killing rage, as bell hooks (1995) termed it, that creeps from the depths of one’s soul as a response to the profound and persistent White ignorance that shapes much of what we do in academia. (Baszile, 2010, p. 5)

hooks (1995) and Baszile (2010) explain that Black rage should not be misconstrued for hate. My Black rage is a coherent reaction against the exploitation, marginalization, and oppression of people who come from racially and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In addition, my Black rage has propelled me to think about my teaching and pedagogical practices as things that resist and subvert the traditional curricula and pedagogies, and it has propelled me to create classroom spaces where self-transformation, humanity, and liberation are infused throughout my curricula and pedagogical practices.

Method: Self-Actualization and Racial Storytelling

When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. (hooks, 1998, p. 21)

If people who are educators and researchers of Color refuse to show our embodied vulnerabilities, we will not be able to create spaces for true empowerment for students (Hill, 2014). If we expect our students to be risk takers and to confess their stories, then we should be willing to take the same risks. As such, I argue that in our classrooms, we should center our self(ves) as a pedagogical practice. Teaching for liberation and human freedom is soul work—that is, it requires a deep excavation of the self(ves). When literacy scholars of Color bring ourselves to the classroom, it can help enhance our students’ understanding of our course material pertaining to critical race issues and racial justice work. However, it requires us to illustrate our vulnerabilities from taking a look within and tapping into our repressed memories and the subconscious. It requires us to revisit memories that we hope to forget but that continue to live on—memories that trigger feelings of joy, guilt, happiness, sadness, frustration, anger, and rage. Furthermore, hooks (1998) asserts, “most professors must practice being vulnerable in the classroom, being wholly present in mind, body, and sprit” (p. 21). Therefore, I believe we should teach students how to engage in self-liberation and human freedom through the process of self-actualization that leads to empowerment. Educators who practice self-actualization will be able to foster holistic pedagogical practices and teaching styles and methods for their students, which can positively affect our preservice and in-service teachers’ ways of knowing and being and to live more fully and deeply.

If we recognize education as an act of liberation and self-actualization, Baszile (2007) states that the reoccurring question then becomes, “Who am I?” To illustrate, she explicates that the curriculum we teach reflects our lived, raced, gendered, and classed experiences. As such, the curriculum becomes more than a box of materials, standards and indicators, and lesson plans for executing instruction; in this sense, it becomes autobiographical. Baszile (2007) writes that the curriculum is, “The category of identity, the notion of ‘self,’ which is not stable or fixed essence, but a vortex of psychosocial and discursive relations” (p. 95). Along the same lines, Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman (1994) contend that, “The study of identity enables us to portray how the politics we had thought were located ‘out there,’ in society, are lived through ‘in here,’ in our bodies, our minds, our everyday speech and conduct” (p. 9).

In this sense, the curriculum reflects our multiple identities and self(ves); furthermore, we carry our life histories and racialized experiences into our classrooms and research, and those racialized hauntings affect our curricular and pedagogical practices. Castenell and Pinar (1993) posit that the curriculum is a racialized text that mirrors the politics of race in the United States and beyond, and it reflects how the politics of race exist in our minds, our bodies, our spirits, and our selves (Baszile, 2006). To be clear, the traditional school curriculum has historically and contemporarily reflected eurocentric onto-epistemologies while inescapably killing the spirit and the humanity of children and youth of Color by marginalizing their voices, erasing their experiences, and overlooking them as producers and holders of knowledge.

From this perspective, educators of Color must work to transform the curriculum so that it does not mirror anti-Blackness (Dumas & Ross, 2016), anti-indigenous (Mays, 2017), and anti-Brown-ness (Martinez, 2016) beliefs or reinforce a male-centered, white education. Moreover, when teachers of Color possess the alacrity to subvert the traditional curriculum, our/their teaching practices, pedagogies, styles, and methods become sites of resistance. As a result, resistance exists within our own self-actualized entanglement with race, racism, and power. These moments of self-actualization need to be analyzed and understood pedagogically.

Returning to this notion of racial hauntings and ghosts, as scholars of Color, whether we acknowledge them or not, we all have racial hauntings. So now, the question becomes, How can teacher-educators of Color begin to identify/analyze our racial and gendered hauntings and confront our ghosts, and what does it mean for teacher education? To tackle these ghosts, I believe educators can utilize racial storytelling as a response to our racialized memories, repressions, suppressions, and oppressions. Racial storytelling enables us to tackle our racial hauntings and to work against our own miseducation while working toward self-transformation and liberation. As a pedagogical practice, engaging in racial storytelling creates a contested space that illustrates our stories do not solely belong to the self—in short, our racialized stories are not just our stories. Racial storytelling requires what Dillard and Bell (2011) call (re)membering. Dillard and Bell write that “it is our duty—our responsibility—to remember” (p. 347). The process of (re)membering through racial storytelling illustrates the intentionality of narrating these stories as ways to employ these memories and to preserve these racialized stories.

It is pivotal to note that racial storytelling is different from counter-storytelling and autoethnography. However, I do view counter-storytelling, autoethnography, and racial storytelling as modes of storytelling that can support one another and are members of the storytelling lineage. First, it is important to highlight that counter-storytelling is utilized by people of Color as a theoretical and/or methodological tool to counter and disrupt traditional and dehumanizing stories that institutions and society hold about people from different racial backgrounds and ethnic identities (see Boutte & Johnson, 2013; Johnson, 2016; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Second, Hill (2014) defines autoethnography as a set “of relationships between researchers and the researched, identity, and interests in narratives that include emotion and the body” (p. 168). Furthermore, autoethnography is a method, methodology, and process that challenges the traditional ways of writing and conducting research, and it views research as personal and political. In addition, autoethnography is a method that can be employed by white educators and scholars; however, autoethnographic work does not necessarily center racism, whiteness, and white supremacist patriarchy. Equally, for storytellers who are centering different critical approaches for people to tell their stores, racial storytelling is an option as racial storytelling allows us to (re)enter and to bear witness of our racialized past to assess where we are in the present so that we can begin to (re)imagine our future. It also illustrates how our multiple identities and our social identity markers (e.g., gender, class, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, language, and dis/ability) all influence how we are racialized and are always in complex dialogue with each other.

On the one hand, for people of Color, racial storytelling is merely telling a story involving race and racism without the gaze of the dominant narrative. Simply stated, our experiences and who we are as people of Color are not always in relation to or with white people. That is, racial storytelling does not have to be utilized to counter dominant narratives. The existence and humanization of people of Color should not have to be in opposition to white people. However, this does not mean counter-stories cannot transpire from racial storytelling.

On the other hand, racial storytelling is not only for people of Color; it is inclusive to white educators, researchers, children, and youth. white teachers and white students can engage in racial storytelling, particularly to tackle their own racism and to story their racialized experiences. To be clear, white people are the ghosts—your protection of whiteness and the protection of your white privilege are the things that produce these racial ghosts that lead to our (people of Color’s) racial hauntings. Moreover, to truly do justice-oriented work, white people have to engage in this process of racial storytelling because it can help lead to true self-actualization.

The Ghostly Matters of Race, Place, and Space in the South

My racial and gendered hauntings are connected to my experiences growing up in the South, particularly Edgefield, South Carolina. The context of Edgefield in relation to my raced, gendered, and educational experiences forged the beginnings of my multiple selves as a Black male. The South is key to understanding the historical and contemporary dimensions of race, racism, and white supremacist patriarchy in both educational and societal contexts (Morris & Monroe, 2009). Cutts, Love, and Davis (2012) posit that

although the region has moved—publicly at least—beyond the days of separate and inherently unequal, cross-burning, lynching, sit-ins, etc., “the power of place” continues to impact the experiences of those who live, work, and are educated here. (p. 59)

The conceptualization of race and place interlocked with time and space mirrors, extends, and is extended by my geographical location, my social identities, and my subjectivities. Having just argued that the geographical context of the South is intertwined with my racial identities, now I want to complicate this point by providing a racial snapshot of the geographical context of Edgefield, South Carolina.

Edgefield is the home of Senator Strom Thurmond. He served as a U.S. senator for 48 years. During his tenure, Thurmond opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and pushed for the continuation of segregation. Edgefield County has a population of 4,500, and the county has one secondary school—Strom Thurmond High School (STHS). Each day, hundreds of students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds enter a high school that bears his name and conveys to students that he is a legendary hero and victor (Figure 2 illustrates STHS, located in Edgefield County School District and established in 1961). Currently, STHS serves roughly 800 students in Grades 9 to 12. African American/Black students make up 49.9% of the student body population, and white students are 43.3%, with Latinx and multiracial students making up 6% of the student demographics.

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Figure 2.

Strom Thurmond High School.

During my seventh-grade year (2001–2002), STHS had its first integrated prom (Smith, 2014). Prior to this, the high school held two separate proms—a prom for Black students and a prom for white students. In 2003, Black students, families, and communities pushed the school district and the school board to eradicate STHS’s “rebel” nickname and its old Southern colonel mascot (Figure 3; this was the official mascot from 1961 to 2004). The representation of the colonial mascot symbolized the confederate South and the oppression of Black people. Over 30 years later, in 2003, after careful deliberation, the school board voted to keep the rebel nickname and to adopt a bluetick hound as the new and current school symbol (see Figure 4). Historically, bluetick hounds were trained to track enslaved Africans and African Americans who were escaping for their freedom. I do not share these hauntings to vilify the South or my hometown of Edgefield County but to simply illustrate how these hauntings run deep and are the sources that shape my Southern roots as a Black male language and literacy scholar who grew up in the (New) South.

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Figure 3.

Southern Colonel Mascot from 1961-2004.

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Figure 4.

Bluetick Hound Mascot from 2004-Present.

A (Re)Visit of the Ghosts of Future Present

As I looked around the room, I thought to myself,

I shouldn’t be surprised that the majority of you haven’t heard about or followed the recent events that are happening in Ferguson. Your privilege and whiteness protect you from having to know the names or the stories of Black people who have lost their lives to police brutality and white supremacy.

I stood there disheartened, bruised, and on fire. My thoughts continued to race:

For 3 months, I have been the only person of Color present in this space. It is quite difficult to detach my Black male identity from who I am as a Black male English educator. Therefore, how can I discuss both of these racialized incidents with you as a way to help you recognize your unconsciousness and your privilege of not having to know or to care about the devaluation of Black lives?”

Implications: Teaching Our Racial Ghosts on “Monday Morning”—A Practical Application of Racial Storytelling

In the wake of racial violence, national organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Literacy Research Association (LRA) have charged literacy scholars, English educators, and ELA teachers to take the onus of our roles in the quest for racial justice (LRA, 2017; NCTE, 2015). Throughout this article, I have demonstrated how I, as Black male language and literacy scholar, engage in racial storytelling as a pedagogical practice. With this in mind, I offer a description and an example of a racial storytelling assignment that my preservice ELA teachers engage in to assist in their dismantling of race, racism, whiteness, and white supremacist patriarchy—while centering their racialized experiences and stories. Further, Matias and Grosland (2016) state,

such a personalized process moves the discussions of racism from meaningless to personally invested. Suffice it to say that to move away from doing lip service to race studies, teacher education must directly engage whiteness and emotionality to deconstruct the hegemonic stronghold of white supremacy.” (p. 4)

I share this racial storytelling assignment as a way to help literacy scholars (re)imagine how we engage our preservice and in-service teachers in humanizing pedagogical practices so that in return, they can use these humanizing pedagogical practices in their current and future classrooms on “Monday morning” (Baker-Bell, Stanbrough, & Everett, 2017). In short, I provide this racial storytelling assignment as one of numerous assignments that educators can utilize to incorporate critical teaching methods, styles, and pedagogies in literacy classrooms.

The Racial Storytelling Assignment

Flowing out of the opening vignette, I engaged my preservice teachers in a space where I could truly create conditions for them to engage in racial-justice-oriented work; as such, I had to engage them in an ongoing process of critical self-awareness. It is imperative for ELA teachers to know themselves and understand how their racial past, present, and future shape their beliefs, values, and the multiple decisions they will make as teachers. The lesson I engaged my preservice teachers in also included how our social identities (religion, gender, class, nationality, language, etc.) shape who we are today. My humanizing assignment was a form of critical autobiography/memoir that provided my preservice teachers with an avenue to explicate their own critical incidents and to begin to consider how these racialized experiences shaped their beliefs about education, their images of language and literacy, and their decision to become a teacher.

To prompt my students’ thoughts, I provided them with the following questions: (a) How have my lived and racialized realities contributed to my conceptualization of myself(ves) and others as racialized beings? (b) How does my racial background affect how I exist and operate within the world? (c) How have my educational experiences been racialized? Table 1 illustrates the reading list I gave to my preservice teachers.

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Table 1.

Reading List.

Reading list
Baszile, D. T. (2006). Rage in the interest of Black self: Curriculum theorizing as dangerous knowledge. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 22, 89-98.
Boutte, G. S. (2015). Educating African American students: And how are the children? New York, NY: Routledge.
Flowers, N. (2016). Native black consciousness responding to the complexity of white racial consciousness. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29, 1059-1064.
Matias, C. E. (2015). “Why do you make me hate myself?” Re-teaching whiteness, abuse, and love in urban teacher education. Teaching Education, 27, 194-211.
Matias, C. E., & Grosland, T. J. (2016). Digital storytelling as racial justice: Digital hopes for deconstructing whiteness in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 67, 152-164. doi:10.1177/0022487115624493
Milner, H. R. (2007). Race, culture, and researcher positionality: Working through dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen. Educational Researcher, 36, 388-400.

Engaging students in this assignment prompted me to wonder what would happen when I engaged my students in conversations that matter.

Sample statements

In this section, I provide several snapshots and samples from preservice teachers’ racial storytelling assignment as a way to illustrate how these future ELA teachers engaged in deep critical self-reflection and to illuminate how racial storytelling assignment(s) can be utilized as a humanizing pedagogical practice. The selection of the students’ comments is reflective of my class racial and ethnic makeup. In this undergraduate literacy course, there were a total of 15 students—14 of those students identified as white. I had only one student of color, and she identified as biracial.

So, I guess I would consider myself one of the hopeful children who believed we made it to a “post-racial” society simply because I had never faced blatant racism. I was biracial, which somehow translated to the thought that we, as a nation, have overcome racism because I existed and remained unharmed. Boy, was I wrong. As much as I hate to admit this, I would say I was conditioned to be white. And, I don’t know if anyone is to blame for that. I don’t want to blame my parents—I’m sure my mom didn’t think anything of it, but I’m always wondering if my dad thought it was necessary. Maybe he thought I’d have better chances of making it. Maybe he thought it was safer. But I feel like a part of me is dying and struggling to breathe, and I don’t know what to do. This is why I want to be a teacher. Not to repair the mistakes that my parents may have unintentionally made, but to be there for the students who struggle with their identity just as much as I do. Children of Color need an adult standing in front of them with eyes, nose, and hair like them. I wonder what my life would be like if I had a teacher that looked like me. Would I be any different? Would I have appreciated them more than anyone else? I would like to think so. And to this day, I still have never had a biracial instructor. But that’s just life for a biracial kid—I guess. The only representation you get is yourself. However, my work is not only focused on being a role model for young mixed kids; I have a responsibility to help students of Color because I feel my story was forgotten in my education experience: Baszile (2006) states that “Black children didn’t need to know of their Blackness” (p. 93). As such, no one ever told me my story was not being told until I realized it in college. I owe it to my students to celebrate their own stories. I want them to see themselves in works; I want them to know they have every capability of achieving, even when the world seems to have turned their backs on us (biracial female student).

As the majority of incoming education students are still white, it is crucial to analyze the impacts of whiteness. No white educator can simply ignore their own positionality and how it relates to their experiences and their perspectives on institutions. Many white people felt like the prevalence of white perspectives (white authors, white educators, etc.) in their schooling is somehow neutral or unbiased, but in reality, these contexts coddle whiteness and allow white folks to be ignorant to race and racism. For non-white students, “official classroom spaces, for nondominant students, can often function as a white public space due to judgment based on white standards and practices” (Martinez, 2016, p. 76). In becoming cognizant of this experience, students of color are likely to have white educators who must check their perpetuation of whiteness. Once teacher education recognizes how “whites have become culturally white, it can engage in a deeper conversation of race and racism, move beyond guilt, anger, and denial needed to become whole-heartedly antiracist” (Matias, 2015, p. 206). (white female student)

The combination of my upbringing, educational experiences, and beliefs brings me to the question of how I see and exist within this world, as well as a reevaluation and reflection of my conceptualization of myself and others. For most of my life, I viewed myself as not being racist. I did not hate people of Color, I did not support violence and discrimination against them, and I certainly wasn’t vocally and outwardly racist. I thought it was impossible for me to be a “racialized being”—I am white. Although white is definitely a racial category, when I hear the term “racialized being,” I think of someone in a Black or Brown body—someone whose worldview and experiences have been shaped and dictated by their race or ethnicity. Reflecting now on my existence, I realize I am not only racist but also a racialized being—just not in the way I previously conceptualized it. Although I could easily refuse to admit it, I still carry biases, make assumptions, and catch myself stereotyping. It is uncomfortable and embarrassing to make that statement, but I am not ashamed to admit that I always consciously challenge myself to reshape my conceptualizations of myself and those around me. This is not a simple undertaking, and it is one I feel I will contend with my whole life. But, I would much rather challenge my thinking every day than to let myself fall into a simple pattern of bigotry, stereotyping, and prejudice. To do so would not only do myself and those around me a disservice, but it would be a disgrace to the education community as a whole. (white female student)

A term loved by my generation is brought to mind when I think about what kind of an English teacher the world needs me to be: a “woke” one. I have always found this term interesting because it puts into words the contrasting feelings I had before and after I became aware of my privilege, particularly by being intellectually challenged at MSU [Michigan State University]. Before my first racialized encounter as a fourth grader, I realized the people who I surrounded myself with had such an impact on how I viewed myself as a racialized being. Before I came to MSU, where I began to understand the immense privilege I had been carrying with me since the day I was born, I was asleep. I was unconcerned about issues of race, and I could afford to be this way. My eyes were closed. MSU’s intellectual and social spaces jarred me into reality; my experiences here were the cold water, the alarm clock, the mom throwing the shades open to let the sunshine in. I am of the opinion that no one can be “too woke.” It is a continuing process of making sure to be aware and respectful, as well as actively working against the systems of oppression that are at play in our society. It’s knowing that my use of the word woke doesn’t necessarily have the same connotations as when a person of color uses it in terms of being safe and questioning the power structure. In the classroom, it is being aware and taking action to ensure my students, especially those of color, feel represented in the curriculum, and feel respected as intellectuals and scholars. (white female student)

Throughout this section, I was intentional about delineating how racial storytelling provides preservice teachers with a space to confront their own relationship(s) with race and racism while building a positive racial consciousness and providing them with the knowledge to become antiracist beings. As I reflect on this assignment, I acknowledge that preservice teachers of color and white preservice teachers apply racial storytelling differently, particularly because of our/their different racialized experiences. For example, the racial story of Kali (pseudonym), the biracial student of color, allowed her to (re)enter her childhood and (re)analyze her experiences growing up as a biracial female with a mother who identified as white and a father who identified as Black. Kali’s (re)evaluation of her racialized past self provided a doorway for her present self to see that her Black biracial female body is still marginalized and unsafe. For instance, she exclaims, “But I feel like a part of me is dying and struggling to breathe and I don’t know what to do. This is why I want to be a teacher.” The racial storytelling assignment illustrated Kali’s inner disturbance and provided her with an outlet to be vulnerable, to take a deep look within, and to return to the perennial question of “Who am I?” Similarly, Kali’s racial story illustrated that engaging in critical work is an ongoing journey. As such, if she continues to engage in critical work and transformation, there will be many moments when she will experience a metaphorical death—metaphorical deaths occur when we are opened and willing to become more critically conscious about race, racism, and other intersecting oppressions. In short, Kali is experiencing her rebirth and continuous journey to self-liberation and human freedom. In return, her rebirth and self-liberation can propel her to provide students of Color with a classroom space for them to grow, to heal, and to learn about who they are culturally, racially, ethnically, and linguistically, but most importantly to love who they are.

In contrast, for white students, the racial storytelling assignment catapulted them to (re)enter their racial past to analyze how they are implicated in the racial oppression of people of Color and to evaluate how their racist ideologies, stereotypes, and prejudices are inescapable because of the working of whiteness and white supremacy. For instance, one white female student explains,

Though I could easily refuse to admit it, I still carry biases, make assumptions, and catch myself stereotyping. It is uncomfortable and embarrassing to make that statement, but I am not ashamed to admit that I always consciously challenge myself to reshape my conceptualizations of myself and those around me. This is not a simple undertaking, and it is one I feel I will contend with my whole life.

Building on this statement, the white students who engaged in the racial storytelling assignment illuminated the importance of decentering whiteness not only in educational spaces but also in society writ large as ways to fight against racism and to authentically and humanely engage in antiracist practices. As one white female student pointed out, there are an immeasurable amount of white people walking around classrooms asleep and dismissive of the life histories and experiences of students of color. Furthermore, she goes on to explain that white teachers must #StayWoke in ELA classrooms. To illustrate, she contends,

Before I came to MSU, where I began to understand the immense privilege I had been carrying with me since the day I was born, I was asleep. I was unconcerned about issues of race and I could afford to be this way. My eyes were closed.

In like manner, to create a #Woke classroom, Cherry-McDaniel (2017) explains that ELA teachers and English educators must create contested spaces where students can negotiate, analyze, and critique their identity formation. That is, a #Woke classroom is a transformative space that supports the interests and intricate identities of children and youth of Color. A #Woke classroom creates a humanizing space for students to become inclined to see themselves as critically race-conscious citizens.

In closing, the racial storytelling assignment enabled preservice teachers to critically reflect on their childhood experiences with their families and friends, trouble their educational experiences, and (re)enter pivotal racial moments that shape their racial awareness, sociopolitical consciousness, and reading and understanding of the world.

Conclusion: A Look Toward the Future—Embracing a Radical (Self) Imagination

Returning to this notion of the disturbance of the self(ves), it is evident my racial specters haunt my historical, contemporary, and collective memories. Thus, I am constantly reading, writing, and storying my racialized self(ves) into existence. Moreover, I have provided my past and present-day racialized stories as a means for me to “learn how to live with my ghosts” (Joubert, 2017). In other words, “learning to live with my ghosts” means to foreground how my racialized past assists me to understand how my present realities construct my future. To do this type of soul work, I have to embrace a radical (self) imagination—I have to begin to (re)imagine myself(ves) and the world in which I live. Simply stated, racial storytelling and self-actualization point toward the radical (self) imagination as a method of thought. Literacy scholars, English educators, and ELA teachers cannot engage in organic self-actualization and liberation if we do not embrace and live within the radical imaginary.

Our future self is ever-evolving and ever-changing. In light of the radical imagination, in order to build and create the world that does not exist, educators have to understand how racism, whiteness, anti-Blackness/indigenousness/Brown-ness, exploitation, and marginalization situate themselves and are situated in today’s society. In short, in the radical (self) imagination, racism, whiteness, anti-Blackness/Brown-ness/Indian-ness, and white supremacist patriarchy do not and cannot exist. Building on this notion of the radical imagination, Dantley and Green (2015) call for the field of education to reenvision the ways it defines and implements social justice work through embracing the historical imagination. The authors state,

A historical imagination emerges when leaders critically reflect on the “history of the future” in their local context. This enables them to approach the pursuit of radical school and community transformation from a place that recalls the triumphs of the past while engaging an indomitable faith for a more socially just future. (p. 828)

The radical imagination compels language and literacy scholars and the field of English education to take action to eradicate a system that blocks the chances of creating the impossible—in this case, a more just and equitable world. Embracing the radical (self) imagination brings the human-ness and the humanity to language and literacy research and classrooms. If one does not see the humanity in others and within oneself, it is difficult to take on the radical (self) imagination. But first, the (re)imagining of y(our) selves must occur and y(our) hearts, minds, and souls have to be angered for justice and angered with the prophetic imagination (Dantley & Green, 2015) to create the world that we hope to see but that is not yet.