Abstract: Although often viewed as burdensome, academic writing guidelines are rarely treated as actively problematic. Even progressive scholars are unlikely to challenge the cultural assumptions or political investments of academic style guides. Yet standards regarding clarity, precision, appropriateness, sensitivity, and objectivity are not politically innocent. In codifying formal guidelines for the presentation of research, academic style manuals reflect and reinscribe the racialized and gendered (among other) power relations characteristic of the academy. Drawing on critical race feminism and whiteness theories, this paper considers how scholarly investments in whiteness and patriarchy organize the influential APA writing guidelines. The present analysis refers specifically to the APA Manual, but similar analyses might apply to aspects of the Chicago and MLA manuals and the Bluebook, among other style guides.
Abstract: Whites have long designated people of color as "good" when they were "friends of the white man." In a reverse move, some antiracist whites now identify themselves as "good" whites -as friends of people of color. A number of antiracist psychologists and teacher educators have argued in support of this move. To develop a coherent and abidingly antiracist stance, they say, white students and teachers must feel positive about their racial identity. If the "anti" aspect of antiracist white identity development is given too large a role, learners will have no room to measure themselves in proactive as opposed to reactive terms. Accordingly, white students need to be able to think of themselves as "allies" of people of color. Although less likely than students to aspire to the status of friend of people of color, progressive white professors, too, insofar as they pride themselves on "getting" race issues, congratulate themselves on being exceptional whites. Both forms of white exceptionalism rely on an indispensable "anti" status: antiracist whites are invited to see themselves as not that kind of white and to embrace only those aspects of whiteness that can be construed as positive. This paper argues that progressive whites must interrogate the very ways of being good that white identity theory offers to protect, for the moral framing that gives whites credit for being antiracist is parasitic on the racism that it is meant to challenge. In order to move towards new conceptions of white antiracism, the paper argues, we need to adopt emergent approaches to both cross-race and intra-race relations.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to put the problematic claims made for educational caring in context by indicating how three competing feminist analyses have addressed the question of gender inequity. Neither from the liberal perspective offered by socialization theory nor from the leftist perspectives offered by structural and deconstructive analyses can caring be considered an adequate solution to educational inequity. Indeed, because “caring” as theorized in gender difference theory turns upon specifically Western, white, middle–class, and heterosexual assumptions about gender and femininity, it risks contributing to patterns of educational exclusion. To understand both the promise and the limitations of gender difference theory, it is necessary to evaluate that theory in the context of other influential educational feminist theories.
No available abstract
Abstract: The author offers a critique of the 'colorblindness' found both in the psychological literature on caring and in theories of caring in education. Thompson argues that, insofar as theories of care fail to acknowledge and address the Whiteness of their political and cultural assumptions, they are in effect colorblind. She calls for a reexamination of the Whiteness embedded in these colorblind theories, which have been universally framed and have thus sidestepped the issues of racial imbalance implicit in colorblindness. She adds to the critique of these theories by showing how differently some of the themes that have proved generative for theories of care might have been interpreted if a Black feminist perspective rather than a liberal White feminist perspective had been assumed. Following her critique of 4 key themes—the moral relevance of the situation, the primacy of survival, the significance of the standpoint from which values are understood, and the moral power of narrative—Thompson calls our attention to how we think about, develop, and implement an anti-racist curriculum and practice in classrooms. Her point is that colorblindness in teaching and learning situations limits us from benefiting from other perspectives that may inform educational practice.
Abstract: This paper argues that democratic education in a racist society requires anti-racist pedagogy. Because traditional approaches to democratic education conceive racism in terms of personal prejudice, they cannot adequately address the problems that racism actually poses. Racism is structural and institutional as well as embodied and ideational; if education is to do more than refine social expressions of and responses to racism, it must take on racism as a way of framing meaning and value. The paper argues that this cannot be accomplished, however, if anti-racist education is conceived in terms of reactive or corrective argumentation. This is because a reactive or even a corrective response to racist arguments accepts the terms of racism even in arguing against them. To avoid invoking the very assumptions and framework we mean to discredit, we must shift out of the racist framework altogether. What this means for education, the author argues, is that we need to appeal to art and performance as ways to reframe and reconceive race relations. The paper closes with examples of a performative pedagogy addressed to anti-racist goals.