“The Students Led Me Here”: A White Teacher’s Movement Toward Antiracist and Abolitionist Practice

The racial mismatch between the overwhelmingly white teaching force and an increasingly heterogeneous student population continues to widen (Boucher, M. (2016). Urban Education, 51(1), 82–107.) with pernicious implications for BIPOC students “who are systematically marginalized by the institution of schooling” (Kinloch, V., & Dixon, K. (2017). English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 16(3), p. 332). This article employs critical whiteness studies to examine one white teacher’s progress toward antiracist praxis. By “problematizing the normality of hegemonic whiteness” (Matias et al.. (2014). Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(3), p.291), critical whiteness studies expose the ways that whiteness and white people’s resistance to acknowledging their whiteness upholds racism and systems of racial injustice. Analysis uncovered two shifts: 1) from a deficit perspective to an asset-based stance, and 2) from a dominant culture curriculum to a culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum that centered family and community. The conclusion offers recommendations for integrating antiracist praxis into pedagogy and ways of being.