From Camouflage to Pledging Commitment: Race in the Habits of Mind

This chapter begins by summarizing Mezirow’s notion of habits of mind and then goes into the data from our research with White preservice teachers, identifying four common habits of mind found in written and spoken reflections that indicate avoidance of issues of race and racism. The first was camouflaging, the habit of speaking around race using terms such as “difference” or “diversity,” or focusing on economic or social factors in lieu of racial issues. The second was simplifying, reducing race and racism to simple terms such as “culture” (left undefined) or constructing cross-race relationships solely in terms of personal affect, elided history, and power relations. The third common habit of mind was holding deficit views toward minoritized students and criminalizing their behaviors. The fourth was pledging commitment and savior-making, the habit of responding to the statement of racial issues by articulating a promise to fight for equity at some unspecified point in the future. Pledging commitment, in its most extreme form, became a kind of soteriological stance we call savior-making, in which White prospective teachers presented themselves as saving minoritized children from the negative consequences of their racial identity.