White Teachers in Multicultural Education

Identity and Inclusion

In the formative years of the multicultural education movement, most White educators saw themselves on the periphery, viewing multicultural education as an initiative for and about educators and students of color. This was not the intent of the founders of the movement, who had a more inclusive vision, but rather a result of most Whites not seeing themselves as racial, ethnic, or cultural beings. Over time, as the ethnic revitalization movement of the 1960s began to gain traction among White Americans, Alba, Paley, Howard, and other White teachers and scholars began to connect White people more to the multicultural education endeavor. For example, Project REACH, which began in a small rural school district in Washington state in 1976, was one of the first multicultural programs aimed specifically at White students and teachers.

In the 1990s, as critical race theory gained more attention among multicultural education scholars, issues of White privilege, structural race-based inequities, and Whiteness studies emerged as central concerns in the multicultural education community. In the first decade of the 21st century—with the enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2002, President Obama's Race to the Top initiative announced in 2009, and the resulting accountability mandate for eliminating race-based achievement gaps—there was a concomitant shift in the multicultural education movement toward cultural competence, culturally responsive teaching, and outcomes-based assessment. In this way, the popular and limited understanding of multicultural education as being primarily about the inclusion of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural content in the curriculum has gradually become closer to the original founding vision of multicultural education as promoting social justice and undoing centuries of systemic inequality. Given the fact that the education of children of color in the United States is largely in the hands of White people, one of the central concerns of multicultural education today is to strengthen the personal racial consciousness and professional cultural efficacy of White teachers.

Demographics and Deficiencies

In 2010, approximately 83% of the public school teachers in the United States were White, while students of color comprised 44% of school-age children. Whereas the racial demographics for teachers have been slow to change, the population [Page 2310]of students of color is rapidly increasing. In 2010, more than half of the newborns in the United States were children of color, and by 2025, students of color will represent a majority of the school-age cohort. By 2045, Whites will no longer be a racial majority in the United States.

Coupled with these demographic realities, the multicultural research literature demonstrates that many prospective and practicing White teachers are not adequately prepared to deal with the racial diversity in their classrooms. Orfield and Lee have shown that White people are the most racially segregated population in the United States. Frankenberg has pointed out that most White teachers have grown up and attended schools in communities that lack rich ethnic and racial diversity. Cooper and Ullucci have found that many White teachers hold deficit views of children of color, questioning their academic ability and motivation, and negatively assessing the values and parenting skills of their families. When confronted with data showing the race-based academic achievement disparities among their students, White teachers tend to blame such gaps on students and parents of color. In addition, Sleeter has pointed out that White teachers often operate from a colorblind perspective, unwilling or unable to acknowledge or understand the impact of race in their students' lives. Related to this color evasion is the tendency for White teachers not to see themselves as racial and cultural beings, preferring to minimize the impact and importance of their own racial identity issues in the classroom. Compounding this disengagement from racial consciousness, Howard and Singleton have demonstrated that most White teachers tend not to analyze educational outcomes through the lens of institutional racism, nor do they acknowledge the complex and continuing impact of White privilege and power in American society.

...