A Meaningful Paradox of Color-Blind Racism and Racial Literacy: Understanding the Phenomena of White Women Teachers Educating Students of Color

Recognizing school resegregation and the demographic imperative as systemic problems impacting the educational outcomes of students of Color, this study examined the role of White women teachers’ racial views within the sociocultural context of teaching and learning. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how 15 high school teachers described their lived experiences as educators of Latinx, Black, and Asian students in a racially diverse, public high school on Long Island, New York. This qualitative study was conceptualized through combining the theoretical lens of critical whiteness studies and critical pedagogy utilizing a qualitative phenomenological methodology for data collection, with the framework of color-blind racism added during the data analysis phase. The sample of 15 White women teachers engaged in two or three semi-structured interviews. The emergence of four meaningful paradoxes indicated that although most participants often employed a rhetoric revealing the uncritical endorsement of a color-blind ideology to describe their experiences, White women teachers also indicated that they were learning to see how race impacted them and their students’ lives. These findings provided insights and future directions for K-12 educational institutions and teacher-training programs by suggesting that more efforts are necessary to recognize the signs of color-blind racism, to ensure racial literacy development as an integral part of the education of White women teachers, and to promote positive teacher-student relationships and educational success for students of Color