The unexamined whiteness of teaching: Will the cycle be unbroken

Because of the overwhelming number of White teachers working in urban public schools, it is critical that teacher education programs consider the influence that White racial identity has on these teachers' understandings of urban communities and students of color. By examining this influence, teacher education can develop strategies to better prepare White teachers. To gain deeper insights into these issues, I engaged in a qualitative research study that posed questions about the ways in which White preservice teachers' biographies, identities, and life experiences influenced their understandings of race and difference. Additionally, I explored how they negotiated these understandings when challenged through a multicultural education course.; I found that the participants' individual biographies played a substantial role in socializing them to hold hegemonic understandings about urban schools, students, and communities. Through understandings passed on and reinforced by their families, schooling, and the white supremacist culture of the United States, the participants had stereotypical beliefs about people of color, characterized by fear and a sense of deficiency. As part of an ongoing cycle of racism, participants carried these misconceptions from their childhood into their student teaching classrooms, and these stereotypes provided the basis for problematic assumptions about the students and families with whom they worked.; The participants' beliefs were challenged through a critical multicultural course designed that addressed White privilege, racism, and social justice education. The participants responded by relying on "tools of whiteness" designed to protect and maintain their original hegemonic understandings---tools that were emotional, ideological, and performative in nature ranging from defensiveness to denial to silence. These tools played a role in the maintenance of white supremacy, as the hegemonic understandings of the preservice teachers manifest themselves as structural racism as they enter the institution of public education. Although in most instances participants remained complicit with their incoming beliefs, there were examples of them breaking from the cycle of racism by changing their hegemonic understandings, transforming their classroom practice, or acting as advocates for their urban students of color. These examples shed light on how teacher education programs can organize to challenge the hegemonic understandings of White teachers.