A volume in Educational Leadership for Social Justice Series Editor
Jeffrey S. Brooks, University of Missouri-Columbia, Denise E. Armstrong,
Brock University; Ira Bogotch, Florida Atlantic University; Sandra
Harris, Lamar University; Whitney H. Sherman, Virginia Commonwealth
University; George Theoharis, Syracuse University The Emperor Has No
Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know
offers theoretical grounding and practical approaches for leaders and
teachers interested in effectively addressing racism and other
oppressive constructs. The book draws both on the author's extensive
experience teaching about race and racism in classroom and community
settings and from the theory and practice of a wide range of educators,
activists, and researchers committed to social justice. The first
chapter looks at the toxic consequences of our western cultural
insistence on profit, binary thinking, and individualism to establish
the theoretical framework for teaching about race and racism. Chapter
two investigates privileged resistance, offering a psycho/social history
of denial, particularly as a product of racist culture. Chapter three
reviews the research on the construction and reconstruction of dominant
culture both historically and now in order to establish sound strategic
approaches that educators, teachers, facilitators, and activists can
take as we work together to move from a culture of profit and fear to
one of shared hope and love. Chapter four lays out the stages of a
process that supports teaching about racist, white supremacy culture,
explaining how students can be taken through an iterative process of
relationshipbuilding, analysis, planning, action, and reflection. The
final chapter borrows from the brilliant, brave, and incisive writer
Dorothy Allison to discuss the things the author knows for sure about
how to teach people to see that which we have been conditioned to fear
knowing. The chapter concludes with how to encourage and support
collective and collaborative action as a critical goal of the process.
