“And her death filled her with great plentitude”: Whiteness, erasure, and racialized schooling

Abstract

Whiteness. We appropriate the word to erase it. We laugh – ha, ha – whiteness. I begin with my experiences as a white, upper-middle class girl raised up in a racist and racialized educational system. This authoethnography revolves around an epiphanic moment resulting from the impact of years of involvement in this system. I look at various ways educational practices that are meant to alleviate pain, inequity, and a legacy of racism can function to allow white people to distance ourselves from the ugliness of privilege, silence criticism, perpetuate inequity, and, ultimately, limit human growth and connection.

Citation

Margolin, M. (2010), "“And her death filled her with great plentitude”: Whiteness, erasure, and racialized schooling", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 239-259. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034016