Running Head: White Gaze
White Gaze: “Talking Bout the Man in the Mirror”
Critical Memoir
EDCS 720
Introduction to Diversity in Curriculum
Derek Vaughan
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Running Head: White Gaze
On September 14, 2013, Johnathan Ferrell, an unarmed black man, was in a devastating car
crash in Charlotte, North Carolina. Seeking help after being badly injured, he ran towards
Police for help, but instead was tased and shot to death.
On November 2, 2013, Renisha McBride, an unarmed 19-year-old Black woman, was shot in
the face with a shotgun in Dearborn Heights, Michigan by a 54-year-old white male
homeowner, when she knocked on his door seeking help after a car accident.
On February 26, 2012, Travon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old Black man was murdered in
Sanford, Florida, while walking through a gated community eating a bag of skittles. George
Zimmerman, an armed White-Hispanic man who was part of the neighborhood watch, stalked
and fatally shot Martin for no apparent reason other than he looked suspicious, and quite
frankly, as Zimmerman implied, he didn’t belong. No one gave any of these young African
Americans the benefit-of-doubt because in their eyes, they didn’t belong. But in my eyes, I call
this the “white gaze.”
White Gaze is the fear that white people have of blacks (Paris & Alim, 2014). In short, it
is defined as looking at the world through the eyes of a white person who has undertones of, or is
blatant in, their racism. Simply put, the gaze means that you have no right to belong. You have
no right to belong in certain neighborhoods; you have no right to belong in certain schools. And
if you are Black, you have no right to belong anywhere that those affected by the White Gaze
feel that you should not be. The white gaze is the product of a culture that automatically centers
whiteness and gives white people the benefit of the doubt. White Gaze is the premise that I am
positioning my critical memoir. I look at this phenomenon as being one of the most impactful
ideals in my lifetime and probably one of the most damaging.
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Running Head: White Gaze
For years I have embarked upon a false narrative and stereotype that has forced me to
move through social spaces in a way to put white peoples fear of me at ease and to be accepted in
their eyes. While unknowingly to me at the time, the white gaze is historically saturated in
notions of white privilege, white power, and hegemony. This White Gaze has emboldened me to
talk about that man in the mirror. That person that I see every morning that has oftentimes, but
unconsciously masked his identity to garner acceptance into mainstream society. First, I will
highlight some of my experiences of being caught up the white gaze. Then I will explain how
those critical incidents have influenced my way of looking at teaching, learning and schooling
through a more critical lens.
I am an African American male who grew up in the rural South. The concept of privilege
was not a part of my lexicon, let alone understanding whether I was or not. I grew up poor, in a
family of seven where my father was ill from alcoholism, and, absent most of my life. I never
knew until sixth or seventh grade that free lunch was not an option, and why I could not get
chocolate milk or ice cream for lunch or go to band to play an instrument. While a student in
high school, I could not make the connection with what was being taught and the usefulness it
would have for me later in life. I thought playing sports and working to help support my family
was what I was supposed to do. At times I felt like that was my privilege. At least it seems that
was the expectation. I did not understand the concept of white privilege and how certain
opportunities were not meant for me because of the color of my skin, or my social status. Even
still, without the ability to afford to what seemed to be at the time, the necessities of life, my
mother made sure our values were intact, like respect, honor, selflessness, hard work, and
unfortunately, to comply to those that are in authority, those that had a voice, and those whose
decisions usually went unquestioned--mainly White people.
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Running Head: White Gaze
As an elementary student during the Civil Rights era, I experienced the hostile,
derogatory, negative messages towards me and people who looked like me based solely on my
marginalized group membership, whether it was intentional or unintentional. As I reflect, this is
when the early seeds of race and white privilege began to take root in my head and the white
gaze pressed its ugly face to the window as if to watch me perform like a trained monkey. A
story I tell often is one in which I have a vivid memory of my second-grade experience in
Virginia Public Schools 1968, shortly after, THEY decided to desegregate. We were in music
and my teacher was white. She divided the class up on this day between those that had an
instrument and those that did not. Most of those that had been bused across town were in the
group without instruments. Not to fret, our consolation was, we got to sing a song called “Cotton
Needs a Pickin.” To make sure that all three domains of learning were covered, we had to act it
out as well. At the time, we had fun with it, never once thinking that we were those little
monkeys being asked to perform for what she perceived to be our place in society. She used her
position of authority to let us know that we did not belong there. She is presenting us the world
the way she sees it and we are supposed digest it that way and follow suit. My training to be
lured into the white gaze started early and often. This gaze is infectious. I now realize that my
teachers and my elementary principal were infected by the white gaze as well.
Mr. Travis was his name. He had the reputation of being mean, very mean. He had no
problem treating students as if they were his own. But I could never imagine the “hurt” he put on
me and my friends was what his children experienced. Mr. Travis was “ole school” and
reminded me very much of my dad. If you got out of line or showed some disrespect, you got
beat, physically. Disrespect to him meant questioning him, or our teachers. Not necessarily
talking back, but questioning. He wanted the best for us. He understood the dynamics of an
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Running Head: White Gaze
omnipresent racially tense society. The wounds were still fresh, the mindset of the white
dominant culture was sensing they were losing power because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
So, he felt there was hope for us. Unfortunately, that hope was for us to be like them. We had to
be good in the eyes of the “the white man” or we will never get ahead in life. Show deference, be
like them. He too was trapped in white imagination. Our futures were predicated on white
culture.
My most recent encounter with white gaze was just a couple of months ago in one of my
graduate classes. In a paper I wrote regarding my intentions for an action research project, I used
the phrase “white privilege.” One of my classmates felt offended by the term and suggested I not
use the term because it was insensitive and offensive. She said the term"…becomes, in my mind
hurtful and divisive. It immediately condemns me for something I cannot control, my skin color…
I don't believe that is your intent to be divisive of using the phrase "white privilege"… I don't see
them as helpful as you conduct your research. I will be thinking of other terms. I haven't found
or created any good ones yet, but I am working on it…” Now I am in a gaze, and it’s not white.
This is the epitome of white gaze. She was trying to control the narrative by assuming what
needed to be done based on how she perceived the dominant culture would feel. The implication
was that I use a softer approach, to avoid offensive language. In other words, my description of
whites and the role they play in subjugating people of color did not belong, therefore, she felt
compelled to not only tell me, but to offer suggestions of a lighter tone. She even went so far as
to offer me books to read that personified her actions even more. She did not realize she was
evoking and operationalizing the very concept she was trying to get me to avoid. She failed to
see how the color of her skin colored her view of the world. I am not sure if her white gaze had
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Running Head: White Gaze
ever been challenged so she did not even notice it was there. But fortunate for me, I was not a
“Rented Negro,” and I challenged her gaze.
Those are just a snippet of my experiences that have helped shape who I am by allowing
me to eventually recognize the white gaze, and not allow my actions to be defined by white
ideologies. During graduate school, I had help in doing this. My goal in becoming an educator
was shaped by a couple of my mentors/advisors. They helped me cut through the haze by helping
me negotiate myself as a young African American male (at least at the time young) living in a
white dominated society. I was constantly reminded that schools are a microcosm of society, and
our social system provide us with constant reminders of a racist, classist, sexist society. Your
progression in life is determined by the color of your skin, whether you are male or female (and
now gender identity), and how much money you have in the bank. They spoke firmly about
maintaining cultural integrity and academic excellence and critiquing social inequities by being
critically conscious.
The white gaze however, still exists and I fight it every day. When I became an educator,
it was a challenge. Like Toni Morrison (Hierospace, 2016), I have spent a major portion of my
life trying to make sure that the White Gaze was not the dominant voice in any of my lessons.
Paris and Alim (2014) suggests that it can be a challenge to prepare teachers and preservice
teachers to be like themselves, who they are and not like middle-class white people. That is, how
do we get them to sustain their cultural being. Paris and Alim (2014) calls this Culturally
Sustaining Pedagogy. They urge teachers to co-anchor with students to understand their value
practices. Then they suggest teachers should work to sustain, honor, explore, and extend those
practices; they should even join students’ value practices. For example, if Hip Hop is what they
like, join in their pursuit of the genre and include critical discourse along the way.
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Running Head: White Gaze
I struggled to avoid falling into a narrative of blaming students and their families for the
widening of the “achievement gap,” when in actuality students of color are not given the
“opportunity” to succeed. Our intense focus on achievement gaps needs to be combined with an
equally intense focus on the opportunity gaps. Children learn when they have opportunities to
learn (Darity, 2018; Gorski, 2012). When denied those opportunities, they fall behind, and we
get the devastating achievement gaps. But when they are provided with rich opportunities to
learn, they thrive, and the achievement gaps closes. This is call “blaming the victim” and is
synonymous to what Gorski (2018) calls advocating “Deficit Ideologies.” Those that prescribe to
this ideology are ignoring certain types of social conditions and not considering the structural
inequalities that communities of color are faced with routinely. He goes on to say the focus is on
fixing disenfranchised communities rather than those things that disenfranchise communities.
This misguided ideology is destructive to students of color and morally justifies existing social
conditions (Gorski, 2013). My responsibility as an educator is to provide better opportunities of
success for students through a more student-centered practice and teach from the position of
finding students’ strengths as opposed to focusing on their deficits.
Another role that I can play is to embrace the theory of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
(CRP). Ladson-Billing (1995) states that CRP addresses student achievement and helps students
to accept and affirm their identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities
that schools and other institutions perpetuate. The goal is to bridge home culture and school
culture and dismiss the notion of teaching from a dominant culture paradigm. This is a studentcentered approach to teaching where students’ unique cultural strengths are identified and
nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the students’ place in
society. This allow teachers to explore their own implicit biases while simultaneously learning
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Running Head: White Gaze
about their students’ culture. It is also important for teachers to understand the role that race
plays in education. Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) tells us that race is still a significant factor in
determining inequality in the United States. The intersection of race and poverty is just as
important as a central construct to education. Race matters in education and it is important to
raise awareness about how policies can be racist and disenfranchise marginalized groups. I do
not need research to see the disproportionate number of African American males in special
education and are suspended from school to know that policies that govern PK-12 schools do not
serve certain populations. These are strong racial messages that presents challenges for teachers
that are related to outcomes in education.
From my experience, the dominant European-American White culture simply dominates
social and behavioral norms and policies to such an extent that those who grow up immersed in it
can be entirely unaware of the realities of other cultures. When teachers, particularly white
teachers say, “they don’t see color, they see children,” they are saying the white gaze does not
exist, thus denying the culture of those that are different from them. Being blind to color is being
blind to the consequences of color (Wise, 2002). This manifest itself into a lack of sensitivity,
respect, and understanding of others’ realities. They in turn expect students of color to reproduce
their values, beliefs, and assumptions. To take on their complexion. But my experiences have led
me to reject that notion and know that my culture is valid and strong, not better, but different.
And it is important that I sustain it. I now understand the White Gaze, how it operates and how it
has impacted my life. So now, every morning when I wake up, figuratively and literally, when I
look at that man in the mirror, I am not asking him to change his ways.
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Running Head: White Gaze
Reference
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