Book Review
We Can’t teaCh What
We Don’t KnoW
White Teachers,
Multiracial Schools
Second Edition
Gary R. Howard
Gary R. Howard
Chapter 1
White Man Dancing:
A Story of Personal Transformation
About the Author, Gary R. Howard
• Born in a small rural town near Seattle, Washington
• First contact with a person of color at the age of 18, senior
year of high school.
• Went on a double date with a classmate, his AfricanAmerican girlfriend and her friend
• Attended Yale Universityafter graduating high school
• While attending Yale, worked with inter city Black and
Hispanic Children at the local YMCA
Baptism By Fire
• Howard attended Yale during the 1960’s
• He and his wife moved to an area of New Haven
named “The Hill”
• A very impoverished neighborhood that during the
60’s was a location of massive racial riots and
burnings
• It was here that Gary Howard found his calling to
fight racism and promote cultural awareness
Chapter 2
White Dominance and the Weight of the
West
• “The Enemy is dominance itself, not White
people.”
• Teachers have a responsibility to our students to
assure that we and other educators remain open to
ever deeper levels of awareness of dominance.
• “If our examination and understanding of the root
causes of social inequality are too shallow, then
our approach to corrective action will necessarily
be superficial and ineffective” (page 30)
Why does Social Dominance
Exist?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Minimal Group Paradigm
Social Positionality
Social Dominance Theory
Privilege and Penalty
Minimal Group Paradigm
• Suggests that human beings tend to demonstrate
discriminatory in-group and out-group dynamics
even when there is extremely limited basis for
drawing distinctions between members of the
groups.
• Two Lessons
1.People tend to draw distinctions between themselves as
individuals and groups, even if the distinctions are
essentially meaningless in a larger context
2. Having drawn these distinctions we then ascribe values
of superiority and inferiority to the various in-groups
and out-groups we have created
Social Positionality
• Subjective- how I see myself and how others see me.
• Objective- relates to my social position in terms of
more quantitative and observable measures, such as
income, education level, or job title.
• From a non-white point-of-view, both subjectively and
objectively Whites have been collectively allocated
disproportionate amounts of power, authority, wealth,
control, and dominance.
• An individual white person may not feel dominant or see
themselves belonging to a collective group defined by
Whiteness.
Social Dominance Theory
Four Basic Assumptions
1.
2.
3.
4.
Human social systems are predisposed to form social hierarchies,
with hegemonic groups at the top and negative reference at the
bottom.
Hegemonic groups tend to be disproportionately male
Most forms of social oppression, such as racism, sexism, and
classism, can be viewed as manifestations of group-based social
hierarchy.
Social hierarchy is a survival strategy that has been selected by many
species of primates, including Homo sapiens.
White educators ought to understand how our inherited hegemonic
position continues to influence the educational process today, because
we should be committed to equitable opportunities and outcomes for
all of our students.
Page 35
Privilege and Penalty
• Social dominance will cause privileges to
flow to certain groups if they are earned or
not.
• Penalties, punishments, and inequities flow
to other groups through no fault of their
own other than their group membership.
Example TV program
Methodologies of Dominance
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•
•
•
•
•
•
Disease
Warfare
Land Theft
Religion
Missionaries and Bureaucrats
Education
Alienation and Alcohol
Chapter 3
Decoding the Dominance Paradigm
Three major processes that function together
as the dynamics of dominance
1.The Assumption of Rightness
2.The Luxury of Ignorance
3.The Legacy of Privilege
The Assumption of Rightness
• Hegemonic groups do not consider their beliefs, attitudes, and
actions to be determined by cultural conditioning or the influences of
group membership
• Many Whites don't even think of themselves as having culture;
we’re simply “right”. Dominate groups don’t hold “perspectives,”
they hold “Truth”
The Luxury of Ignorance
• Assumption of rightness is
reinforced by the fact that
dominant groups tend to know
very little about the “other”
groups
• Dominant groups can function
without knowledge or
interaction with those people
that are not part of the dominant
group.
• This leads to the projecting false
perceptions and assumptions as
truths.
Example- Jesus and English
The Legacy of Privilege
•
•
•
•
•
“The Real Americans”
“forever foreign” syndrome
Cheap food
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer
“Voice” Dominant groups have the power
to control public information and education
Chapter 4
White Educators and the River of
Change
White Teachers and the
Healing Response
1. Honesty
2. Empathy
3. Advocacy
4. Action
Chapter 5
Mapping the Journey of White Identity
Development
Stages of White Identity Development
1. Contact
2. Disintegration
3. Reintegration
4. Pseudo-independence
5. Immersion / emersion
6. Autonomy
Chapter 6
Ways of Being White: A Practitioner’s
Approach to Multicultural Growth
White Identity Orientations
1. Fundamentalist White Identity
2. Integrationist White Identity
3. Transformationist White Identity
Chapter 7
White Teachers and School Reform:
Toward a Transformationist Pedagogy
• What Transformationist Teachers Know
1. Race Matters
2. Change Begins With Us
3. Beliefs Determine Outcomes
4. Teaching Is a Calling, Not Just a Job