How am I enhancing my educational influences with racialising discourses of whiteness in living educational theories?
Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath.
Draft 15 January 2006
Through my desire to live a productive life I have focused on the generation and evaluation of living educational theories that carry hope for the future of humanity and my own. This hope is connected with the values, skills and understandings that have developed in the course of my research programme into the nature of living educational theories. What I mean by a living educational theory is an individual's explanation, for their educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations, that emerges from an educational enquiry that includes questions of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' (McNiff & Whitehead, 2005, 2006; Whitehead & McNiff, 2006)
My reason for stressing the importance of living educational theories is that they are ways in which individuals can provide accounts of their lives and their educational influences in their learning, in relation to the values, skills and understandings they believe carry hope for the future of humanity. By sharing these accounts, within processes of democratic evaluation, it is my belief that individuals from different cultures, races, genders, classes, religions, spiritualities and ideological beliefs can live to learn together in enhancing the flow of values, skills and understandings they believe carry this hope and in learning to work together to resist constraints and violations to this flow.
In answering my question I have learnt much from four
doctoral students of the University of Bath, Cathy Aymer, Judith Ryde, Yaqub
(Al Kindy)-Murray and Eden Charles.
When I asked Cathy Aymer in the course of her enquiry into Seeking
Knowledge for Black Cultural Renewal, if
there was anything I could do to help her she said, 'Just bear me in
mind'. Watching Cathy graduate
with her doctorate (Aymer, 2005) in December 2005, and having examined her
thesis, I felt that I understood the relational values of humanity and
life-affirming energy that Cathy communicated in, 'bearing me in mind' and in
her seeking knowledge for black cultural renewal. I am thinking in particular
of her living expression of the relational African cosmology of Ubuntu, 'I am
because we are'. In examining Judith Ryde's (2005) thesis on Exploring
White Racial Identity And Its Impact On Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy
Organisations, I could appreciate her
originality in making 'whiteness' visible with white psychotherapists and the
significance of exploring guilt and shame experienced by white people in the
context of psychotherapy.
In my enquiry I am conscious of the dynamic boundaries of
interconnecting and branching channels of communications between people, that
can flip into a disabling vortex fuelled by anger, guilt and shame. I seek to
resist being sucked into such disabling vortices, often through the expression
of the pleasurable release of energy through laughter, so that I can ensure
that my own responses to life, flow with hope and life-affirming energy. The release of energy through humour
does not diminish the pain, suffering and cruelty, inflicted by some human
beings on others. I am simply acknowledging that my capacity to experience the
pleasurable flow of energy released by laughter has helped to sustain me in my
most trying times and circumstances.
My desire to enhance my educational influence flows with a life-affirming energy and love of what I do in education. I intend to express this desire without losing my awareness of the need for an appropriate response to many different kinds of conflict in the world that inflict pain, sap life affirming energies, and destroy opportunities for enhancing the well being of individuals and their communities. Hence, I am enquiring into how I enhance my educational influence with life-affirming energy, love and hope through racialising discourses of whiteness in living educational theories.
The third doctoral researcher at the University of Bath to
influence my enquiry is Yaqub
(Al Kindy)-Murray. As a self-designating mixed race, mixed heritage educator,
undertaking a doctoral research programme, Yaqub has helped to focus my
attention on the significance of identity in enhancing educational influences
through racialising discourses with whiteness. When I began my supervision
Yaqub (Al Kindy)-Murray would identify with the name Paul Murray. I produced a
joint paper with Paul Murray for AERA 2000 on White
and Black with White Identities in Self-Studies of Teacher Education Practices (Murray and Whitehead, 2000). Paul
Murray moved on to Paulus Murray to Yaqub Paul Murray (2005) and to Yaqub (Al
Kindy)- Murray (personal correspondence 11/1/06). Yaqub also helped me, by
accident, to develop my awareness of the importance of scarification in
severing educational conversations. He also helped me to understand the
educational significance of scarification in cutting oneself off from the possibility
of the other.
I began to develop my understanding of the significance of scarification when I made a mistake in my understanding of the use of the word by Yaqub. He had intended its horticultural use - scratching the surface of soil and seeds to hasten germination. I had mistakenly thought, when I looked for the meaning of scarification in the dictionary, that he had meant wounding through harsh criticism! The idea of scarifying by wounding through harsh criticism has stayed with me as I seek to understand how educational conversations can be sustained in the face of scarifying responses, to one's ideas, work and being. Yaqub has also been inspirational in the way he has engaged with and shared responses to his readings of postcolonial literature. My use of the quotation below from Taiaike Alfred about appropriate responses to colonial tyrants is due to Yaqub sharing his excitement as he engaged with the text.
Eden Charles, is the fourth doctoral researcher at the University of Bath to influence my enquiry into the educational desirability of racialising with whiteness, living educational theories. In his doctorate Eden is researching his educational influences in his learning as a black father, a black educator at the Sankofa Centre in London and as a black management consultant in national and international contexts, in a relationship with African cosmology. Three of the following images are from Eden's web-site and the fourth from an i-chat conversation with me.
Speaking to an audience (international From i-chat conversation with Jack
Management consultant) 11/01/06.
Listening to a student's experience Listening to a parent's experience
At the Sankofa Centre in London. at the Sankofa Centre in London.
What I have learnt from Eden is that it is possible, and desirable, to learn to live in a way the enhances the flow of values that carry hope for the future of humanity in the face of the most dehumanising of experiences. I am thinking of my learning from the experience of Eden telling me about a visit to Sierra Leone where he was working with the people who worked with women who had seen their husbands killed in a civil war, been raped and had a child from the rape often by the man or men who had killed their husband. In the video-clip of the conversation Eden talks about how profoundly he has been influenced by the women for the love they expressed for their children. The humanity of these women from Sierra Leone was communicated by Eden to me in the video clip below. Before giving access to the clip, I would like to contextualise it with the following points from Eden as he reflects on his experience and concerns:
In that experience I recognised the horror that these
women were experiencing and the ways in which their humanity had both been
defiled and yet somehow transcendent. They were being the best parents they
could to their children. More than that though, what struck me was the extent
to which, being in the context of the atrocity brought home the magnitude of
that atrocity upon these women and the wider society for whom it was not
normal. By that I mean that they had not become desensitised to the pain. It
hurt them as much as it would hurt a white middle class woman in Bath. These
people had experienced a contradiction between their humanity, their
aspirations and dreams for themselves their children their society and the
inhumanity of war AND IT HURT and the pain may last for generations.
"I am
African genetically. I have a long history of articulating the abuse of Africa
and Africans by colonial powers. I have studied African history, culture,
cosmology and liberation philosophy. I have spent time in many parts of Africa
and have very close friends living on the African continent. However, being
there immersed in the reality of this situation and experiencing a different
embodied connectivity, made me want even more powerfully to do something to
help stop the despoliation of dreams and flesh. I am angry that
this is allowed to happen, fed and encouraged by the desires for control of
diamonds to increase the wealth of a few westerners while fuelling distortions
about the causes of African poverty. I did not work with the women directly
Jack but they worked with me. Does that make sense?
I showed the clip to a friend of mine and her response
was to ask why it was that the clip about Africa that we were showing was yet
again about pain, inhumanity and social breakdown. As we discussed we explored
the contradiction between the ways in which I spoke of these women as examples
of the very best of the human spirit and the ways in which the video might be
construed as reinforcing notions of African inhumanity and possibly
inferiority. After that discussion I took the clip off my web site Jack because
I thought that I did not want it to be shared without this kind of explanation giving it context.
I would like that, if you do share it, then some of this dialogue be included,
if only in the form of your response to it. I know that your point is about me
communicating the humanity of these women and of the influence that has on your
learning. I think, particularly in a paper in which you are articulating the
importance of "racialising discourses of whiteness in living educational
theories", that this context and the milieu of racist stereotypes about African
peoples are part of the scope of your attention and need to be explicitly
considered. I also want to remind you that there is a stereotype about black
people being happy even as they are treated abominably and facing the most
dehumanising of experiences. This stereotype has been used to justify the
negative treatment and is the opposite to my intention as a result of having
had the experiences in Sierra Leone that I had and, I believe, to your intention
Jack. I share your purpose with this paper Jack and know that you are coming
from a good and very important place with your desire to communicate the
importance of living in ways that "enhances the flow of values that carry hope
for the future of humanity in the face of the most dehumanising of
experiences". I am sharing these thoughts with you because I think we have to
be aware not to be inadvertently contributing fuel to those whose intention is
other than serving the interests of the wider humanity. (Eden Charles, personal communication 14/01/06)
Bearing in mind the danger of the stereotypical response described by Eden, and my own identification with Eden's communication of the humanity of the women, here is the clip:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/edenslsor.mov
What I would like you to bear in mind as I continue with an answer to my question, is the flow of life-affirming energy, pleasure and hope I experience, through my understandings of Eden's enquiry. I intend to share this answer to my question, about enhancing my educational influence through racialising my discourse with whiteness in my living educational theory, with a group of practitioner-researchers who gather for educational conversations on Monday evenings in the Department of Education of the University of Bath.
Now I know that within particular groups certain ways of feeling, thinking and behaving often become normalised. I mean this in the sense that they become taken for granted and not problematised in the discourses of individuals within the group. For example, in my experience of groups of educational researchers who are wholly or mostly white, individual researchers have rarely racialised their academic discourse by addressing their racial characteristics of being white and by addressing the power relations that support white privilege and supremacy known as 'whiteness'. For example, as Enora Brown, writing about the decentering of dominant discourses in education with a self-study on the (In) visibility of Race, says:
"I observed that race was relatively insignificant in the
personal narratives of European American pre-service teachers and that
concomitantly, whiteness was normalized in traditional textbooks within the
discipline of Human Development." (Brown, 2005, p.65)
Brown's writings were published in a collection of research papers, edited by Francoise
Bodone on What difference Does Research Make and for Whom? The collection was born out of an interactive symposium
at the 2002 American Educational Research Association in New Orleans on Capturing Whom for the Sake of What? What difference
does research make? And for Whom? The
participants were:
Francoise Bodone (Chair),
University of Oregon (USA);
Mary Dalmau (Respondent), University of Oregon
(Australia);
Lynn Butler-Kisber, McGill University (Canada);
Phil Carspecken,
University of Indiana, Bloomington (USA);
Andrew Gitlin, University of Utah,
Department of Education, Culture and Society (USA);
Graham Hingangaroa Smith,
University of Auckland (NZ);
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, University of Auckland (NZ);
Yolanda Wattsjohnson, Marquette University (NZ); Jack Whitehead, University of
Bath (UK).
In her contribution to the collection, Wattsjohnson focuses on articulating knowledge for transformation in a way that includes an enquiry into her existence as a black women encountering racism with a group of white woman:
"Using narrative inquiry, I succeed in a discovery of self and an understanding of the constructed community in which I exist that surpasses conventional modes of knowing, to explain what it means for me to exist as a black women at a white institution." (Wattsjohnson, 2005, p. 193)
"Inward.... I resent the presence of the discrimination I
am experiencing, not being able to make it all go away, having to deal with it,
instead of ignoring it the say it deserves to be. It saps my energy. This
destructive energy is taking way from everything and adding nothing. Then there
is the realization that because a group of white women dislike my evaluation of
their work, they can disrupt my professional life. It is unjustified and the
human energy that goes into proving them wrong is a waste of my precious time
that instead should be spent writing to support my tenure process.
Students have told me that I am the one that keeps racism alive because I talk about it. Their ignorance speaks so loudly it's deafening. What allows a group of students who have never taught to decide that they know more than me? I resent having to admit that these students, supported by the administration, have exercised the power to disrupt the class, distract my attention and create an atmosphere in the class unlike what I would have liked, I am so disappointed." (Wattsjohnson, 2005, p.196)
In an earlier publication Wattsjohnson (2003) emphasises the need to end white silence. I am hopeful that my own acknowledgement of the educational influence of whiteness as a set of power relations that sustain white privilege and supremacy, emphasises the importance of this need. I believe that the experience of these power relations by those subjected to them, scarifies, in the sense of wounding, by undermining the legitimate sense of identity of accepting one's racial characteristics as no better or no worse than those of others.
At the AERA interactive symposium in 2002, Dalmau was the discussant and provided, along with Bodone, the concluding chapter to the collection on Acting in a World Unveiled. Dalmau rightly points out that dealing with "I" also confronts the person-in-action in the world (p.274). Dalmau and Bodone draw on a previous collaboration to emphasise the importance of personal/professional identity:
"The locus of the study of practice has moved from the
abstraction, description and analysis of professional work (through
statistical, qualitative or action research), to the recognition that the
personal/professional identity of individuals is intrinsically bound to the
creation and renewal of their practice. This reconceptualisation relies on
holistic or organic interconnections between personal and professional
identity, action and belief, and between individual and collaborative action.
(Bodone, Gujonsdottir, & Dalmau, 2004, p. 746)
Dalmau (2005) identifies three approaches from her research that I seek to integrate into my own understandings. I am thinking of the need for globalist, ecolological perspectives in mapping the terrain; ensuring that ontological, epistemological, practical, socio-cultural and historical features are considered in the enquiry; opening spaces for iterative and divergent consideration of data and meaning (Dalmau, et al. 1991, Dalmau, 2002).
Richard Holloway has developed a perspective that appeals to my ontology:
"The melancholy truth is that we are life's passing
guests who will soon have to make way for the next house party, and if we try
to resist our own leaving we only succeed in making ourselves more miserable.
The art of living well has a lot to do with knowing when it's time to go, so
that we can gather up our things and get on the bus before the new guests
arrive. And this is true for institutions as well as individuals. They, too,
are transient and have to adapt to the way the next generation wants to
operate.
Refusing to adapt to this dynamic principle of constant becoming is usually fatal to the resistant institution. Sociologists describe this kind of institutionalism as morphological fundamentalism. Another paradox is that it is usually the unfaithful, the radicals and romantics, who Rumi the Sufi poet called 'lovers of leaving', who secure the survival of human institutions by inoculating them with a foretaste of the future that is about to overwhelm them. It is their inability to commit themselves for life to anything except the restless quest for something better than enables heretics to introduce the faithful conservative majority to new and different ways of doing things. By denouncing the injustices of the past and proclaiming the superiority of the future, they prepare society for what is coming. The dissident's refusal to conform to received standards helps to save humanity from the ultimate stupidity of holding out forever against the emergence of new social realities. There are many examples of this law at work, but the most potent of them is the emancipation of women." (Holloway, 2004, pp. 187-188)
In emphasising my hope for the contribution to be made by living educational theories in the future of humanity I am curious about the educational value of explicitly acknowledging the evidence of the capacity of human beings to violate others. In other words, I am wondering if the explicit inclusion of whiteness in my living educational theory, with the understandings of history and present day experiences, actually serves to support nihilistic responses or does the inclusion of whiteness embody the kind of hope for humanity described by Holloway? In denouncing the injustices of the past and present, and proclaiming the superiority of the future, do living educational theories help to save humanity from the ultimate stupidity of holding out forever against the emergence of new social realities?
For example, I was born in 1944 towards the end of the last World War, a war which had been partially fuelled by the ability of Hitler and others to fill a culture with the racist hatred and white supremacy of ideas such as:
It was
and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same
secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily
resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political
height, and himself rising to be its master. (Adolf Hitler, My Struggle. The Jewish Virtual
Library http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kampf.html )
Without the political will, ingenuity and self-sacrifice of those who halted the colonising power and ideology of fascism, with its belief in the cultural and political supremacy of the white race, I and countless others would not have been able to benefit from the educational opportunities, the health service and the economic opportunities opened up through living in the democratic society of Britain, whatever its flaws might be. To halt a colonising tyrant requires the kind of courageous blows against coercion and the necessity of a physical capacity for resistance, pointed our by Taiaiake Alfred (2005):
"Pushing
the colonial tyrant to his limits takes both strong words and courageous blows
against his coercion. Hence the necessity of a physical capacity for resistance
and a practised politics of contention to supplement education and growing
enlightenment. The Chinese classic Taoist teaching, I Ching, advances that, 'In
contention there is sincerity". Trouble doesn't start without reason,
contention arises because of a need for change. Contention flows from a
manifested unwavering commitment to the truth: sincerity.... in Chinese
philosophy as in indigenous teachings contention is natural and organic to
human relations."
(Taiaiake Alfred, 2005, p. 75)
I want to express my gratitude to those who rose to the challenge of expressing such courageous blows and physical capacity for resistance. They enabled the creation of the social formation within which I live and within which I have not been required, as they were, to express myself in this way to protect my life, liberty and happiness. Some 60 years after the ending of the last World War we are at the beginning of 2006, when multiple sources of social conflict are still being experienced within and between social formations around the world. Some of these conflicts are related to racism and religion in the here and now. One illustration of this is that as I write I am looking at a headline on the trial of Abu Hamza (about his actions as Imman of the Finsbury Park Mosque in London), of "Jury sees video of Hamza 'preaching murder and hatred'".
"You have to bleed the enemy, whether you work alone, you
work with a group or with your own family. That after you have done that,
obviously you will be on the run", suggesting that fugitives should set up
mountain camps to attack non-believers the preacher concluded: "Forget your
differences and start to destruct the enemies of Allah."
"He berated British Muslims for being comfortable living in their adopted or native country, saying acquiescence in concepts such as democracy is haram – forbidden by the Koran – and Muslims taking part in elections carry direct responsibility of the death of their co-religionists in Iraq." (Independent Newspaper on the trial of Abu Hamza, 13/01/06, p.9)
In my enquiry, How am I enhancing my educational
influences through racialising discourses of whiteness in living educational
theories? , I am interested in your
responses to my belief that I am enhancing the educational influence of living
educational theories, with racialising discourses of whiteness, with explicit
acknowledgements that such discourses have historically, carried predominantly,
hatred and violence.
As a white man, I am wondering if, by sharing the
life-affirming energy, love, pleasure and hope I feel as I see Eden Charles, a
black man, enquiring into his parenting, his work as an educator with black
youngsters and parents and his work as a management consultant, with an African
Cosmology, I have been able to acknowledge the importance of a racialising
discourse on whiteness in a way that shows a possibility for enhancing
educational influence? I am thinking of the possibility of enhancing the flow
of values and understandings that carry hope for the future of humanity and
my/our own through the creation and development of one's own living educational
theory.
Concluding with Eden's response to the final draft of this
paper seems most appropriate as an invitation to share our living theories that
flow with our common humanity in our movement beyond those relationships
defiled by 'whiteness':
This text reminds me of the paradox to do with the way in
which it feels that by bringing 'whiteness' to the attention of inquirers you
are both requiring them to be aware of the impact of their 'whiteness' upon the
power relationships in the world and you are inviting them to move beyond
ossified, essentialist notions of race and consider the common humanity that is
sometimes defiled by 'whiteness'. (Eden
Charles, personal communication, 14/01/06).
References
Alfred, G. T. (2005) Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Toronto: Broadview Press.
Brown, E. R. (2005) Decentering Dominant Discourses in Education.
Dalmau, M. C., Hatton, G., & Spurway, S. (1991) ISI Program: Inclusive Schooling Integration (Vol. 1-3) Melbourne, Australia: Department of School Education. Victoria.
Dalmau, M. C. (2002) Taking a fresh look at education: Reconstructing learning and change with teachers. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene.
Bodone, F., Gudjonsdottir, H., & Dalmau, M. C. (2004). Revisioning and recreating practice: Collaboration in self-study. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. E. Hamilton, V. LaBoskey & T. Russell (Eds.), The international handbook of self-study of teaching practices (pp. 743-784). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Holloway, R. (2004) Looking in the Distance: the human search for meaning. Edinburgh, New York, Melbourne; Canongate.
McNiff, J & Whitehead, J. (2005) Action Research for Teachers, London; David Fulton.
McNiff J. & Whitehead, J. (2006) All You Need To Know About Action Research; London; Thousand Oaks; New Dehli.
Murray, Y, P. (2005) Welcome to my multiracial and inclusive Postcolonial Living Education
Theory - practice, research and becoming. Retrieved 15 January 2006 from http://www.rac.ac.uk/~paul_murray/default.htm
Murray, P. & Whitehead, J. (2000) White and Black with White Identities in Self-Studies of
Teacher Education Practices. Retrieved 12 January 2006 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/A2/aerapj.htm
Wattsjohnson, Y. (2003) End white silence. Multicultural Perspectives, 5 (3), 12-18.
Whitehead, J. & McNiff, J. (2006) Action Research Living Theory. Sage; London; Thousand Oaks; New Dehli.