Hearing the silenced dialogue: an examination of the impact of teacher race on their experiences

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with 17 educators, 9 Black, and 8 White, as well as observations of classes and staff meetings at a segregated urban high school, this essay examines the ways teacher race impacts their professional work and suggests that racial experiences are far more complex than has been recognized in the literature on race and teaching. In this sample, Black educators described a strong sense of racial solidarity with their students, a theme frequently raised in studies of Black teachers. However, these educators also noted that racial solidarity was an expectation Black students held of them. Such expectations placed Black educators in the ‘crossfire’ between student demands of solidarity and the demands of their professional roles. White teachers expressed conflicted perspectives around race. They were at once race evasive and race cognizant while also wary that White teachers were victims of race talk and racial policy. White teachers are often depicted as embracing ‘color blind’ racial ideologies, but, in fact, these may be defensive postures masking much more complex understandings of race. The great divergence between the racial experiences of teachers at the same school offers greater insight into the lack of dialogue across the color line that Delpit (1995) noted over a decade ago.