Reifying and Resisting Racism from Early Childhood to Young Adulthood

Abstract

This article explores parallel findings from two critical ethnographies (Miller in Whiteness, discourse, and early childhood: an ethnographic study of three young children’s understandings about race in home and community settings. University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2012; Nash in Blinded by the white: foregrounding race and racism in a literacy course for preservice teachers. University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2012) of white early childhood teacher educators using a critical race stance as they researched race and racism in two contexts: an early childhood education course and home and community settings with the author’s own three young children. In each context, the researchers/authors found that participants used discourse to both resist and reify racism. The authors share these findings, offering implications and questions for critical reframing of the socially and historically located meanings of race and racism in early childhood education and teacher education.