“They Hate on Me!” Black Teachers Interrupting Their White Colleagues’ Racism

Abstract

Black teachers have long been aware that Black students face racism in multiple forms throughout their lives. As racism has consistently been present throughout the history of the United States, Black teachers have used education as a platform to work against that racism, adapting their strategies through different periods in American history. Although Black teachers who taught in the Jim Crow era of legally mandated segregated schools taught their students how to deal with the racism that they faced outside of the school building, those who teach in diverse schools today find themselves preparing students to deal with the racism they experience beyond school and helping students navigate the racism they experience within the school building. The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which Black teachers work to interrupt the racism that their White colleagues inflict upon their students. Findings indicate that efforts to protect Black students from White teachers’ racism led Black teachers to engage their students in emancipatory pedagogies and serve as interceders on behalf of their students. The teachers also found themselves on the receiving end of their colleagues’ racism. Any effort to recruit or retain teachers of color must first consider the experiences of contemporary teachers of color, and the findings reported in this article help researchers further understand the experiences of Black teachers.