Post-White Pedagogies?

This is a guest post from Dr. Marcus Croom, Assistant Professor of Curriculum & Instruction, Indiana University School of Education and a CITL DEIJ Faculty Fellow.

Happy November! Have we teleported from the first blog to this final blog of our three-part series? Feels like it to me. We’ve covered a lot of ground together, too. First, I urged for “teaching and learning that helps your students (and yourself!) to become better human beings in our shared world” (September). Next, I recalled that “Du Bois has invited us to explicitly use university teaching and learning to engage the real world for good results—pedagogic functions which he regarded as ‘the secret of civilization’ itself” (October). Now, I bring together all of these previous posts by focusing on the term post-White pedagogies, defined as teaching and learning that de/reconstructs racialization and advances racial literacies practice. If you go back and read all of the previous blog posts in this series, in short, we have been exploring post-White pedagogies in various ways.

But where did “post-White pedagogies” come from? In 2016, as a doctoral student at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), I published an article in the Black History Bulletin titled “Reading: ‘The Crisis in Black Education’ from a Post-White Orientation (Croom, 2016). I provided a critical analysis of racialization using the theme of that journal issue and I included a lesson plan that educators could use to develop print and racial literacies (vocabulary, reading comprehension, writing, race critical thinking, etc). Below are excerpts that (a) defined the post-White orientation and (b) gave an early glimpse of post-White pedagogies with Social Studies teachers in mind:

Post-White Defined: Excerpt from Croom, 2016, p. 18

In this article, I will argue that race can be theorized either as common sense or as consequential D/discourse.1 I will also offer contrasting views of what “crisis” may mean according to each theory and conclude by suggesting that this moment of “crisis” is thrusting upon us an opportunity to read text and the world from a post-White orientation. By post-White orientation, I mean a racial understanding and practice characterized by (a) unequivocal regard for “non-White” humanity, particularly “Black” humanity; (b) demotion of “White” standing (i.e., position, status); (c) rejection of post-racial notions; (d) non-hierarchical racialization; and (e) anticipation of a post-White sociopolitical norm.

 

Lesson Plan for Print & Racial Literacies: Excerpt from Croom, 2016, p. 23

So where is “post-White pedagogies” today? Along the same lines as 2016, in August 2021 I published another exemplification of post-White pedagogies—the real talk protocol (RTP)^©—to support educators in the U.S. who want to respond to the “reality imperative” by having a real talk about race, racism, and politics in their schools instead of hamstringing themselves with silence, avoidance, and unprofessionalism (Croom, 2021). Across these five years (and certainly before 2016), I have essentially pursued one aim: to support K-12 schools, undergraduate students, and graduate students with rethinking race in order to improve teaching and learning. More recently, I have become acquainted with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at IUB. As a result, I have now begun with “Opening Lines of Race Critical SoTL and Post-White Pedagogies” through the global community of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). Looking ahead, I hope this three-part blog series will begin to prompt university faculty to also explore and practice post-White pedagogies, de/reconstructing racialization and deleting—in every way—the false notion of White(ness) as preeminent.

If all of this continues to unfold as the post-White scholarship of teaching and learning (post-White SoTL), this would mean that our higher education institutions, our curricula, our courses, our instruction, our students’ learning experiences, and the related sociopolitical consequences involved should unequivocally regard the full humanity of all, across racial groups. Of course, I don’t know if our university faculty will practice post-White pedagogies. But if we did, it would be an exponential advancement beyond our past and present teaching and learning norms in the United States of America. Will you join me?