What Teacher Education Can Learn From Blackface Minstrelsy

Abstract

Research on the racial identities of White future teachers has assumed and circulated an overly simplified, and ultimately unhelpful, conception of White racial identity. An alternative is needed, which the authors develop with reference to scholarship that explores White people’s participation in blackface minstrelsy. They argue that at the core of White racial selves is a profound ambivalence that must be accounted for if future research is to better illuminate what the racial identities of White future teachers mean for their development as educators.