More Than an Ally

Abstract

This qualitative case study provides a counternarrative to the literature of White teachers who are unsuccessful in bridging the achievement gap and disrupts the assumed meaning of solidarity between successful White teachers and their African American students. As part of successful classroom practice, this teacher interrogated his own whiteness and worked to create relationships of solidarity with students. Solidarity in multicultural and multiracial classrooms is difficult to build and a deeper concept than many theorists have acknowledged. The success of this teacher suggests that the creation of relationships of solidarity may be an effective framework to describe successful White teachers.