Transracialized selves and the emergence of post-white teacher identities

Abstract

This article draws on two previous studies by the authors, both based on interviews with European-American individuals, to document white experiences with multiculturalism, race, and cultural differences. We consider recent developments in research on whiteness and offer a perspective on racial identities defined as discursively enacted identifications that are rooted in racialized discourse communities. We provide profiles of two white women who draw upon assets developed, in our view, largely through their successful negotiation of relationships with racially and culturally different members of multicultural discourse communities. Next, we demonstrate a methodology based on the narrative analytic tools of Stanton Wortham (2001, Narratives in action: a strategy for research and analysis [New York, Teachers College Press]) that was used to explicate multiple ways in which both participants narrated their identities during interviews. Our analysis demonstrates how these women enacted what we call 'transracialized' selves, that is, ways of being white that transcend predictable performances of more typically racialized identities. We link transracialized identities to the notion of 'post-white' identity. Finally, we close with comments about the implications of transracialized, post-white identities for the field of multicultural teacher education. The future calls for each of us to become partners in the dance of diversity, a dance in which everyone shares the lead. And because we have been separated by race and ethnicity for so long, we may feel awkward at first with the new moves... But with a little help from our friends in other cultures, even white folks can learn to dance, again, as we did among the great stone circles of ancient Europe. (Howard, 1993, p. 41).