CHAPTER TWO
A review of the literature on multicultural education reveals a lack of consideration of the white male experience within the field. While some work has been done to address white people (men and women) and their roles in multiculturalism, the multicultural education literature tends to focus on the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities (Howard, 1993). That work which does focus on white people falls into three categories: 1) discussions concerning white researchers conducting multicultural counseling research, 2) multicultural competence for white counselors, and 3) white teachers and multicultural education.
White Researchers and Multicultural Counseling Research
According to Thomas Parham (1993), many white people lack the necessary life experiences, graduate training, certification from ethnic-specific associations, and commitment to address multicultural counseling issues. Without citing specific examples, he points out that the work of white multicultural counseling researchers generally results in literature which frames "culturally different research subjects in stereotypic and derogatory terms" (1993, p. 253). Derald Wing Sue agrees, stating that the work of white researchers on ethnic minorities "frequently portrays them as maladjusted, delinquent, or pathological" (1993, p. 245). Sue also suggests that, too often, white researchers use their research for personal reasons (grants, tenure, and promotion) instead of conducting research for the purpose of "contributing to the betterment the group being researched" (1993, p. 245).
Sue (1993) and Parham (1993) suggest that a history of work by white researchers concerning multicultural counseling, with the limitations described above, has resulted in distrust and resentment among minority researchers for white researchers. Researchers of color perceive white researchers as "lacking soul and heart in their research and publications" (Sue, 1993, p. 247). Parham describes his own resentment, as a researcher of color, for the inconsistency in how his work is received compared to that of his white counterparts:
Whether the level of scrutiny is a tenure-and-promotion committee or a government agency, there is too often a double standard. Culturally different researchers watch their manuscripts being rejected by journal after journal, whereas white researchers are published with less difficulty. Culturally different researchers watch their grant applications to public agencies turned down, whereas white researchers receive hundreds of thousands of dollars to study us. Culturally different researchers watch white researchers make tenure using ethnic research as a vehicle, whereas ethnic researchers are denied tenure, ironically, because their research is said to be too narrowly focused on this or that cultural group, or published in an ethnic-specific journal to which white researchers give no credibility (1993, p. 252).
Paul Pedersen identifies "the basic underlying problem" regarding white researchers and multicultural counseling research as "achieving accuracy in our assessment of ourselves and others" (1993, p. 231). To remedy this problem begins with white researchers developing a better awareness of their whiteness, as well as their values, stereotypes, and biases (Parham, 1993; Sue, 1993). As Helms points out, researchers who fail to acknowledge the effects of their own racial identity development on their research risk adding to "the existing body of racially oppressive literature rather than offering illuminating scholarship" (1993, p. 242). Pedersen (1993) agrees, adding that when researchers ignore their own learned cultural assumptions, they may impose those assumptions on others, leading to inaccuracy in their research. Ivey (1990) suggests that some white multicultural counseling researchers have begun the process of questioning their own assumptions and the meaning of their whiteness, but the research agrees that this process must continue and become a practice of all white multicultural counseling researchers (Parham, 1993; Sue, 1993; Helms, 1993).
Parham (1993) identifies a number of other "prerequisites" for white researchers intending to conduct culturally-sensitive research. He argues that white researchers must address a history of biases in sampling techniques, suggesting that too often, samples come from one of two extremes: ghetto-dwellers or college students (1993). He suggests employing research designs which include not only quantitative analysis, but also qualitative measures (1993). Parham (1993) challenges white researchers to become more familiar with different conceptual systems for cultural understanding, pointing out the difficulty in white people conducting meaningful research on African-Americans' mental health without an understanding of what it means to be "mentally healthy" for African people.
Sue (1993) also offers suggestions to white researchers interested in conducting multicultural counseling research. She recommends that white researchers be sensitive to the fears and suspicions researchers of color have toward them (1993). She states that white researchers must appreciate the sociopolitical nature of multicultural studies, pointing out that they involve "oppression, discrimination, prejudice, racism, and the dominant-subordinate relations manifested in our society between majority and minority groups" (1993, pp. 246-247). Sue (1993) also suggests that white researchers must begin to see multicultural studies as more than a set of abstract, theoretical ideas.
Multicultural Competence of White Counselors
Like the literature on white multicultural counseling researchers, the literature regarding white counselors and their multicultural competence focuses on the need for, and importance of, self-awareness (Carter, 1990; Katz, 1985; Ponterotto, 1988; Sabnani, Ponterotto, and Borodovsky, 1991) Richardson and Molinaro (1996) point out that white counselors generally fail to address the needs of culturally diverse clients. This is evident in that people of color are employing counseling services less than white people, and those who do employ counseling services discontinue visits sooner than white people (Richardson and Molinaro, 1996). Much of the literature hypothesizes that the multicultural competence, as well as the overall counseling competence, of white counselors can be improved through an increase in their self-awareness (Richardson and Molinaro, 1996; McRae and Johnson, 1991). It is through this process of increasing self-awareness that white counselors will be better prepared for working effectively with diverse clients (Richardson and Molinaro, 1996; McRae and Johnson, 1991).
Richardson and Molinaro (1996) and others offer "prerequisites" for white counselors or counselor trainees, just as Parham (1993) did for white counseling researchers. Richardson and Molinaro (1996) suggest that each white counselor's awareness flows from his or her examination of the racial implications of three self-defining dynamics: worldview, cultural values, and white racial identity. They employ Sue's (1981) definition of "worldview," referring to it as "how a person perceives his or her relationship to the world (such as nature, institutions, other people, things)" (Richardson and Molinaro, 1996, p. 239). If a counselor is unaware of her or his worldview, she or he carries the potential to push that worldview on a client, perhaps resulting in alienation or distrust (Richardson and Molinaro, 1996). According to Torrey (1983), such alienation and distrust can be avoided if the counselor engages in a process of confronting and understanding her or his own worldview and carries the resulting self-awareness into counselor-client interactions.
According to Richardson and Molinaro (1996), one's worldview is formed by her or his cultural value system. Katz (1985), Carter (1991) and others have identified values they attribute to the white American value system, arguing that such values also dominate counseling theory and practice. These include future time orientation, mastery over nature, individual relationships (Carter, 1991), as well as Protestant work ethic, Christian holidays, objectivity and rationality, rigid time schedules, and decisions based on majority rule (Katz, 1985). Because research has shown that white people tend to disregard whiteness as a cultural identifier, and thus do not recognize a unique white cultural value system, white counselors may be unaware of these characteristics in themselves (Katz, 1985). This process is especially difficult for white counselors who have found comfort in mainstream white culture and have never examined their value system and white privilege (Richardson and Molinaro, 1996; McIntosh, 1988). Wrenn (1985) and Richardson and Molinaro (1996) suggest that counselors who are not aware of their own cultural value system tend to assume that their values are universal and are thus unable to effectively adapt to a client with a different set of values.
According to Richardson and Molinaro (1996), the third prerequisite for white multicultural counselors is an exploration of white racial identity. Sabnani, Ponterotto and Borodovsky (1991), Helms (1984, 1990), and Ponterotto (1988) have proposed that a white counselor's multicultural competetence is strongly affected by her or his racial identity development. In a study to test this hypothesis, Ottavi, Pope-Davis and Dings (1994) surveyed 128 white counseling trainees, measuring both their white racial identity attitudes as well as their multicultural skills, awareness, relationships, and knowledge. They found that white racial identity development as an important factor in multicultural counseling competence (Ottavi et al., 1994).
The literature indicates that the exploration of one's worldview, cultural values, and racial identity development is a long and difficult task for all counselors, and moreso for white counselors (Sabnani et al., 1991). Still, it is a necessary and vital process toward achieving multicultural counseling competence and being more inclusive in counseling practice (Richardson and Molina, 1996). Developing a stronger sense of self-awareness prepares counselors for understanding the culture and experiences of clients, improving both the process and outcome of counselor-client interactions (McRae and Johnson, 1991).
White Teachers and Multicultural Education
The literature regarding whiteness and multicultural teaching, like the literature regarding researchers and counselors, focuses on the need for self-analysis and awareness (Sleeter, 1996; McIntyre, 1997; McLaren; 1995, Haymes, 1995). McIntyre (1997) challenges white teachers "to be more self-reflective about our own understandings about race and racism and for us to challenge our own constructions about what it means to be white in this country" (p. 14). Sleeter (1996) agrees, explaining that white educators need to become more aware of our own "biases, limitations, and vested interests" (p. 152). One such limitation which white educators carry into classrooms is a worldview and awareness constrained by our own experiences with society and discrimination and inconsistent with the experiences of students of color (Sleeter, 1995). Sleeter and McLaren (1995) place some of the responsibility for this on multicultural education as a field of inquiry which currently fails to address the identities and interests of white multicultural education advocates.
Sleeter (1996, 1995), McIntyre (1997), Lawrence (1997), McLaren (1995), Haymes (1995) and Bollin and Finkel (1995) have examined the present level of white identity development, multicultural awareness and understanding of white teachers and white pre-service teachers, noting areas of consistent unawareness among white teachers and explaining how this unawareness manifests itself in the teachers' attitudes and teaching practices. Sleeter (1996) summarizes the consistent areas of unawareness among white teachers, identifying four interconnected concepts white teachers have difficulty grasping. The first area of unawareness, according to Sleeter, is the "historic roots of racist opportunity structures" (1996, p. 139). She suggests that white Americans, whose roots in this country are for the most part a result of voluntary immigration, prefer to assume that all others descend from immigrants as well (Sleeter, 1996). We avoid considering the lasting effects of slavery and conquest because doing so "calls into question the legitimacy of the very foundation of much of white people's lives" (Sleeter, 1996, p. 140). Sleeter (1996) describes this foundation as an opportunity structure which historically has allowed for the upward mobility of European descendants at the expense of everyone else. McIntyre (1997) focuses this argument back on education, arguing that white teachers must re-examine "the system of whiteness that is the bedrock of the education system in the United States" (p. 13). She suggests that white educators tend to "perform the multicultural tricks" without considering how our race positions us in a place of greater opportunity within and outside of the education system (McIntyre, 1997, p. 13).
The second area of unawareness identified by Sleeter is "the nature and impact of discrimination" (1996, p. 141). She suggests that white teachers tend to underestimate the effects of discrimination, seeing it only as individual acts of prejudice instead of daily life experiences which minimize opportunity (Sleeter, 1996, p. 141). According to Sleeter, we tend to believe that the differences in financial and social success among Americans result from individual effort in a context of equal opportunity. If we begin to develop an understanding of discrimination as a systemic issue, we must also confront the un-level playing field which affords us greater opportunity than people of color. In the classroom, this means confronting how some of our well-meaning teaching practices, such as treating all students alike, attributing all success to hard work and encouraging individuality without addressing the importance of group identification, may play into the systemic discrimination against people of color in schools (McIntyre, p. 132).
The significance of group membership is another concept white teachers have difficulty grasping, according to Sleeter (1996, p. 143). Because American ideology is very individualistic (Sleeter, 1996), group identification is often ignored, especially by white people who are not constantly reminded about being the "other" in terms of race and ethnicity. A common statement made by white teachers is that we are "colorblind," seeing only kids, not colors (Sleeter, 1996; McIntyre, 1997). The result of this approach is a failure by white teachers to directly address the ethnic and racial identities and cultures of their students (Sleeter, 1996; McIntyre, 1997), instead focusing on differences in foods, holidays, clothes, and other surface-level cultural themes without relating them to race or ethnicity. Such a focus allows white teachers to minimize multicultural education to discussions on differences with little social consequence and to continue to ignore how group membership helps shape the lives of everyone involved, including both those who are privileged because of it and those who are discriminated against because of it (Sleeter, 1996).
According to Sleeter, the last of the concepts which white teachers tend to misunderstand is the "nature of culture" (1996, p.145). In a 1990 study, Richard Alba found that the most recognized of cultural experiences, as defined by white people, is eating ethnic foods (cited by Sleeter, 1996, p. 145). The literature suggests that this limited view of culture manifests itself in education, as well, where even "multicultural education" has become simply a celebration of ethnic foods and festivals (Sleeter, 1996; Sleeter and McLaren, 1995, Haymes, 1995). We fail to understand culture as the "the totality of a people's experience" including "its history, literature, language, philosophy, religion, and so forth" (Sleeter, 1996, p. 146). Because we have been so entrenched in white culture, through institutions such as the media and our own education, and because we take that culture for granted, we tend exist without any knowledge of traditionally non-represented cultures (Sleeter, 1996). An often unexamined consequence of this for white educators is that we continue to teach from an assumption of our culture as the "norm" or neutral, while we use "diverse" or "different" to describe all things non-white (Haymes, 1995; Sleeter, 1996; McIntyre, 1997), a message clearly heard by the "other" students.
In response to these points of unawareness for white teachers, the literature suggests approaches for white teachers to move toward greater awareness and self-analysis. white educators must first focus on personal growth and analysis before attempting to bring these messages into the classroom. Sleeter (1996) and McLaren (1995) insist that while our tendency is to work toward "converting" others, this process is often used to avoid confronting ourselves. As part of this process, Sleeter (1996) and McIntyre (1997) suggest that white teachers should dialog and collaborate with teachers of color. As this process takes us toward greater white racial identity development, we must model white identity in a positive way for our students (Bollin and Finkel, 1995). McIntyre asks white educators to support professional development activities which work toward awareness and show us how to "practice what we, as educators, teach" (1997, p. 148). When our self-analysis work is underway, we should turn our concerns toward wider social action. McIntyre (1997) challenges white educators to confront the teaching profession itself, and to take responsibility for systemic discrimination in our schools. Sleeter (1996) encourages white educators to work at a more individual level, mentoring other white people at difficult places in their racial identity development, but not losing sight that ending discrimination will take large scale collective political action.
designed and maintained by Paul C. Gorski
url: home.earthlink.net/~gorski/dissertation/literature_mc.html