White Professors Teaching About Racism: Challenges and Rewards

Abstract

One of the complexities of multicultural teaching is that course content inevitably relates to personal experiences of privilege and oppression among both students and professors. Even when professors have benefitted from their own multicultural training, teaching about race and racism presents particular challenges to different professors based upon their own social locations. In this article, we answer the following question: What personal and professional challenges can White professors expect when they work as social justice educators? The authors present relevant considerations and illustrate them with examples from their own teaching experiences.