School Without Racism? How White Teachers in Germany Practice Anti-Racialism

Authors

  • Hanna Maria Burhoff University College Maastricht

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15273/jue.v11i3.11240

Keywords:

whiteness, racism, critical race theory, identity, Germany, education

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates how white teachers at a German Catholic comprehensive school conceptualize issues of “race” and racism in the context of being a “School without Racism – School with Courage” (SOR-SMC). By collecting signatures and exhibiting yearly projects, more than 3,300 schools in Germany brand their school to be “without racism”. I found the branding of my researched school to be a form of “anti-racialism” that opposed “race” and racism as concepts but did not tackle any underlying racist structures (Goldberg 2009, 10). The teachers I interviewed took the SOR-SMC branding for granted and assumed that the school was racism-free. They thereby engaged in silent racism and reproduced racist connotations and structures without challenging them (Trepagnier 2001). Being anti -racist is not accomplished by declaring a school as racism-free. Instead, white teachers need to understand that anti-racism involves a deeper engagement with the structures that keep “racial” inequality in place (Goldberg 2009, 10).

Downloads

Published

2021-11-28

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 3 (2021)

Section

Articles

License

By sending potential submissions to the editors, you grant The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography a royalty-free, perpetual, license to: use, reproduce, store, adapt, translate, and publicly display such submissions for any purpose.  In addition to the grant of the above license, you hereby consent to your name appearing as the contributor of any submission where applicable, and to the disclosure and/or display of such information and any other information which appears in or is associated with a submission. Further, you acknowledge and agree that The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography is not responsible for any loss, damage, or corruption that may occur to your submissions, and acknowledge and agree that any submissions you provide for display on the website will be considered non-confidential. If your manuscript is rejected, the above license is revoked, and your submission (manuscript, name, and associated documentation) will be stored only in the correspondence records of The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. You may submit your manuscript to other publications, but must withdraw if selected for publication in The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. Your paper itself is published using a strict Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License that allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can‘t change them in any way or use them commercially. You retain the right to grant other permissions.