Book Review | Samuel Jaye Tanner’s Whiteness, Pedagogy, and Youth in America reviewed by Jonathan McCausland

Whiteness, Pedagogy, and Youth in America by Samuel Jaye Tanner (2018) provides an in-depth account of a school-based participatory action research project with high school students surrounding the complexities of whiteness and white students’ identities. This book is a helpful resource for AJE Forum readers interested in youth participatory action research (YPAR), art education, critical scholarship, critical whiteness studies, and narrative approaches to data interpretation and presentation. Through their use of personal vignettes from their life and detailed descriptions of moments during the project, Tanner creates a novel-like work that delves deeply into their personal narrative and the narrative of students as they participate in the Whiteness Project. Overall, this work pushes the boundaries of how educators can think about teaching white students about being anti-racist that goes beyond viewing them as deficit in conversations about race, whiteness, and white supremacy.

The author opens the book with a chapter that details their experience growing up white. By detailing their narrative, Tanner provides an entry point for how they understand and see whiteness in their life in a way that previews what is to come throughout their telling of the Whiteness Project. Tanner’s narrative also works to provide intimately detailed examples of how whiteness operates in the life of a white person (Tanner) and the ways their pedagogy is influenced by specific moments throughout the entire project. The author then describes the field of critical whiteness studies, providing a description of the field as well as its historical roots and trajectory. After describing critical whiteness studies, the author outlines the methods they employ to investigate their research questions that surround YPAR and whiteness. The final five chapters detail the more than year-long project through a linear narrative from beginning to end, with a conclusion that details what happened to the students in the study and Tanner’s thoughts and remaining questions after the experience.

One of the unique aspects of this work is how it weaves together the narrative of the project with the analysis grounded in the theoretical perspectives of scholars such as Thandeka, Lensmire, Ellison, and Morrison to contribute to second-wave critical whiteness studies. Together, these scholars provide Tanner with an avenue to discuss, as second-wave critical whiteness scholars advocate, white identity in ways that goes beyond mere privilege pedagogy that is typically based in Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) paper about the “invisible knapsack” carried by white people. Together this style of delivery and description allows Tanner to simultaneously provide the story of the project, details the methods they employed, and deeply analyze the narrative using theories that generate more robust notions of whiteness and white identity formation. Throughout the text, the reader is taken on a journey they understand and are compelled to grapple with how Tanner is conceptualizing whiteness and white identity in the context of the YPAR project, The Whiteness Project.

In order to ground the project within the field of critical whiteness studies, Tanner highlights the “…surprising lack of research documenting practical and effective implementations of critical whiteness pedagogies…” (Tanner, 2018, p. 16). Stating, “Much of the established teaching and learning on white identities in education over-rely on McIntosh’s (1988) white privilege framework in simply documenting white color-blind identities…” (p. 16). In order to address this, Tanner highlights work by other scholars that calls for a second-wave of critical whiteness studies. By doing this, Tanner effectively situates their work among a body of literature that is attempting to understand whiteness and white identity in ways that moves beyond simplistic explanations of privilege; a framework that provides a limited understanding of how whiteness operates in the world and how white people learn to be white. What is left in its place are ideas that work to expose and recognize how whiteness operates at “…the level of individual, local communities and the broader level of policy…” (p. 31).

Tanner also effectively ties in a description of YPAR. While Tanner does not provide a “how to” of YPAR or a strict methods section with explicit details, the linear narrative format allows readers to glean what happened throughout the project. Commonly throughout the narrative, Tanner makes references to when they reflected on field notes with Natalie, a non-student research assistant or conversations they had with specific students who participated in the project such as Victoria. By detailing these moments during the Whiteness Project, Tanner demonstrates how various actors participated in and contributed to the making of the Whiteness Project, allowing readers to understand who participated as well as how they participated. This also allows Tanner to weave theory within the narrative to provide timely analysis of each event.

Tanner provides a powerful example of how learning environments can be shaped to acknowledge the intense emotions surrounding identity work, prompt students to examine their own racial identity, and engage in a generative process to create transformation. 

One particular moment details a student reading a racially complex play that contained racist content and ideas. While this event took a very small amount of time compared to the larger project, Tanner unpacks his thoughts and reasoning around their reaction to the play. Tanner simultaneously allows several ideas to exist, ones that recognize how the play worked to both reify and disrupt white supremacy. While readers may not agree with Tanners actions, moments similar to these do force readers to consider the complicated nature of the project and the issues at play. These moments also demonstrate how YPAR is not straightforward and requires a multitude of decisions be made, but in the end, those moments potentially provide fodder for robust analysis. Tanner shows the complexity of YPAR, but through the narrative, readers can understand what a project like this looks like and gives a linear telling of the steps needed to produce an experience that provide a corpus of useful and interesting data.

While the narrative works well to both tell the story of The Whiteness Project and provide intimate details and analysis of the YPAR experience, the conclusion leaves open questions. While it is clear that the experience was impactful for students, it is unclear how each student mentioned throughout the text changed or what they learned. One student in particular, Victoria, takes invested interest The Whiteness Project and becomes a close mentee for Tanner. Through the narrative the reader is walked through Victoria’s frustration with not being able to fully implement her project, fights with mental health, and ultimately an email about participating in a protest in New York City. Victoria’s story is rich. However, while there are noticeable changes in how Victoria is sharing and thinking about her white identity and whiteness, these shifts are largely left up to the reader to notice. For other students, the same arch is not present. Therefore, it is left up to the reader to discern how and what students gained from this experience. 

In many ways, Tanner relies on the thick description of events to indicate points of learning and take-aways for students. This becomes apparent near the end of the text when describing how the student developed play becomes local and national news after being picked up by local radio and conservative media. Rather than describe the situation deeply as it unfolded (although this is very clear), Tanner instead decides to analyze some of the comments made by the media that advocated against the student created play. Through this analysis, Tanner drives home many of the theoretical points of the text through the analysis and its juxtaposition with describing their students. To summarize, Tanner argues the negative response “…might be illustrative as to how the initial response by white people of shame can be so quickly rendered into angry rationalizations, dismissals, and justifications of logics of white supremacy” (p. 115). Tanner then describes how their students benefited by being provided a space for generative conversation. Through these conversations, Tanner argues, students were permitted to be confused, and as a result, were not paralyzed by discussing topics connected to whiteness and white supremacy. 

Although some details can be lost within the narrative format of the text, a deep reading will provide significant details for educators and researchers on how to develop similar projects both in topic and method. Overall, Tanner makes the case for a need to reconceptualize how to support white students in learning about their identities. They provide a powerful example of how learning environments can be shaped to acknowledge the intense emotions surrounding identity work, prompt students to examine their own racial identity, and engage in a generative process to create transformation. 

This text will act as a strong foundation for anyone looking to engage students around identity work or in YPAR because it details every consequential moment throughout the duration of the project. Through explaining why they made certain decisions, Tanner demonstrates for educators and researchers how to keep fidelity to your goals while responding to moments that can cause projects to evolve and change. As a result of this quality, the work also provides an example of how art education can be used to produce social change. Whiteness, Pedagogy, and Youth in America will force you to think deeply about your identity, your pedagogy, your curriculum, and the ways whiteness continues to operate and affect individuals, communities, and society. Any reader interested in social justice will find this 148-page text a worthwhile read.

Jonathan (JD) McCausland is a PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in Science Education at Penn State University. He is a former high school science teacher who served New York City’s “overage and under-credited” population and holds an M.Ed. from Brooklyn College. His current research interests surround preservice teacher education as well as understanding the experiences and policies affecting the success of “overage and under-credited” students and their teachers.

References

McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies. Wellesley Center for Research on Women. Wellesley, MA. Working Paper 189. 

Tanner, S. (2018). Whiteness, Pedagogy, and Youth in America. New York: Routledge.