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Teachers as “Nice White Ladies”: Race, Gender and Neoliberalism

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 Teachers as “Nice White Ladies”: Race, Gender and Neoliberalism
In J. Diem (Ed.), Social and Cultural Foundations of Education: A Reader. Cognella Press, 2016.

by Christin DePouw, PhD

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

Every semester I have my students complete a media analysis assignment as part of our

course, which is an introduction to issues of race and racism in education. The assignment asks

students to critically analyze the ways in which films like Freedom Writers reinforce cultural

racism against students and communities of color while valorizing their teacher as a “White

Savior.” I’ve learned to wait until later in the semester to engage this analysis—after we’ve had

time to discuss the concept of institutional racism and critically examine the so-called

achievement gap (Anderson, 2004) and relevant race-related concepts such as color-blind racism

(Bonilla-Silva, 2006), racial microaggressions (Kohli & Solórzano, 2012), counterstorytelling

(Solórzano & Yosso, 2001), intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), community cultural wealth

(Yosso, 2005), and Whiteness as property (Harris, 1993).

Even though my students intellectually understand these concepts and are able to identify

them in media examples, critiquing the White Savior trope is still hard for them emotionally.

Many are preservice teachers who are personally invested in this narrative and see themselves as

future White Saviors—they do not want to interrogate why this vision of White teachers is

problematic. It is also difficult for many of the predominantly White students to recognize the

interdependent nature of racial representation. They are reluctant to acknowledge that valorizing

individual White teachers as White Saviors requires a cultural deficit representation of students

and communities of color as unable to save themselves in order for a White Savior to make sense

within the narrative. Deconstructing this trope becomes even more challenging when we

recognize that, overwhelmingly, most White students in class have lived significantly segregated

1
lives. Consequently, media representations of race and racism carry disproportionate weight in

shaping their perceptions.

Although there are many films and related media that fall within the genre of the White

Savior (Vera & Gordan, 2003; Hughey, 2014), I focus on the film Freedom Writers in order to

discuss the implications of popular media depictions of individual White teachers as saviors of

students of color. In particular, I employ critical race theory (CRT) to analyze how the narrative

structure of individual White teachers as “Nice White Ladies” (Dombrowski & Leddy, 2007)

who save youth of color relies on three key and interrelated factors: valorization of Whiteness

and naturalization of White supremacy, cultural deficit framing of students and communities of

color, and a decontextualized and ahistorical understanding of institutional inequity.

In addition to a critical race analysis of the White Savior, I discuss the ways in which

White Savior narratives serve to undermine the labor of teachers by decontextualizing or

ignoring institutional barriers to student success such as funding inequities and related gaps in

services and support, by presenting meritocracy and personal responsibility as solutions to

educational inequity, by setting unrealistic expectations of teacher workload and personal

sacrifice, by deprofessionalizing teaching through its focus on emotional rather than intellectual

work, and by implicitly (sometimes explicitly) arguing that unions and veteran teachers are the

real barriers to effective, caring individual teachers.

When these two areas of analysis are brought together, it is clear that the White Savior

narrative may pay White teachers a “psychological wage” (DuBois, 1935/1992) but

simultaneously undermines the value of their labor by contributing to negative public perceptions

2
about the complex collaborative work and intellectual engagement that actually go into

classroom teaching.

Theoretical Framework

Critical race materialism (Valdes & Cho, 2011) is an analytical framework that focuses

on the interconnected nature of systems of racism and economic exploitation. It utilizes critical

race theory to examine the ways in which structural and social inequities operate at both micro

and macro levels through color blindness and global neoliberalism (Valdes & Cho, 2011). I will

first define the concept of critical race theory and its elements as well as neoliberalism. I will

then discuss how these two concepts interconnect through critical race materialism.

Critical race theory defines race, racism, and White supremacy as deeply embedded

within U.S. society and its institutions (Matsuda et al., 1993, as cited in Dixson & Rousseau,

2006, p. 33). According to Solórzano, Villalpando & Oseguera (2005), there are at least five

defining elements that form the form the “basic assumptions, perspectives, research methods,

and pedagogies” (p. 274) of CRT:

1. The centrality of race and racism. CRT recognizes that race and racism are important

and deeply embedded characteristics of U.S. society and its institutions.

2. The challenge to dominant ideology. CRT challenges traditional claims to objectivity,

race neutrality, color blindness, meritocracy, and equal opportunity. These claims

serve to mask dominant ideologies as simply “the way things are” and thereby

naturalize what are actually socially constructed relations of power, self-interest, and

cultural and epistemological hegemony (Brayboy & Maughan, 2009).

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 3. A commitment to social justice and praxis. CRT is not only a form of analysis but part

of broader projects whose purpose is to eliminate racism and all other forms of

oppression. In other words, CRT is intended for action as well as analysis

(Cammarota & Romero, 2014).

4. Centrality of experiential knowledge. CRT recognizes that the experiential knowledge

of people of color is valid and legitimate, and it provides important insight into the

lived realities of racial inequity and institutional racism. Through counterstorytelling,

or stories that are counter to dominant majoritarian ideology, we validate experiential

knowledge of parents and highlight the relationship between academic research and

lived reality. In our application of a CRT framework to critical race parenting,

experiential knowledge of parents and families of color needs to be valued as an

important source of knowledge and lived experience.

5. An historical context and interdisciplinary perspective. CRT challenges ahistorical

and uni-disciplinary approaches to knowledge as decontextualized and as limited in

options for nuanced and well-informed analysis (Solórzano et al., 2005).

For the purposes of this analysis, recognition that race and racism are deeply embedded

in U.S. society and its institutions is key. Institutions, including systems of education and mass

media, are connected to histories, ideologies, and interests and therefore should not be

considered as neutral or objective entities. It is the contextualization of institutions as rooted in

inequity that leads to a critique of dominant ideologies, particularly meritocracy and color

blindness. Meritocracy is the belief that the U.S. system is open and fair and that anyone who

wants to make it has the opportunity to do so. Implicit within the logic of meritocracy is the

belief that those who have not “made it” are to blame for their own situation due to poor personal

4
choices, values, or behaviors (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Even a cursory overview of U.S. history

reveals that U.S. political, economic, and social systems have never been neutral or equal.

Therefore, claims that inequality is simply the result of poor choices or lack of effort is

disingenuous and victim blaming.

The value of experiential knowledge, another defining element of CRT, is an important

counter to dominant claims of neutrality, fairness, and meritocracy in the United States. This

knowledge is often what is left out of history textbooks or majoritarian narratives of our nation’s

past precisely because it is a more accurate accounting of events from the perspectives of those

most impacted by them. Experiential knowledge is central to acknowledging the agency,

strategy, and resistance of generations of communities of color in the face of deeply entrenched

institutional racism and oppression. When historical narratives exclude or distort the agency of

communities of color and instead focus on idealized White individuals as agents of change,

communities of color then become characterized as passive or unable to save themselves even

though the accurate historical record often indicates that the opposite is what occurred (Hughey,

2014). For instance, the majoritarian narrative of the civil rights movement often emphasizes

steady incremental change over time with the implied argument that most White people had a

moral change of heart and voluntarily removed formal barriers to racial inequality. Experiential

knowledge and more accurate history, however, shows that challenges to legal segregation were

met with massive White resistance and that substantive change was only brought about by mass

collective movements of ordinary people—the vast majority of whom were people of color

(Anderson, 2006).

5
 In CRT, the use of experiential knowledge to challenge majoritarian (or dominant)

narratives often takes place in the form of counterstories. Counterstories are:

Both a method of telling the story of those experiences that are not often told (i.e., those
on the margins of society) and a tool for analyzing and challenging the stories of those in
power and whose story is a natural part of the dominant discourse. … For instance, while
a narrative can support the majoritarian story, a counter-narrative or counter-story, by its
very nature, challenges the majoritarian story or that “bundle of presuppositions,
perceived wisdoms, and shared cultural understandings persons in the dominant race
bring to the discussion of race” (Delgado & Stefancic, 1993, p. 462Solórzano & Yosso,
2001, p. 475)

The film Precious Knowledge serves as an important counterstory to the majoritarian narrative of

Freedom Writers. The Critically Compassionate Intellectualism (CCI) (Romero, Arce, &

Cammarota, 2009) that is clearly at the core of Raza Studies pedagogy challenges the taken-for-

granted logic of passive, deficient students of color and pathological communities that is at the

heart of the Freedom Writers film narrative.

Color blindness is the belief that racism is now a thing of the past and that it is

recognition of race and racism that are the cause of racial problems (Bonilla-Silva, 2006).

Bonilla-Silva (2006) names this “color-blind racism” and argues that an insistence on color

blindness is the dominant form of racism in modern America. Color-blind racism serves to

diminish the importance of (or even the existence of) institutional racism, naturalizes it by

refusing to question its causes, uses presumed cultural characteristics as proxies for racial

markers such as phenotype, and relies on seemingly neutral procedures or rules as evidence that

racism is no longer a factor.

In addition to the five elements of CRT, neoliberalism is an important concept for this

discussion. Neoliberalism promotes market logic as dominant ideology and has four components:

6
deregulation, competition, individualization, and privatization (Hursh, 2007). Since the 1970s we

have seen massive shifts in global economic and political structures that have built upon prior

colonial relations of exploitation and oppression with serious implications (Valdes & Cho, 2011).

Deregulation, under the guise of “freeing capital,” removes important protections for workers

and the environment. Competition in conjunction with privatization undercuts important public

services such as public education while shifting public tax dollars into private hands.

Individualization decontextualizes exploited and oppressed peoples so that they are viewed

outside of history rather than as a member of a group with a particular social, economic, and

political location (Slater, 2015). Individualization also promotes a version of citizenship that

relies on meritocracy—the belief that, within the marketplace of choices, if we experience

inequality it is our own fault for being a poor consumer (Hursh, 2007).

Conceptually and in material impact, neoliberalism has significant overlap with color-

blind racism. Valdes and Cho (2011) discuss the overlap in terms of “critical race materialism,”

which they identify as an analysis of the inextricable linkages between economic and social

identities. They argue that critical race materialism demonstrates the ways in which neoliberal

economic and social exploitation has its roots in prior arrangements of colonial and imperial

exploitation and that neoliberalism should be understood as building upon existing systems of

economic and racial exploitation and oppression. In that sense, color-blind racism and

neoliberalism are mutually reinforcing in our current historical moment. We can see that both

color-blind racism and neoliberalism, for instance, intersect in their heavy reliance on

meritocracy and ahistoricism. Both insist on individualism over collective identities or collective

remedies to social problems. Both victim blame through an emphasis on personal choices and

7
personal responsibility. Both rely on racialized, gendered, and classed assumptions of agency

and passivity, worthiness and unworthiness.

Critical race materialism is necessary to examine the White Savior narrative because it is

not enough to only engage social identities such as race or gender. Such an analysis also needs to

consider why teachers in particular are often targeted for these kinds of representations and also

to contemplate the ways in which the teaching profession is impacted when it is characterized

through a gendered valorization of Whiteness that ultimately undermines the labor status of

educators.

Critical Race Materialism and the White Savior

Films have been and continue to be an important medium through which broader society

constructs, imagines, and reinforces conceptions of Whiteness and White identity (Foster, 2003;

Vera & Gordon, 2003; Hughey, 2014). The White Savior narrative is an important part of this

ongoing racial project (Omi & Winant, 2015) and has shifted over time along with broader racial

meanings and identities:

Many now cite the intersection of race and film as more progressive and egalitarian than
ever before. On the other hand, while admitting a sea change in racial representations,
others point to contemporary Hollywood movies as one of the main instruments for
establishing a context in which whiteness—whether victimized or valorized—is framed
as ultimately superior and normative. In this vein, racism has shifted from overt
expression to subtle and hegemonic qualities (Bernardi, 2007; Hughey, 2009a). Such a
process, according to Vera and Gordon (2003), ultimately produces “sincere fictions of
the white self.” That is, while films like Freedom Writers seem to tell a “positive” story
of nonwhite uplift, they also validate a structurally violent and racist educational and
legal system, demonize youth and lower socioeconomic cultural patterns associated with
people of color, and ultimately sanctify a sole white teacher as a messianic character of
biblical proportions. (Hughey, 2010, pp. 478–479)

8
Normalizing Whiteness and White Saviors as superior is the basis for an ongoing validation of

meritocracy and colorblind racism. These worldviews and belief systems, in turn, support the

continuation of racially inequitable economic, political, and social arrangements by naturalizing

inequity as the result of work ethic, intelligence, personal responsibility, and cultural pathology

(Bonilla-Silva, 2006).

Freedom Writers attempts to naturalize racial inequity early in the film through the

narration of one of the students, Eva. She is discussing the spatial and racial arrangements at her

school in terms of “tribes”:

If it was up to me, I wouldn’t even be in school. My probation officer threatened me,

telling me it was either school or boot camp. Dumbass. He thinks that the problems going
on in Long Beach aren’t going to touch me at Wilson. My PO doesn’t understand that
schools are like the city, and the city is just like a prison, all of them divided into separate
sections, depending on tribes. There’s Little Cambodia. The Ghetto. Wonder Bread Land.
And us, South of the Border or Little Tijuana. That’s just the way it is, and everyone
knows it. (DeVito, Sher, Shamberg, & LaGravenese, 2007)

Eva’s inner monologue serves several functions—first, she states clearly that she does not want

to be in school by choice, thereby labeling her as a resistant rather than dedicated student. This

statement works in tandem with the second function of the quote, which is to label her as

criminal by mentioning her parole officer. Finally, Eva’s inner monologue discusses racial

segregation as natural and normal. In the context of her previous statements in which she labels

her probation officer a “dumbass” for not knowing all of this, the three components of her

narrative reinforce racism and segregation as natural and inevitable. Because the three

components of Eva’s narrative work together, her status as resistant student and as criminal are

naturalized as well.

The film briefly mentions the Los Angeles uprising in 1992 and alludes to court-ordered

desegregation, but these are not fully explained or critically engaged as important institutional

9
factors in the experiences of the students in Ms. Gruwell’s classroom. Instead, two racist White

teachers stand in as the barriers to students of color. Their constant expressions of low

expectation and racially loaded characterizations of Gruwell’s students individualize racism by

locating it within specific bigoted White teachers rather than in broader historical and

contemporary institutional arrangements. Individualizing racism as those “Bad Whites” (Bonilla-

Silva, 2006) allows the audience to further identify with Gruwell as the White Savior by creating

a clear binary in White identity choices. The binary of Good White/Bad White relies on

positioning unsupportive White teachers as uncaring, intellectually elitist, and tenured, whereas

the “Good White” teacher is caring, assigns material that is interesting to students, and is new to

the educational system. It is important to note that, in this binary, being new to teaching and

being a caring teacher are represented as interdependent. In other words, it is Gruwell’s outsider

status as rookie teacher that allows her to remain untainted by the cynicism and racism of the

tenured, more experienced “Bad White” teachers.

In particular, the Nice White Lady teacher as lone hero portrays teacher labor as care

driven rather than as tied to professional preparation, undermines arguments for the value of

unions and fair compensation, and implicitly argues that teachers should selflessly sacrifice all in

order to save students from their “pathological backgrounds.”

The promotion of young, inexperienced White females as potential saviors of deficient

students is a narrative with a long history in U.S. education systems. During the common school

era, White female teachers were recruited to alleviate teacher shortages and also to staff schools

more cheaply than male teachers, who could command a higher salary. As more and more

female teachers entered systems of education, there was also a shift toward limiting the academic

freedom of individual teachers and placing intellectual decisions in the hands of the male

10
supervising principals. White female teachers were often idealized as “public mothers” who

continued to mold and care for children as a way to nurture future citizens (Spring, 2010). At

many other moments in the expansion and development of systems of public education, “care”

and racially gendered stereotypes of White female teachers served to undermine their labor

status. The valorization of White female teachers as caregivers and public mothers used virtuous

and self-sacrificing public reputation as a form of “pay” even as the same narrative was often

used to demonize White female teachers who advocated for higher wages and more academic

freedom. The White Savior narrative of Freedom Writers similarly appears to place the naive

White rookie teacher on a pedestal at the same time that it normalizes poor labor conditions

through a racialized, classed, and gendered framework of what constitutes good teaching.

As Yosso and Garcia (2008) noted, the film’s construction of what constitutes good

teaching also normalizes White supremacy by placing Gruwell’s version of cultural capital at the

center of what it takes to be successful. Gruwell socializes the students in her class into her

version of appropriate manners through field trips, classroom activities, and even a “toast for

change,” which relies heavily on the logic of racialized meritocracy as the mechanism of student

empowerment.

Most important in examining the ways in which White supremacy remains unchallenged

in Gruwell’s classroom is that she never has to interrogate her own racial identity as a White

teacher in a classroom that is predominantly of color. When students challenge her on her racial

identity, Gruwell responds with a color-blind claim that her racial identity does not matter.

Instead, the scene of the movie is written to position the student of color, Eva, as the “racist”

because she insists on a formulaic understanding of race and racism as defining everything in life

11
and as her personal hatred for White people. The eventual change in Eva’s perspective implies

that racism was not caused by institutional factors or historical context but by the person of

color’s inability to “get past” race and aspire for more. Once Eva “gets past” race and articulates

personal responsibility, she is now fit to participate in the postracial color-blind America for

which Gruwell is preparing her.

The centrality of White normativity and supremacy in Freedom Writers is sometimes

difficult to recognize because Gruwell is a Nice White Lady. Gruwell passes the first portion of

the film demonstrating an almost unbelievable naiveté that is supposed to characterize her as

innocent and therefore not implicated in the conditions that face her students. Instead, she is an

outsider who decides to intervene in problems that are not her own. This characterization

reinforces the idea of color blindness and of Whiteness as invisible or “not really a race” the way

other racial identities are. The Nice White Lady is armor against critique because how can such a

nice person also support institutional racism?

Supporting institutional racism does not require personal animus. Gruwell teaches the

Jewish Holocaust rather than more culturally relevant curricula because this is the curricula that

resonates with her (Yosso & Garcia, 2008). She has students verbally decide to change in a

classroom toast because her experience has led her to believe that a change of heart is all that is

necessary to change one’s life. She works extra jobs and ultimately divorces, all because of her

self-effacing behavior. These sacrifices appear proof that whatever she does is in the best

interests of her students, even as we see the White Savior consistently pathologize or exoticize

the lives of her students through poorly constructed assignments that serve little academic

purpose except emotional catharsis and voyeurism.

12
Precious Knowledge as Counterstory

In contrast, the pedagogy in Precious Knowledge also involves teacher sacrifice but not

as outsiders looking in on someone else’s problem. Rather, the teachers understand the

interconnected nature of social justice and teach from perspectives of solidarity and collective

action. By exploring the interdependent nature of White heroes and racial deficit frameworks, it

becomes clear that counterstories such as Precious Knowledge offer important alternatives to

problematic narratives that ignore the systemic realities of educational inequities.

Critically Compassionate Intellectualism (CCI) is at the heart of Mexican American

Studies (MAS) in Precious Knowledge (Romero, Arce, & Cammarota, 2009). CCI begins with

the recognition that institutions actively produce inequities and that economic, political, and

social inequity are systemic rather than the result of individual failure or deficit. The teachers in

MAS work to build respectful and reciprocal relationships with community members and

families, which is a stark contrast to the message of Freedom Writers—that success is distancing

oneself from pathological community and/or family. The pedagogy of CCI makes a clear

connection between strong cultural identity and strong academic identity, which means an

emphasis on critical analysis of social problems and informed study of how to act to resolve

those problems. This action is not simply a verbal commitment that the student will not accept

something in his or her future, as in the toast for change. Instead, the action is informed by

rigorous academic research and recognition of the institutional nature of social problems, which

in turn requires collective and ongoing action.

Whereas the White Savior narrative employs the neoliberal push for deregulation,

implying that the “system is broken” because of bureaucracy, unions, and apathetic tenured

13
teachers, CCI engages in a deeper analysis of how systems of education function effectively to

(re)produce inequity. From this standpoint, CCI recognizes the need for legal protections such as

due process, elected representation, and civil rights laws even as it analyzes the ways in which

legal rights historically have had significant limits when the interests of communities of color did

not converge with those of the White majority (Bell, 1980).

The challenges to MAS and the ways in which many White politicians and community

members attacked the academically successful program proves Bell’s (1980) point about interest

convergence. Classrooms such as Gruwell’s are not models for eliminating educational racism in

the sense that they do not fundamentally challenge or transform the institutional conditions that

produced racial inequalities. However, the popularity of films like Freedom Writers and the

lucrative speaking engagements that Gruwell and former Freedom Writer students receive are an

indication that a feel-good color-blind treatment of race is more politically and socially attractive

than a program that actually empowers and educates youth of color.

Conclusion

Academically, the data show that MAS is a highly effective academic program with

curricula that is often honors aligned and with university-level research skills (Cabrera, Milem,

& Marx, 2012; Cammarota & Romero, 2014). Yet this program was targeted as seditious, anti-

American, and so forth because it focused on communities and students saving themselves

through a lens of self-respect and critical race analysis. By providing historical context,

knowledge of how institutions and systems of inequity function, and high-level academic skills,

MAS proved threatening to the status quo in a way that the Freedom Writers version of teaching

does not. From the response to MAS, it is evident that proven pedagogies that achieve academic

14
success with students of color are not as valuable as absolving White people of responsibility for

alleviating institutional racism.

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