Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
"This story offers an autobiographical counterstory examining different ways young white, middle-class children in the United States learn to accept and celebrate their place in a viciously unequal society. The story explores this process through the experiences of a young white student named Zack growing up in Cedar Grove and attending Cedar Grove Elementary.
The story focuses on what researchers call white racial socialization (Hagerman, 2018), socialization practices (Hughes et al., 2006), and white habitus (Bonilla-Silva, Goar, & Embrick, 2006). This counterstory attempts to pull back the curtain on how white children are socialized to accept and celebrate the status quo in a nation built on a racial caste system (Alexander, 2010). Two central metaphors appear throughout the story: The Covenant and an initiation. The Covenant represents a set of agreements most white Americans 'sign' in exchange for the ongoing material, psychological, and emotional benefits of remaining silent and complicit in white supremacy and settler colonialism. Likewise, an initiation process involving conversation, curriculum, correction, and a criminal silence, socializes white youth to not question their position in society and to 'sign' The Covenant like their parents years before."
Recommended Citation
Matschiner, A. (2020). What He Learned to Think He Earned. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.5070/D4162046032
Copyright
The author
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Disability and Equity in Education Commons, Educational Psychology Commons, Elementary Education Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, volume 16, issue 2, in 2020. https://doi.org/10.5070/D4162046032