New Ways of Being White: White Families Striving to Raise Young Antiracists

Author

Katie Kitchens, Chapman UniversityFollow

Date of Award

Summer 8-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Lilia D. Monzó, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Margie Sauceda Curwen, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Shelly Tochluk, Ph.D.

Abstract

In asking the questions “How are white families striving to create antiracist family cultures simultaneously resisting reifying white dominant culture, and how are white children making sense of their racial identities in those families?” I had the opportunity to deepen previously established relationships with three families asking similar questions. Our collective querying resulted in data collected using critical ethnographic methods rooted in culturally responsive methods including fieldwork, formal and informal conversations, and written narrative. Unique themes emerged from each family’s data, from which I drew three major theoretical conclusions: the importance of (1) Critical Consciousness (2) Antiracist Community, and (3) Unfinishedness. The data indicates the need for continued research regarding white children’s antiracist racial identity development in the social, familial, and schooling spheres, as well as the motivations that undergird white caregivers to attempt to act in antiracist ways. This study contributes to a current gap in the literature regarding the development of antiracist attitudes among white children.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Kitchens, K. (2024). New ways of being white: White families striving to raise young antiracists [Doctoral dissertation, Chapman University]. Chapman University Digital Commons. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000607