Running head: GROUP 4 BOOK REVIEW C&T 807

A Book Review of Debby Irving’s ​Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race

Group 4: Kelly Ward, Jaclyn Mack,Danielle Saile, Laura Hagenbaugh

University of Kansas C&T 807

Running head: GROUP 4 BOOK REVIEW C&T 807

Book Review

Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race​, Debby Irving, Cambridge, 2014,

273 pp., US$19.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-9913313-0-7

The nine chapters of Debby Irving’s book ​Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the

Story of Race ​reveal how the author embarks on a quest, as a middle aged, educated, white

woman from the east coast, to understand race and racism. We can look at the book through a

series of stumbling blocks in her social awakening starting with Irving’s belief that she did not

have race, her own silent wondering, and finally her social awakening. The story begins as a

blank canvas and evolves into a less than perfect piece of art with Irving learning to recognize

that in a culture where race matters, her social awakening became the paint and she became the

painter of her canvas. Much like the work of an artist, her social awakening was messy,

frustrating, and often fraught with feelings of failure, and yet, Irving persisted. In ​Waking Up

White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race,​ Debby Irving provides her readers an inside look

at the beauty that can come from places from within the emotional mind that are scary and

uncomfortable.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 1: “Childhood in White.”

Debby Irving leads with speaking of the beginning of her racial journey in ​Waking Up

White​, going back to when she was a young child. What wasn’t said when she was growing up

led to ignorance. When Irving spoke to her mother about Indians, her mom’s response was what

she had learned from her own upbringing. The lack of knowledge to help connect Irving to the
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historical truth was not there and no one encouraged her to dig deeper to see the other side of the

story. Irving spoke about her affluent upbringing in the upper-middle class area in the suburbs of

Boston. She was taught at an early age that hard work pays off: “Being accomplished and staying

busy were signs of good character, I believed, in part because they offered ways to show my

forebears my gratitude” (Irving, 2014 p. 10). These were the morals that were instilled in her so

that she did not know anything different. Optimism seemed to be the type of thinking that was

necessary for achievement, for those who worked hard and “kept their nose to the grindstone.”

Everyone, so it seemed, could reach the American Dream of success if they worked hard. Like

the shows which aired on television depicting the “average” American family Irving found

herself leading a normal life. Not understanding who Dr. King was during his time, Irving later

realized that, “By pretending the world was problem-free, my family culture left me grossly

unprepared to solve problems” (Irving, 2014 p. 20). Even during school, history classes were

taught through the eyes of white European Americans. This showing just one side of America’s

history, the one through rose colored lenses. As she grows, Irving, on her own, tries to figure

out what the issue really is: race or class. Both are linked: “Until I understood the impact skin

color can have on one’s life, I wasn’t able to consider racism in combination with other factors

that influence one’s culture” (Irving, 2014, p. 14). Skin color is visible, leading the author to see

how her skin color impacts her perceptions.

Chapter 2: “Midlife Wake-Up Calls”.

It wasn’t until Irving moved to the city of Cambridge did she start seeing racial

disparities. Her bubble from which she was raised in had suddenly popped. She started working
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on diverse committees to help understand her surroundings. As Irving’s worked progressed, this

only led to confusion –saying or doing the wrong thing. What was culturally appropriate? This

is the point in the book where she enrolled in the “Racial and Cultural Identity” course at

Wheelock College. As the college course continued more questions were arising. Digging

deeper to how the idea of race was constructed dating back to the 1600’s.

When I got honest with myself, I had to own up to the fact that I’d bought into the myth

of white superiority, silently and privately, explaining to myself the patter of white

dominance I observed as a natural outgrowth of biologically wired superior white

intelligence and ability.(Irving, 2014, p. 44)

Irving’s honesty with what she thought she knew she took and embraced her new found insight.

Realizing that the American “melting pot” was more or less come to America and act white –

making it hard when physical attributes could not be changed. She is using the terms “headwinds

and tailwinds” to characterize systematic racism, “The more I came to understand systemic

racism, the more I longed to be able to talk about it with white friends and family (Irving, 2014,

p. 60). Irving sees that there is a distorted belief system in our society that will go unchanged if

humanity continues the way it is.

Analysis and Application of course readings Chapters 1-2.

In module three, it was Ulluccci and Battey’s (Ullucci and Battey, 2011) article ​Exposing

color blindness/grounding color consciousness: Challenges for teacher education​, the authors

speak about how whiteness is deeply interconnected to color blindness. Like in ​Waking Up

White​, Irving was going from colorblindness to color consciousness, “A necessary step in
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recognizing others’ worldviews and experiences as valid requires acknowledging that such

paradigms are racially informed and not monolithic” (Ullucci and Battey, 2011, p. 1200). The

article speaks about deconstructing whiteness in one’s own values and understanding those of

other cultures. Just as Irving was doing on her journey to understanding her views on race and

class.

There is a crossover in Irving’s book and Tatum’s article (Tatum,1992) from module two,

Talking about race, learning about racism: The application of racial identity development theory

in the classroom​, “Because of the prejudice and racism inherent in our environments when we

were children, I assume that we cannot be blamed for learning what we were taught

(intentionally or unintentionally)” (Tatum, 1992, p.4). Both authors seem to share the same

upbringing, they learned about their environments from their parents who may have not known

any different from their rearing. Tatum explains that as adults there is an unwritten responsibility

that we need to take on to identify and understand the cycle of oppression that is continuing. Just

because one was taught to maybe think or act a certain way, does not mean that it was right.

There needs to be a time when we come to recognize that society may have been misinformed

about things and need to take responsibility to find accurate information and alter our behavior.

Chapter 3: “Why didn’t I Wake up Sooner?” ​Irving finds herself in the midst of a

“breakthrough” during the Wheelock course (Irving, 2014 p. 63). The Wheelock course is what

is rooted in her “awakening.” At this point in the text Irving is exploring self-reinforced thinking

that creates a perceived evidence that leads one to a narrow perception about the meaning of skin
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color. She explores the definition of culture she held from her childhood with what she now

understands culture to be:

Culture is to a group what personality is to an individual. It’s a collective character that

describes a set of beliefs and behaviors that identify the group. Though individuals in the

group vary, these common beliefs and behaviors hold the group together. (Irving, 2014,

p. 63-64)

The Iceberg theory enlightens Irving and makes her privy to her own whiteness, assumptions,

and calls into question her own logic skills that has delivered her to a place of beginning to

understand racism and the missing complexities surrounding stereotypes and racism that she

possesses (Irving, 2014, p. 65). Next, racialized ideas are threaded throughout the chapter. Irving

states:

I begin to see how racialized ideas get handed along like a relay torch. Ideas create

outcomes that, if unexamined, reinforce old ideas​ --m​ America’s oldest idea being that

the white race rules. White folks don’t just control America’s institutions; they control

the narrative. And the narrative, I believe, controls just about everything else. (Irving,

2014, p. 67)

Irving draws attention to the various forms of privilege being present in her life and how she has

overlooked her privilege when she had it the most (Irving, 2014, p. 71), capitalizing even further

on her understanding of her white dominance. Lastly, she explores what she calls the zap factor,

which creates a perfect metaphorical circuit to keep racism in its currency. This concept comes

about because people of color have been trained/conditioned to not bring up race to white people,
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and white people are conditioned to not to see race. In this schema, the author is placed in the

direct path of creating a surge of avoidance that perpetuated the zap factor (Irving, 2014, p. 75).

In the end of chapter 3, the whole story is “stories feed our belief systems” (Irving, 2014, p. 82).

The moral of this chapter is if dominant culture continues to believe white is right, then different

narratives become ignored and the cycle of racism will be perpetuated (Irving, 2014, p. 85).

Categorization takes center stage at the end of chapter 3. At the forefront of categorization are

logos and stereotypes, which are important parts of memory retrieval that store information

neatly in our brain and result in labels. Categorization turns people into symbols and logos and/or

adding attributive tags in conversation when talking about people of color, but never asserting

the same rule for white people because white was implied. Irving adds:

How could I have avoided labeling the white population, when I seemed to do it so

naturally to every other cultural group? Easy: I had no language and therefore no file

folder in which to collect stories and stereotypes for the white race, the invisible race

(Irving, 2014, p. 91).

The challenge is noting what “we” as readers have filed for people of color and what stereotypes

are attached to those folders.

Chapter 4: “My Good People.” ​Irving calls into question the idea of the “good people”

theory. Learning about how racism works went against her paradigm of her family being good

and what she was explicitly taught in regards to being polite and honest and not being selfish.

The pushback around racism was not about it being new information; it was about it being

“completely contradictory” information (Irving, 2014 p. 95). As Irving evolves in her “waking
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up,” the more aware and authentic she becomes about the ideas she was holding such as

color-blindness and how it simply does not get any more racist than saying that one does not see

color. Irving distinguishes the difference between people of color, making sense of a racialized

world and all that comes with it. For whites, it comes with invisible privileges (Irving, 2014, p.

101). Next, in the “my good luck” subheading of this chapter, Irving continues to explore

privilege, and more specifically how she benefited from family connections to secure

employment, gain housing, afford the ability to own a car, and exit college debt free. All her

“good luck” or privilege helped perpetuate the cycle of racism. Lastly, Irving addresses what she

calls her Robin Hood syndrome. The syndrome is basically the idea that she knew what was best

for “others” and when what she thought was not actuality she was left with another reality, also

grown out of privilege.

My Robin Hood era had ended with the sound of a deflating balloon, not the accolades

and gratitude I’d anticipated. I felt demoralized, saddened that the ending hadn’t turned

out as I envisioned. I’m discovering now that neat and tidy endings, especially happy

ones, are yet another luxury of the entitled. (Irving, 2014, p. 111)

During this phase of her life, Irving had not yet come to terms with systemic racism. She was

unprepared for any conversation that would challenge racism and push her out of her zone of

comfort, and she was even further away from wrestling with the deeper components she

addressed in this chapter and earlier chapters like invisible privilege, the zap factor, missing

narratives, and stereotypes (Irving, 2014, p. 109).

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Analysis and Application of course readings Chapters 3-4.​ The beauty of reading the

Irving memoir is that her “awakening” parallels the module readings wonderfully. Just as Irving

is starting to understand her whiteness, Carter, Helms and Juby’s ​The Relationship Between

Racism and Racial Identity for White Americans: A Profile Analysis​ in module 1 informs readers

about such topics as racial identity schemas in which they talk about white racial identity and

attitudes, just as Irving ebbs through many of the Schemas (Carter, Helm and Juby, 2004, p.3).

DiAngelo in Module 2 further defines whiteness for her readers and Irving many times

throughout the book is the embodiment of DiAngelo’s work around White Fragility (DiAngelo,

2011, p. 56). Ullucci and Battey ​Exposing color blindness/grounding color consciousness:

Challenges for teacher education​ in Module 3 build on the colorblindness and a misperceptions.

Irving spends considerable amounts of time “grappling”(Irving, 2014, p. 109) with this concept

and many others. In the article ​What is Critical Race Theory and​ ​what’s it doing in a nice field

like education?,​ author Ladson-Billings helps develop a working definition of critical race theory

and more importantly the stories of people of color and how race does matter (Ladson-Billings,

1998, p.8), while at the same time Irving is uncovering her privilege in understanding stories and

how many times she shut down narratives dismissing them as not aligning with her values or

how they just made her uncomfortable all of these were privileges afforded her because of the

color of her skin. Each of the modules provide a nugget of overlap as a teeter-totter between

research and theory, the narrative consequence, learning or outcome from the modules readings.

The Irving book is a refreshing balance that is welcome between the heaviness that emerges in

Multicultural Education 807.

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Chapters 5​: ​“Twenty-five Years of Tossing and Turning.”

Irving, after spending hours with her friends and colleagues from various backgrounds,

she found it difficult to retreat to her white cocoon. All the while, she felt conflicted about what

side she belonged to, even though she felt a deep connection with living in her Cambridge world,

where she “felt freed from the kind of homogeneous, dominant culture I’d known in Winchester”

(Irving, 2014, p. 120).

From various diversity trainings over the years, Irving learned that talking about race and

skin color does not have to be a taboo topic with children. Using those moments allows talking

and teaching about race to be natural. In another training, she was stunned by how certain words

can cause rage in different groups of people. Irving sent an email expressing her emotions from

her experience:

I confessed to a mounting stew of confusing and upsetting feelings around race. I listed

about twenty emotions I was wrestling with, including guilt, despair, fear, hopelessness,

confusion, and anxiety. I told him that I didn’t feel I was getting closer to understanding

cross-race relations and i didn’t know how to proceed. (Irving, 2014, p. 128).

Irving comes to terms that she spent many years trying to help and fix others to help them fit in,

that she hadn’t considered her role in perpetuating the dominant culture that shut them out.

How can racism possibly be dismantled until white people, lots and lots of white people,

understand it as an unfair system, get in touch with the subtle stories and stereotypes that

play in their heads, and see themselves not as good or bad but as players in the system?

(Irving, 2014, p. 153)

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Irving discusses that white people need to embrace the elephant in the room of self awareness in

order to dismantle racism. As Irving begins her awakening process, she begins “leaving behind

[her] culture of bravado, comfort, and polite conversation to open up and grow” (Irving, p. 154).

Chapter 6​: ​“Leaving My Comfort Zone.”

In this chapter, Irving discusses leaving the comfort of her white world. The phrase

“intent versus impact” is introduced, where a person’s intentions “have been misunderstood or

they’ve misunderstood another’s” (Irving, 2014 p. 159). When race is mixed in, cultural

difference combined with pent-up emotions can cause charged intent-versus impact upsets. On

the advice of a racial justice colleague, Irving attends a conference by and for professionals of

color. Upon sharing her thoughts with the crowd, many expressed that she should examine her

whiteness. Afterwards, five men and women of color had stayed with her to teach her the impact

that she could unleash on people through sheer ignorance.

The “culture of niceness” Irving grew up with was how everyone around her​ gets along

and seems happy to work together, but there are simmering issues that cannot be addressed, and

internalizes that nice equates to good. “The culture of niceness did nothing short of program me

away from my humanity and into a socially scripted role with diminished capacity to feel my

way through situations” (Irving, 2014, p. 169). A cycle is created as this culture of niceness

provides a social norm stating that conflict is bad and discomfort should be avoided. To move

forward from this, creating a space for open conversation is necessary. Dominant culture and

stereotypes can be addressed when white people “learn how to listen to the experiences of people

of color for racial healing and justice to happen” (Irving, 2014, p. 175).
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As Irving left her comfort zone, she delved into perception reversal as she became

hyper-aware of people’s physical attributes. Fear of “otherness” and fear of an “other” with

power comes with the sense of symbolism of whiteness. The “Beloved Community” was a

concept of Dr. Martin Luther King, which envisioned complete racial, class, and national

integration and brotherhood. One of the most important tasks of dismantling racism--within

ourselves and in our communities--is educating ourselves.

Analysis and Application of course readings Chapters 5-6.​

In module 2, DiAngelo states in ​White Fragility,​ “White Fragility is a state in which even

a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves”

(DiAngelo, 2011). ​Emotions include: anger, fear, guilt. Behaviors include: argumentation,

silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. Like in ​Waking Up White,​ Irving stated her

emotions as she became aware of her whiteness and as she started to learn about cross-race

relations in her awakening.

Irving strives to reconstruct her white racial identity as she is in the Disintegration stage,

as described by Tatum. According to Tatum in ​Talking About Race, Learning About Racism,​

“certain kinds of experiences (increased interaction with people of color or exposure to new

information about racism) may lead to a new understanding that cultural and institutional racism

exist” (Tatum,1992). Irving’s lack of awareness changes as she becomes aware of racial issues

and it brings about feelings of discomfort through guilt and shame.

In Matias’ ​Check Yo'self before You Wreck Yo'self and Our Kids, ​they discuss how

people need to “re-experience the pain of racism” (Matias, 2013, p. 78). Like Irving’s
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experiences, white people can draw from scholars of color that depict the emotional trauma of

racism and white antiracist scholarship on the emotional shift of becoming a better white ally.

We learn that despite the discomfort of unveiling whiteness, it is worth the commitment to racial

justice.

Chapter 7: “Inner Work.” ​In Chapter 7 of Waking Up White, Irving asserts that before

one can begin to tackle the larger and more complex examples of systemic racism and

discrimination in America, it is the “inner work” that needs to happen first. Commonly, white

people feel that they do not have a race or culture, believing that white mainstream culture is the

norm and that all others differ from this typified culture. Critical self-reflection is needed to

parse out the ways in which we have contributed and identified with a culture that is, however,

visible or invisible, inequitable, and has shaped our current selves. Irving brings notice to the

dominant culture’s proclivity for dichotomies, namely the either/or and better/worse which

frames everyone’s experiences, practices, and worth as superior or inferior, dichotomies that

became foundational in her thinking. In assessing every practice or attribute as better or worse,

she came to belief that is was her and her family’s superior habits and traits that led her to be so

successful. Undoing and understanding these ways of thinking within one’s self are essential

before one can move to the work of disrupting racial discrimination away from the home.

Chapter 8: “Outer Work.” ​Outer Work​ chronicles key moments in Irving’s journey as a

social justice advocate. She likens the work for racial equality to that of bullying in its three

actors: the bully, the victim, and the bystanders. Very much as there are those on the offensive

and defensive in a bullying scenario, the most harm is often caused by those standing on the
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sidelines. This often happens because the role of the bystander is one of ease and comfort.

Disrupting racism and changing paradigms require difficult conversations, enduring awkward

moments, and acknowledging our own blunders so that we as people can come to an honest and

collective understanding about race in America. Irving faces her own blunder as she calls to

apologize to the parent of another girl on her daughter’s soccer team after she mistakenly called

her the name of another girl of color. She reflects on the harm caused historically when people

of color are misidentified, picks up the phone, and faces her mistake, leading to a vulnerable and

more honest conversation about race for both women.

Chapter 9: “Reclaiming My Humanity.” ​Irving begins C​hapter 9: Reclaiming My

Humanity​ by asserting that racism is two-pronged; it was not simply her socialization in white

dominant culture but also the incomplete or false narratives she was fed about race that

perpetuated her ignorance and directed her to a life of comfort rather than vulnerability and

compassion. She recalls the last days of her father’s life in which he confesses to her that he did

not do enough to help others and (she believes) stand up in the face of injustice. This further

supports what she sees as her responsibility to our collective humanity, to use the privilege that

she cannot deny or give away to bring America closer to equity. The end of the chapter is a call

to action for her readers to educate themselves, engage with people of color and white people

alike, donate to organizations like Race Forward and the White Privilege Conference Fund, spur

racial awareness, and take a course, as she did, that can elicit your own racial awakening and

work for justice.

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Analysis and Application of course readings Chapters 7-9. J​ ust as Irving came to the painful

reality that meritocracy is a myth, and that she was set up for success by varying intersectional

factors in her life, primarily race, Beverly Daniel Tatum’s experience teaching a class on the

psychology of race reflects that:

An understanding of racism as a system of advantage presents a serious challenge to the

notion of the United States as a just society where rewards are based solely on one’s

merit. Such a challenge often creates discomfort in students...students are not necessarily

eager to recognize the painful reality of racism (Tatum, 1992, p.6).

Throughout ​Waking Up White,​ Irving moves through multiple stages of White identity

development. In Chapters 7-9, her thinking and behavior is best typified by the

Immersion/Emersion stage of development as described by Tatum.

Just as the Black students seeks to redefine positively what it means to be of African

ancestry in the United States through immersion in accurate information about one’s

culture and history, the White individual seeks to replace racially related myths and

stereotypes with accurate information about what it means and has meant to be White in

U.S. society (Tatum, 1992, p.12).

In Irving’s exploration of the ways in which she has experienced systematic advantage

due to her whiteness, T.J. Yosso’s and Annette Lareau’s definitions and applications of cultural

capital are poignant. Lareau points out that individuals inherit skills that take on different value

in specific contexts. Cultural capital is comprised of social networks, forms of cultural

knowledge, and varied experiences with institutions like healthcare and the criminal justice
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system (Laureau, 2015). “The dominant groups within society are able to maintain power

because access is limited to acquiring and learning strategies to use these forms of capital for

social mobility” (Yosso, 2016). In Chapters 7-9, Irving is cognizant of the ways in which

cultural capital positively or negatively impacts experiences and outcomes based on context. It

becomes her mission to disrupt the prejudice and inequity of this reality.

Much as Irving understands the power of ignorance and the impacts of a culture of

colorblindness, in ​Talking about race, learning about racism​, Tatum states,

Because of the prejudice and racism inherent in our environments when we were

children, I assume that we cannot be blamed for learning what we were taught

(intentionally or unintentionally). Yet as adults, we have a responsibility to try to identify

and interrupt the cycle of oppression. When we recognize that we have been

misinformed, we have a responsibility to seek out more accurate information and to

adjust our behavior accordingly (Tatum, 1992, p. 4).

Both authors convey that amending the past is impossible and ignoring it is a futile and harmful

effort. Rather, the work to be done is focusing on that change that is possible in the future. This

requires denouncing the deficit lens that Communities of Color are so often viewed through, as

described in ​Whose culture has capital​ (Yosso, 2016), and examining the hidden prejudices that

lie below our consciousness, and valuing the unique capital that all races and ethnicities bring to

the table.
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Discussion Conclusion

Take Away Learning.

From reading Irving’s book, I have come to realize that learning about yourself is a

continuous lifelong process. Realizing what I thought was the norm because it was the way it

was presented growing up can have an effect on one’s upbringing. Being able to journey

through Irving’s wake-up, I have been able to question some of the decisions my family has

made as well as looking into myself. Being unconscious about some of the decisions or thoughts

I may have made has allowed me to deepen my new found understanding of what my whiteness

is.

The take away learning from Irving is her delivery of seriousness and appropriate

amounts of humor. She models vulnerability and one cannot truly come to a moment of

awakening without it. You can be both a good person and racist it is what you do with that

information that can be life altering. I want to continue to engage the way Irving has over the

years since her Wheelock course to having her own class where she gets to lead others into their

“awakening”. As an educator I can see how necessary it is to sometimes just go with the

conversation even when it is uncomfortable and to create a “new normal” for engaging in

conversations around race and racism.

Going through this journey with Irving, a big takeaway is the necessity to be vulnerable

in your learning. Reconstructing our racial identity will not be linear. It will be uncomfortable

during your awakening, but being able to discuss openly will allow you to grow, especially when

so much has been unintentionally ingrained into our upbringing without us knowing it. Despite
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being uncomfortable with unveiling our whiteness and our privileges, it’s worth the commitment

to racial justice to examine and peel back the layers of injustice.

Impact on Future Practice.

The impact that Debby Irving has had on my thoughts and views of society has led me to

see how different now my future practices will be. My insight on how I view culture has shifted

and I am now more aware of the implications I may be instilling in my students when teaching or

the people I talk to. As Irving went through later in her life, I am now able to start practicing my

cultural awareness sooner. Practicing my openness to others thinking - not being afraid to bring

up topics that before I may have found uncomfortable.

I am not considering the impact on future practices because I am in the moment of right

now. Debby Irving has impacted my current practice weekly over the last 7 weeks. Each week

something that I read became a topic of conversation with students or with colleagues. Her work

invited me to try new things in my classroom. Her openness invited me to be more open with

students and to allow a space for students to constructively talk about their current understanding

of race, culture, identity, and what it means to be a student of color. To equip them with use of

equitable language and model vulnerability around areas where I can do better at connecting

their culture to the classroom and curriculum to make it relevant to who they are as learners.

Irving has led me to think more about how my background and upbringing have

privileged me in ways that I have never considered. Irving talking about intent versus impact has

made me think about my discussions with people in the future. Even now, I am actively thinking

about how what I’m saying is affecting the people who I am conversing with. I intend on having
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more open, courageous conversations with my students and others to disrupt the cycle and

dismantle racism.
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References

DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. ​The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3(​ 3).

Irving, D. (2014). ​Waking up white: And finding myself in the story of race.​ Cambridge, MA:

Elephant Room Press.

Lareau, A. (2015). Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality. ​American Sociological

Review,80​(1), 1-27.

Matias, C. E. (2013). Check Yo'self before You Wreck Yo'self and Our Kids: Counterstories

from Culturally Responsive White Teachers?... To Culturally Responsive White

Teachers!.Preview the document Interdisciplinary Journal of Teaching and Learning 3(2),

68-81.

Tatum, B. (1992). ​Talking about race, learning about racism: The application of racial identity

development theory in the classroom​. ​Harvard Educational Review 62​ (1), 1-25.

Ullucci, K., & Battey, D. (2011). ​Exposing color blindness/grounding color consciousness:

Challenges for teacher education​. ​Urban Education 46(​ 6), 1195-1225

Yosso, T. J. (2016). Whose Culture Has Capital? ​Critical Race Theory in Education,​113-136.
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Zeus Leonardo (2016) Tropics of whiteness: metaphor and the literary turn in white studies,

Whiteness and Education, 1:1, 3-14