White Female Teacher

A screenshot of the Google search term “white teacher.”

“Why Talk About Whiteness” by Emily Chiariello and “The unexamined Whiteness of teaching: how White teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies” by Bree Picower begs but one question: Why are the majority of teachers white females? I sought to find the answer.

My research revealed a common theme: people of color do not pursue careers in teaching because the do not see themselves in the profession, literally. Thus, the lack of representation leads to the lack of pursuit.

Emily Deruy provides evidence for this phenomenon in “Student Diversity Is Up But Teachers Are Mostly White” citing Paul Beare, dean of California State University-Fresno's Kremen School of Education, “Few minorities, especially men, think about becoming teachers. Many have simply never had minority teachers themselves, and so they don't identify with the idea…”.

While the lack of minority representation in public schools is a large part of the reason people of color do not end up as classroom teachers, it’s unreasonably redeductive. Sharif El-Mekki, principal of Mastery Charter School–Shoemaker Campus in Philadephia, PA and author of the blog “Philly’s 7th Ward,” writes in the post “Why Are Over 70% of Our Teachers White?” a much more nuanced summary, “The reasons are varying, complex, and disturbing.”

The complexity El-Mekki refers to has a lot more to do with a system of oppression that was designed to perpetuate racial bias than a lack of minority representation in the classroom. The former begets the latter.

Pointedly, Christina Berchini identifies what is disturbing about the question “Why Are All the Teachers White?” in the eponymously titled article that it “...seems to skirt, if not outright ignore, the system of racialized privilege that is historically embedded in, and endemic to, the public school system writ large.”

Berchini further proffers, “...why would historically marginalized populations elect to eventually become teachers for the very system that (likely) underserved them in some way? Why would minority populations elect to serve a system that will (likely) continue to underserve minority students if the current discourse of “accountability” has its way?”

This too, seems overly reductionist. Which leaves me wondering, am I a part of the problem? Would my position as a passionate, mostly effective educator be better served by a person of color? Would my students attain higher academic success if their teachers were more reflective of “visual elements of their identity, such as race and gender” (El-Mekki, 1)?