Power and Positionality
Resource: Ore, Ersula. (2017) “Pushback: A Pedagogy of Care.” Pedagogy, 17.1, 9-33
Description: Ore’s powerful personal testimony of her experience as a faculty woman of color in the racialized space of a historically White institution demonstrates the harmful impact of assuming whiteness as the norm in academia, and Ore shares her own response to these assumptions: a strategy she calls ‘pushback’. Ore defines pushback as “an ethical pedagogical posture that reflects a conscious awareness of whiteness and seeks to disrupt it by making it strange” (13), drawing on Dyer (1997)’s definition of pushback. While Ore enacts pushback from the position of a faculty woman of color, meaning that pushback employed by those who have traditionally held power in academia might look different, her explanations of the history of racial stereotypes in academic institutions and advocacy for disrupting whiteness in the classroom are thought-provoking and important guidance for anyone seeking to disrupt the ubiquity of whiteness in their classroom.
Reflection Questions:
- How do you evaluate your own authority in academia? What are the ways that others make you feel like you belong or do not belong? What are the ways you might unconsciously be making others feel like they do not belong?
- How might you disrupt whiteness and make it strange in or outside your classroom?