The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys

A Message From the Editors

When Eddie Moore Jr. first asked me if I’d be interested in co-editing The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys, I let out a sigh of recognition that I hear from most people when I mention the title of this book.  It’s a collective sigh that says, “I’ve been waiting for that book.”  We hear it from people of all gender identities, and all racial backgrounds.  It’s as if to say, “That book really should exist, shouldn’t it?”  or “It’s about time, isn’t it?” 

In my case, I said, “I want to read that book, but I don’t know if I can produce that book.”  But Eddie convinced me that this is the kind of book that none of us could produce alone.  I know a lot about White women, and my research focuses on White teachers. I am a White woman.  Between Marguerite Penick-Parks, a teacher educator who works almost exclusively with White pre-service teachers in Wisconsin, and I, we have White women covered.  Eddie knows Black boys from his research on Black men and sports, from his experience as a former Black boy, a Black man, a father, a teacher, a diversity director, and from his 18 year leadership of the White Privilege Conference.  

Producing this book required that we acknowledge that none of us could have all of the answers on our own.  In fact, we each have different, sometimes contradictory answers.  And this book is our collective inquiry into the question of how White women can be effective teachers of Black boys, supported by the 70+ authors in this book.  

In our first workshop on this book in 2013, Eddie asked the audience if a White woman could help a Black boy grow up to be W.E.B. DuBois? Malcolm X? Frederick Douglass?  He clearly thought the answer was “no.”  Throughout the course of the workshop, it slowly dawned on me that he didn’t think White women could teach Black boys.  Afterwards, we had to go head to head.  Why on Earth were we creating a “Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys,” if we didn’t think it was fundamentally possible?  The ensuing conversation was our first evidence that this book—and our team—would be successful, if we were successful because of our differences, not in spite of it.  That the magnetic energy that comes from honoring different—and sometimes opposite—polarities, is not generated without the presence of difference.

Four years later, it seems like Eddie has more hope for White women.  We have a 45 chapter guide with 30 personal vignettes, which take teachers step by step through the personal understanding, respecting the contextual and systemic racism in our society, the connective understanding about inherently biased school structures, and we have met countless White women do the work we seek to describe.  And yet Marguerite and I, who were initially much more optimistic about the capacity of White women (and by extension, ourselves), have moved much closer to Eddie’s initial position.  We feel daunted by the enormity of his initial vision, which we didn’t even fully grasp when we began this project.  Can White women do what is required to teach Black boys in a way that enables them to be their whole selves, to have the tools to navigate a racist society, to fully included and centralized in the life of the school, to could be leaders in the Black community or any community they choose to be a part of, and to be unapologetically Black (not stereotypically, but in the way that feels authentic to them) in their self image, the language they choose to speak, the way they choose to dress, the radical self love they choose to embrace, and the radical love of other Black people.

As James Baldwin has written, radical Black self love can be intimidating, even threatening to White people.  And yet how can anyone be successful in this lifetime, without a fundamental love of self, home and community.  But can White people, White teachers cultivate that in Black boys?  I don’t know.  After 4 years, multiple drafts of 70 written pieces, 60 hours of video footage with White and Black interviewees that is interspersed throughout the book, Marguerite and I (both White women) have come closer to Eddie’s side initial view, and Eddie has come closer to ours.  

Ultimately the answer lies with the 65% of White women who are currently in the drivers’ seat in classrooms in the United States.  While we don’t think White women can do it themselves, and we are simultaneously working to increase the number of Black teachers of all gender identities in classrooms, we acknowledge that for the time being, the vast majority of teachers are White women.  If this work happens, it will because White women heed the call to do school in a way that is different from how we currently do it.

We hope that when it is hard, when teachers face disagreement and difference, that they remember that energy and magnetism come from opposing forces.  As an editorial team, we are clear that our relationships with one another, and the polarity of our differences, is absolutely a manifestation of the same energy that runs through this book.  It is an energy that comes from our love and respect for one another, from the electrical current that our differences spark.  It is an energy generated by the coexistence of seemingly contradictory answers that together lead to complex, multifaceted solutions.  We recognize that without each other we could not even ask these questions, much less answer them. 

By Ali Michael with Eddie Moore Jr. and Marguerite Penick-Parks