The great white north?: exploring whiteness, privilege, and identity in education.

Carr, Paul R. / Lund, Darren E., ed. The great white north?: exploring whiteness, privilege, and identity in education. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2007, xiii, 244pp., PAPERBACK, very good, light shelf wear but appears little used if at all. Transgressions (Rotterdam, Netherlands) v. 11. - This landmark book represents the first text to pay critical and sustained attention to Whiteness in Canada from an impressive line-up of leading scholars and activists. The burgeoning scholarship on Whiteness will benefit richly from this book's timely inclusion of the insights of Canadian scholars, educators, activists and others working for social justice within and through the educational system, with implications far beyond national borders. Naming Whiteness and White identity is a political project as much as an intellectual engagement, and the co-editors of this collection must be commended for creating the space for such naming to take place in public and academic discourses. Is it noteworthy to acknowledge that both Paul and Darren are White, and that they are overseeing this work on Whiteness? I believe that it is, not because others cannot write about the subject with clarity and insight, as is clearly evident in the diverse range of contributors to this book. Rather, naming their positions as White allies embracing a rigorous conceptual and analytical discourse in the social justice field is an important signal that White society must also become intertwined in the entrenched racism that infuses every aspect of our society. As Paul and Darren correctly point out, race is still a pivotal concern for everything that happens in society, and especially in schools. - CONTENTS: Section 1. Conceptualizing whiteness: Exposing the authority of whiteness: an auto-ethnographic journey / Kathleen S. Berry. Before I was white I was Presbyterian / Tim McCaskell. Being white and being right: critiquing individual and collective privilege / James Frideres -- Section 2. Whiteness and indigenous peoples: Going native: a white guy's experience teaching in an Aboriginal context / Herbert C. Northcott. On indigenous academia: the hermeneutics of indigenous western institutional participation--eleven theorems / Tracey Lindberg. "Don't blame me for what my ancestors did": understanding the impact of collective white guilt / Julie Caouette and Donald M. Taylor -- Section 3. Deconstructing and developing white identity: Development of anti-racist white identity in Canadian educational counsellors / Christine Wihak. "Radical stuff": starting a conversation about racial identity and white privilege / Susan A. Tilley and Kelly D. Powick. Who can/should do this work?: the colour of critique / Carl E. James. -- Section 4. Learning, teaching, and whiteness: The parents of Baywoods: intersections between whiteness and Jewish ethnicity / Cynthia Levine-Rasky. Re-inscribing whiteness through progressive constructions of "the problem" in anti-racist education / Lisa Comeau. Discourses on race and white privilege in the next generation of teachers / R. Patrick Solomon and Beverly-Jean M. Daniel. White Canadian female teachers and technology in education: stories reproducing the status quo / Brad Porfilio. -- Section 5. The institutional weight of whiteness: Whiteness and philosophy: imagining non-white philosophy in schools / Laura Mae Lindo. (De)centering normal: negotiating whiteness as a white school administrator in a diverse school community / Debbie Donsky and Matt Champion. A group that plays together stays together stays together: tracing: a story of racial violence / Gulzar R. Charania. The whiteness of educational policymaking / Paul R. Carr. ISBN 9789087901424.…