Maggie and Me: A Black Professor and a White Urban School Teacher - Connect Autoethnography to Critical Race Pedagogy

Oct 15, 2026

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Explores urban schooling and teacher education through the lens of autoethnography and critical race pedagogy. Sherick A. Hughes describes challenges in “caring” for students without disabling them and highlights racial, ethnic, and cultural mismatches that intersect with class, gender, and sexual orientation. Using graduate teaching experiences with White educators learning alongside a Black professor, the text examines power differentials, White privilege, and interlocking systems of oppression. It outlines critical race pedagogy’s framework and argues that transformative, reflexive caring and individual action can disrupt oppressive narratives and support more just schooling.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Critical Race Pedagogy

Autoethnography and Critical Race Pedagogy Connection

Evidence and Concluding Thoughts

Maggie and Me: A Black Professor and a White Urban School Teacher Connect Autoethnography to Critical Race Pedagogy By Sherick A. Hughes Sherick A. Hughes is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. Introduction There are at least two current challenges arising for urban schools, teaching, and teacher education. First, many urban public schoolteachers and urban teacher educators with whom I have made acquaintance, colleagues, or friends are challenged to explore further how to “care” for students without crippling them. Second, many of us are challenged each year by racial/ ethnic/cultural mismatches, while attempting to remain“intimately cognizant of the necessary intersection of other oppressive constructs such as class, gender and sexual orientation”(Jennings & Lynn, 2005, p. 26). From June, 2003 to June 2007, I worked in the University of Toledo’s urban, Midwestern setting. Like most of its counterparts nationwide, Toledo is replete with waning support for inner-city public schools, resegregation, and a growing tension arising from a teacher-to-student mismatch in relation to “personal biography and group or community experiences created by race, class, and gender”(Collins, 1990, pp. 226-227) . Many of my graduate students were self-identified White female, graduate-level teachers responsible for educating large numbers of children of color. This graduate student population also represented the working poor, as well as the struggling middle class. Upon taking a course from me, a Black male, tenure-track Assistant Professor, these students found themselves in the unusual position of being challenged to both teach and learn daily from Blacks. During the day they were teaching predominantly Black urban students, and in the evening they were taking part in a course taught by a Black professor that, in part, centers White privilege. It was seemingly the closest these White teachers had come to experiencing life as a minority, albeit temporal and context-specific. Like other scholars of color (e.g., Cleveland, 2005; Berry, 2006), I sensed the tension of White students seeing me as a Black “other.”However, the unequal power dynamics inherent in the professor/researcher-student relationship were also present in this urban setting (Villenas, 1996) . Jennings and Lynn (2005) support this notion ofa power differential even in Black professor-White student situations.Although, they contend and I agree that duetothe overwhelming nature of White privilege in the U.S.,“scholars of color cannot be easily described in terms of being ‘privileged’in the same way that White scholars define their role as privileged”(Jennings & Lynn, 2005, p. 27) . Some education practitioners and researchers alike continue to narrow the race, class, and gender nexus by focusing upon binary race vs. class, or race vs. gender inquiries (Collins, 1990, p.230). Other educators contend that teachers and learners can overcome oppression at school by centering social justice movements with race or political race (e.g., Guinier & Torres, 2002) . Still, other educators center social class/SES above and beyond “race” to expose barriers to the potentially liberatory forms of schooling (e.g., Darder & Torres, 2004; Van Galen, 2004; Wilson, 1980; Wilson, 1996). Noticeably fewer publications of educational research (Cleveland, 2005; Collins, 1990; Hughes, 2006; Jennings & Lynn; Van Galen, 2006) seem to center either race, class, or gender as interlocking systems of oppression, whereby each system should be “centered, validated and judged by its own measure without de-centering any other forms of oppression”(Collins, 1990, p. 237) . My former College of Education encouraged faculty to implement pedagogy that responded fully to the needs of citizens in diverse situations, including the urban, metropolitan community we served. Such a vision requires, by default, a sincere effort to change or “re

FAQs

What challenges does the article identify for urban schools and teacher education?

It highlights difficulties in teaching with care without harming students and the recurring problem of racial/ethnic/cultural mismatches while also addressing intersecting systems of oppression such as class, gender, and sexual orientation.

How does the author describe his classroom context with graduate teachers?

White female graduate-level teachers worked with predominantly Black urban students during the day, then took a course taught by a Black professor in which White privilege was central, creating a temporally specific experience of minority positioning.

What role does autoethnography play in relation to critical race pedagogy?

The article argues that autoethnography can contribute by illustrating a promising connection to critical race pedagogy through interwoven narratives of race, class, and gender struggles and hopes shared by Maggie and the author.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by moss~