(Un)masking Cultural Identities: Challenges for White Early Childhood Educators

Abstract

It has been argued within the literature on critical race theories that individuals and groups who are white do not often see themselves as being connected to a cultural or racial group. For white individuals and communities, the cultural basis of their identities has been silent and unnamed, and largely remains so, even while their identities are discursively constructed from within particular social, historical, and geopolitical times (Delgado and Stefancic, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; Moreton-Robinson, 2004). It is undesirable and problematic to collapse the diversity and multiplicity that exists in white communities, indeed any community, into one static and concrete category, and this work requires the explorations of historical, geopolitical, and social constructions of the specifics of any context and country. With these tensions in mind however, it is also useful to begin naming white to ensure that white individuals and groups begin to locate themselves as just another cultural group. This is useful, as it provides entry-points and opportunities to begin to trouble and problematize the silent and unacknowledged judgment and categorization that occurs for “others” against the unnamed and unspoken white norm. In Australia specifically, the necessity of (un)masking white identities in efforts to decenter white and accord it just another place in a diverse racial and ethnic mix is particularly relevant.