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Tackling Difference in the Conservative Heartland of Canada

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Abstract

Sometimes life’s pivotal educational moments reveal themselves in unexpected situations. Like many other white mainstream Canadians, I have grown up virtually oblivious to an invisible bubble of white privilege, attending to instances of inequity and racism mainly for the purposes of telling inappropriate racist jokes. In 1987, however, during my first year of teaching high school in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, a group of students in one of my nonacademic English classes at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School opened my eyes to the potential for educators to work with students toward challenging racism and tackling issues of difference in school settings.

Portions of this manuscript appear in revised form in Lund (2001), and arc used with the kind permission of the publishers. I acknowledge the generous support of my research by fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and the Killain Trusts.

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© 2005 Peter Pericles Trifonas

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Lund, D.E. (2005). Tackling Difference in the Conservative Heartland of Canada. In: Trifonas, P.P. (eds) Communities of Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981356_2

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