Revealing The Invisible by Sherry Marx

The book Revealing the Invisible was written by Sherry Marx, a formal teacher, who went in-depth to explore the racist beliefs of white female teacher education students. The book began with Marx talking about pre service teachers that focused on English-language learning school children (ELLs). During this course she discovered just how low the expectations her students had for ELLs students. Throughout her interviews she will explore more beliefs of white females and their thoughts about race, racism, whiteness, and the children they tutored.

Whiteness was the first main subject she approached. She explains that Whiteness is usually expressed by “illuminating the invisible,” but most consider it normal rather than a marker of white culture. Whiteness is something perceived by Whites and usually considered the “normal”. The norm for one person is obviously different from the next and Whiteness is almost like an advantage without even knowing. The woman then described all things that were normal to her growing up like her neighborhood, country club, or teams she was a member of. It’s considered so normal because how under looked it is to White people who don’t realize this advantage they have. The white culture isn’t an entity, but more so a combination of different individuals that have little else in common but skin color. The more Marx interviewed these women the more she realized they had racial backlash.

Racial backlash became apparent the more then women talked about how they felt they weren’t apart of a group. The women explained they aren’t gay, blind, or deaf and admitted they were envious of the strong cultures other groups had. They felt it was something that tied these people together and the support they have. ...

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...deny seeing what they actually do not see. Rather, they profess to be color-blind when trying to suppress negative images they attach to people of color…”(1993, p.167) A quote that stood out that I believe sums up how she portrayed her philosophy in her book. I think this quote explains how we as teachers need to work on ourselves much more than we really need to help these students and how it all begins with us. I might use this information to not just focus on the curriculum, but to focus on my teaching to see what I am doing. I might focus on getting more feedback from teachers that shadow my mentoring or teaching for constructive criticism. Am I discriminating these students without even knowing? Am I rewarding myself more for the teaching rather than helping the students achieve the goal? As cliché as it is, I learned recently we don’t know what we don’t know.