Marx, Sherry. (2006). Revealing the Invisible: Confronting Passive Racism in Teacher Education. Reviewed by Soria E. Colomer, University of Georgia

Marx, Sherry. (2006). Revealing the Invisible: Confronting Passive Racism in Teacher Education. New York: Routledge Pp. xii + 196         ISBN 978-0-415-95343-6

Reviewed by Soria E. Colomer
University of Georgia

April 9, 2009

During my first year teaching in a rural southern town, Trinise (pseudonym) and I were about to enter a small hardware store a few blocks from the high school when she murmured, “Ms. Colomer, I’ll just stay in the car.” The cheerleading team’s co-captian, Trinise was in charge of designing the banner for the night’s game, so I thought it was absurd for me to choose the paint on my own. After much coaxing, she walked in the store with me. However, where I had been greeted by a sales clerk the week before, no one acknowledged us that afternoon. Without much thought, I assumed the employees’ oversight was due to the high volume of customers; yet, a strange feeling overcame me when others who entered the bustling store were immediately greeted. Typically a spirited and outgoing person, Trinise cowered while in the store. Prompted by her unusual demeanor, I took a closer look at the clerks and the clientele, and I noticed that everyone in the store—besides my student—was White. Suddenly, I became conscious of why some of my colleagues challenged my status as a “teacher of color” and how I could “pass” for being White when others chose not to see my olive skin tones. After leaving the store, Trinise remarked, “See?” with a definite I-told-you-so attitude. Although I never again patronized that store, such a forthright lesson in “seeing” invisible racism remains with me.

I was reminded of this incident while reading Revealing The Invisible: Confronting Passive Racism in Teacher Education by Sherry Marx because the pre-service teachers in her study approach race issues with the same naiveté I did my first year teaching. Part of the Teaching/Learning Social Justice Series, Revealing The Invisible successfully accomplishes the author’s primary objective by modeling how she sustained conversations about race, racism, and Whiteness with pre-service teachers in her class. Specifically, Revealing The Invisible is a story of nine, White, female pre-service teachers in a bilingual certification program who volunteer to work with students of color who were also English learners. Drawing from data she collected through participant-observations, interviews, and journal entries, Marx engages her readers with an articulate style, an honest tone, and a skillful use of her participants’ narratives which she seamlessly weaves throughout the book.

Marx begins Revealing The Invisible with a detailed description of her study and a vivid introduction of her participants. She provides individual “stories” of her participants for the readers to have a better understanding of these pre-service teachers and how their personal experiences affect their perceptions of themselves, the students of color they tutor, and their roles as volunteers. These introductions constitute an essential element of the book because the participants’ personal journeys as volunteer tutors are the basis of Marx’s seven-step approach to confronting and discussing passive racism. Even though the participants’ voices help the reader “see” the lens through which they position the students they tutor, the most telling element of their stories is their unawareness of both their own deficit perspectives and how detrimental such perspectives can be to the children they had volunteered to help.

In chapters two, three, and four, Marx describes what took place during her semester study and tells of her participants’ initial deficit perspectives towards their tutees and their tutee’s parents. In one instance, even though Claire knew that her tutee’s parents did not speak English, she remarked,

One thing I noticed was that his parents did not read to him. They basically hired me, and I told them I would do it for free—they paid me a little bit—but they basically wanted somebody else to do it. (p. 59)

Although this incident may not seem overtly racist or derogatory, it caught me off guard because my own parents, much like her tutee’s parents, were Spanish dominant; thus, they also sought tutors to fill the academic gaps they could not fill themselves. Moreover, as Marx points out, Claire “did not make the connection between their lack of English proficiency in English and their inability to read with Juan [her tutee] in English. Nor did she consider how much they must have cared about their child’s education to hire a tutor for him” (p. 59).

As the semester continued, Marx noted more instances of deficit thinking, so she gave each participant a copy of her transcripts to read and deconstruct. Although this technique did not unsettle all of her participants, seven pre-service teachers began to see the world through a more critical lens and realized how passive racism could potentially emerge in their classrooms once they became teachers. During a debriefing session, Elizabeth was appalled with herself when the only reason she could provide for not asking Martin, the child she tutored, any personal questions was because she, perhaps subconsciously, had expected him to have a “hard family life.” After an emotionally charged meeting of deep reflection with Marx, Elizabeth realized how her deficit perspectives could “work against the progress of students like Martin who were different from herself in terms of race, ethnicity, economic class, and language” (p. 106). In response to her newfound consciousness, she looked inward and considered the contributions she could make to counter the challenges these students faced in school.

In chapter five, Marx summarizes her participants’ reflective journeys and describes a seven-step synthesis of her attempt to lead her students in critical dialogue and her students’ attempts to recognize and resist their racism. Although Marx encourages teacher educators to consider these steps as they work with pre-service teachers, she reminds us that personal histories affect how and when individuals approach each step. She emphasizes that these steps are guides for transformative reflection, not static markers that must be checked off systematically. Furthermore, Marx clearly warns teacher educators that pre-service teachers begin their journey of deconstructing race and racism from different places.

Even though racism remains difficult to address, Marx provides a much needed blueprint for teacher educators to follow by highlighting seven steps: 1) create a trusting relationship with pre-service teachers and encourage them to speak candidly without the constraints of being “politically correct;” 2) avoid comforting pre-service teachers by constantly challenging White talk in a respectful manner; 3) when pre-service teachers begin to recognize and resist their racism, unwaveringly forbid pre-service teachers to retreat into their safe space of White talk; 4) challenge pre-service teachers to move beyond a mere “awareness” of racism; 5) encourage pre-service teachers to make a connection between the racism that influences their thinking and the challenges many children of color face in American schools; 6) listen patiently to pre-service teachers when they begin to cast away excuses for maintaining the status quo; 7) and help pre-service teachers avoid White guilt by encouraging them to reconstitute a White identity by unlearning racism.

With these seven steps, Marx exemplifies how critical reflection and praxis are effective means of countering the invisible and passive racism that pervade our schools. However, the biases she mentions resonate with the perceptions of Anabel, a Colombian born teacher of six years whom I interviewed for an ongoing study of Spanish teachers in new Latino communities. Similar to Claire’s assumptions about her tutee’s parents, Anabel considered it “remarkable” that the mostly Mexican student population at her school could read because “their parents are totally, totally illiterate.” On a social level, Anabel recognized the “wall” students constructed to guard themselves in response to stricter immigration laws. Paradoxically, however, she was frustrated to see the students “stick together.” Emblematic of her standpoint, she would tell the Latino students, “Nobody is racist—nobody is putting you separate. You are separating yourselves from the crowd. You are sticking together all the time.” Aloof to the xenophobic atmosphere at her school which marginalized Latina/o students, Anabel’s reaction underscores the need for teachers of all races and ethnicities to incorporate the critical reflective practices modeled by Marx and her participants.

In the final chapter, Marx provides a candid explanation of how current education programs generate a color-blind language by “omitting any discussion—or any challenging discussion—of the biases that teachers bring with them to the classes and the children they teach” (p. 150). As an instructor of an ESOL multicultural education course, I notice pre-service teachers struggle with the same ideologies as the tutors in Marx’s study. In my attempts to implement the strategies offered in Revealing The Invisible, I also strive toward challenging my students to surpass our safe place of awareness as we deconstruct political correctness and White talk. Similar to Marx, I am often uncomfortable when I pose questions that I know could easily be left unasked. However, as a teacher educator, I feel an obligation to my pre-service teachers, and to their future students, to dialogue about critical reflection so they do not walk into their schools with the same naiveté that blinded me as a first year teacher.

About the Reviewer

Soria E. Colomer is a doctoral student and teacher educator in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. A National Board Certified Teacher and former Mississippi Teacher Corps member, Ms. Colomer's current research interests include the positioning of teachers of color, student/teacher relationships, and student marginalization in new Latino communities.